Review: The King in Yellow

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
Presented by Blackstone Audio

Very mixed feelings.

Some really interesting ideas, and some standout stories, but not entirely worth the effort.

I'm glad I had an audio copy of this one, as I was ready to give up at page 3. I switched to the audio and proceeded to enjoy the first few stories but then they just became dull and convoluted and, honestly? I tuned out a whole lot.

The first story takes a lot of work to get into, but once it takes off it becomes a wonderfully bizarre tale. The thread of the whole book is this fictional King in Yellow book that allegedly makes people go crazy, but we only every get excerpts and suggestions rather than any real idea as to what the book is about.

What we do get is a bunch of crazy people.

Some of the stories leave some great impressions, with scenes that will really stay in your mind, but others are dull and pointless from the get-go and make you wonder why they were included.

The narration was decent - great level of performance to make the stories engaging, though some of the accents and voices were a bit overwhelming at times. The delivery of all the French towards the end was brilliant, but also made it a lot harder for me to follow as I don't speak French, so I often missed what the words and phrases meant. I recommend the audio, though, if you want to read this one but are struggling within the first page or two.

I really like the idea of this collection, but ultimately it was just too much work. This one's for the erudite who want to ponder all the possible meanings and symbolism. I'd only recommend it to people who are keen to put in the work, as it takes a lot of effort to keep up with this one.

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