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Cassilda's Song: Tales Inspired by Robert W. Chamber's King in Yellow Mythos
Cassilda’s Song is a collection of weird fiction and horror stories based on the King in Yellow Mythos created by Robert W. Chambers—entirely authored by women. There are no pretenders here. The Daughters of the Yellow Sign, each a titan of unmasked fire in their own right, have parted the curtains. From Hali’s deeps and Carcosa’s gloomy balconies and Styx-black towers, come their lamentations and rage and the consequences of intrigues and follies born in Oblivion. Run into their embrace. Their carriages wait to take you from shadowed rooms and cobble¬stones to The Place Where the Black Stars Hang.
The 1895 release of Chambers’ best-remembered work of weird fiction was salted with nihilism and ennui, and ripe with derangement, haunting beauty, and eerie torments. Poe’s influence was present in the core tales and one could easily argue Chambers may have been influenced by the French Decadents and the disquieting transfigura¬tions of the Symbolists. All this and more can be said of the works collected in this anthology. Carcosa, accursed and ancient, and cloud-misted Lake of Hali are here. The Hyades sing and the cloud waves break in these tales. The authority of Bierce’s cosmic horror is here. The talismantic Yellow Sign, and the titular ‘hidden’ King, and The Imperial Dynasty of America, will influence and alter you, as they have the accounts by these writers. Cassilda and other unreliable narrators, government-sponsored Lethal Chambers, and the many mysteries of the mythical Play, are boldly represented in these tributes to Chambers.
Have you seen the Yellow Sign?
The contents of this anthology include:
• Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic by Damien Angelica Walters
• She Will Be Raised a Queen by E. Catherine Tobler
• Yella by Nicole Cushing
• Yellow Bird by Lynda E. Rucker
• Exposure by Helen Marshall
• Just Beyond Her Dreaming by Mercedes M. Yardley
• In the Quad of Project 327 by Chesya Burke
• Stones, Maybe by Ursula Pflug
• Les Fleurs Du Mal by Allyson Bird
• While The Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder
• Old Tsah-Hov by Anya Martin
• The Neurastheniac by Selena Chambers
• Dancing The Mask by Ann K. Schwader
• Family by Maura McHugh
• Pro Patria! by Nadia Bulkin
• Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning by E. Catherine Tobler & Damien Angelica Walters
• Grave-Worms by Molly Tanzer
• Strange is the Night by S.P. Miskowski
The 1895 release of Chambers’ best-remembered work of weird fiction was salted with nihilism and ennui, and ripe with derangement, haunting beauty, and eerie torments. Poe’s influence was present in the core tales and one could easily argue Chambers may have been influenced by the French Decadents and the disquieting transfigura¬tions of the Symbolists. All this and more can be said of the works collected in this anthology. Carcosa, accursed and ancient, and cloud-misted Lake of Hali are here. The Hyades sing and the cloud waves break in these tales. The authority of Bierce’s cosmic horror is here. The talismantic Yellow Sign, and the titular ‘hidden’ King, and The Imperial Dynasty of America, will influence and alter you, as they have the accounts by these writers. Cassilda and other unreliable narrators, government-sponsored Lethal Chambers, and the many mysteries of the mythical Play, are boldly represented in these tributes to Chambers.
Have you seen the Yellow Sign?
The contents of this anthology include:
• Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic by Damien Angelica Walters
• She Will Be Raised a Queen by E. Catherine Tobler
• Yella by Nicole Cushing
• Yellow Bird by Lynda E. Rucker
• Exposure by Helen Marshall
• Just Beyond Her Dreaming by Mercedes M. Yardley
• In the Quad of Project 327 by Chesya Burke
• Stones, Maybe by Ursula Pflug
• Les Fleurs Du Mal by Allyson Bird
• While The Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder
• Old Tsah-Hov by Anya Martin
• The Neurastheniac by Selena Chambers
• Dancing The Mask by Ann K. Schwader
• Family by Maura McHugh
• Pro Patria! by Nadia Bulkin
• Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning by E. Catherine Tobler & Damien Angelica Walters
• Grave-Worms by Molly Tanzer
• Strange is the Night by S.P. Miskowski
264 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 21, 2015
31 people are currently reading
427 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 22, 2015
An amazing anthology that does what King in Yellow stories do best: create a dreamlike mood and the sensation that reality is ephemeral and could fade at any moment. Individually, nearly all of these stories would be standouts in another anthology. But together the stories fit perfectly, contributing and building towards a greater whole. It begins perfectly with a story by Damien Angelica Walters about an artist and her creation. This story accomplishes several things at once: using a female artist as opposed to the male artist in Chambers’s “The Yellow Sign” sets up that the anthology is written entirely by women, the story also beautifully establishes mood and tone, and since it is a story about the act of creation it builds the framework for the rest of the anthology, all while telling it’s own separate story.
The affect of these stories continues to build. Mercedes Yardely’s “Just Beyond Her Dreaming,” is from start to finish one of the best stories I’ve read, and it’s addition to this anthology with the line at the end “[The King in Yellow] changes everything. Absolutely everything” is perfectly placed. By the time the anthology hit its homestretch with stories by E. Catherine Tobler & Damien Angelica Walters, Molly Tanzer, and S.P. Miskowski, my ears were ringing and I can’t think of three better stories to read back to back, an incredible ending to a stellar combination of stories.
I have read many anthologies either of or containing King in Yellow stories, but have never read an anthology where the overall effect is so wonderfully unsettling. Each morning after reading one story, the dreamlike effect has lingered and now having finished the last last story and considering the book in its entirety, I half expect to see the Yellow Sign.
The affect of these stories continues to build. Mercedes Yardely’s “Just Beyond Her Dreaming,” is from start to finish one of the best stories I’ve read, and it’s addition to this anthology with the line at the end “[The King in Yellow] changes everything. Absolutely everything” is perfectly placed. By the time the anthology hit its homestretch with stories by E. Catherine Tobler & Damien Angelica Walters, Molly Tanzer, and S.P. Miskowski, my ears were ringing and I can’t think of three better stories to read back to back, an incredible ending to a stellar combination of stories.
I have read many anthologies either of or containing King in Yellow stories, but have never read an anthology where the overall effect is so wonderfully unsettling. Each morning after reading one story, the dreamlike effect has lingered and now having finished the last last story and considering the book in its entirety, I half expect to see the Yellow Sign.
May 11, 2016
Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the fact that the “King in Yellow” cycle of author Robert W. Chambers consists of only four core texts—two of them only tangential in reference, and all short stories at that—is the notion that someone might endeavor to create an anthology written in tribute to and existing in the same fictional world of that cycle. But seasoned writer and editor Joseph Pulver, Sr., himself the author of his own homages to Chambers, has endeavored to do just that, and he has taken on the additional tact of sourcing stories from some of the genre’s fiercest female writers, lending a stage to the women of Carcosa so that their song may be heard by readers and followers of the Yellow Sign alike.
A number of discoveries are made upon reading Cassilda’s Song, one being that volumes such as these are not only welcome but immensely valuable in exposing readers to a wide range of talent that might have fallen outside their original purview, and two being that, in spite of their limited numbers, Chambers’ “King in Yellow” stories contain enough potency and mystification to fuel the febrile imaginations of the entire cast of impressive players here.
The dynastic order at the heart of Chambers’ mythos, the one that lords over everything that the twin suns touch in Carcosa, lends a fairy tale-vibe to the narratives that explore the theme of princesses who have either become lost or have abandoned the tattered courts of their all-seeing father. The contributions from E. Catherine Tobler (“She Will Be Raised a Queen”), Allyson Bird (“Les Fleurs du Mal”), and the joint effort of Tobler and Damien Angelica Walters (“Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning”) all explore this theme literally and explicitly, placing us alongside the magical women who find passionate lovers, historical enemies, and countless victims as they traverse dimensions and time in the forms of selkies, muses, and Fates. These tales prove more difficult to engage with than others, their prose, in spite of the fecundity of rich imagery, at times too ephemeral to get a grasp of just what is occurring, dulling the keen edge they might have possessed, but each story does provide pleasures aplenty for those who enjoy getting drunk on the wine of language.
The entries from Lynda E. Rucker (“Yellow Bird”) and Helen Marshall (“Exposure”) place this lost princess theme in a more modern light, the former dealing with a Southern “wild girl” whose readings of an old family diary and the visions conjured in the flames of an accidental inferno reveal her true almighty parentage, while the latter story introduces us to another maturing woman who finds out just how big and bad the real world is when she’s left to fend for herself on a Grecian island where the corpse-tide rises high. Both stories nicely complement the other, the half-formed, imperfect personalities of the characters fueling their individual desires for acceptance and independence, their fitting narrative voices—the homespun charm of Rucker’s, the mood-swinging snap of Marshall’s—compelling us to follow these girls through their journeys. The best of the stories working in this thematic wheelhouse is undoubtedly Mercedes M. Yardley’s “Just Beyond Her Dreaming.” Like others in the collection, it’s a story about a woman attempting to free herself of the masculine bonds that shackle her, but in the antiquated setting and lush prose of a Romantic novel Yardley makes the plight of her heroine feel especially damning. Instead of placing the threat of subjugation in the fantastic context of Chambers’ all-ruling King, Yardley grounds her conflict in the very real social mores of the time and explores it with quiet grace. “Just Beyond…” hardly qualifies as a traditional horror story; we become caught up as the protagonist maneuvers through the minefield of 19th century marriage and exults in the beautiful freedom that nature and her masked lover afford her, but it’s with the satisfying click of a tumbler falling into place that the tale’s last sinister revelation is made, and slowly we become aware that a new set of shackles may have just been snapped in place.
Several authors take advantage of the milieu of artists and bohemians that populated Chambers’ original stories to examine one of the genre’s pet relationships, that of creativity and madness. Many of these stories are quite good, such as Damien Angelica Walters’ solo effort, “Black Stars on Canvas, A Reproduction.” The story is a great choice for an opener, establishing as it does the recurring vision of those inky novas and speaking to the inherent frustration faced by artists of all stripes but perhaps especially those of Weird fiction: the task of reproducing madness or the instigation of madness with words that always manage to feel inadequate, useless rusty things. One of the reasons that Chambers’ stories still feel so vital is because the author circumvented the shortcomings of the form by keeping all passages of his insanity-inducing play to a minimum, just enough to provide a whispery suggestion of the horrors within. It’s become a well-worn trope of the field since then, so it must be commended that authors like Walters are able to expand upon those few scant hints and reveal their own vistas while still managing to cloak their stories in tantalizing darkness. Walters’ fascination with the scarring and shedding of skin melds well with the obsessive drive of her heroine—and all the other characters in the book—to fly away to that golden realm of dreaming.
Carcosa is lensed through a variety of other artistic mediums, such as ballet (Ann K. Schwader’s “Dancing the Mask”) and music (Lucy A. Snyder’s “While the Black Stars Burn”), the latter bolstered by an overall fierceness and robustness of visuals that doesn’t shy away from viscera like ripped spines and rat-chewed corpses. This sub-school of homages comes with a top contender as well, this time arriving in the form of Selena Chambers’ patently masterful “The Neurastheniac.” The story’s documentarian opening serves as the sizzling fuse on this powder-keg of ideas and imagination, the one entry from the collection that seeks to elaborate on the suicide chambers, one of the most disturbingly fascinating facets of Robert W. Chambers’ “The Repairer of Reputations.” It’s a marvelously intricate piece, one that breaks down forms even as our self-destructive, Diane Arbus-esque poet breaks down within the corridors of the disused chambers, the cold delivery of the prelude giving way to narrative journal entries before finally diving open veins-first into the emotional hallucigenia of poetry, a musical wonder that deftly shows the magic that authors can achieve with the turning of a single, brief verse. If any one story is poised to claim top honors in the anthology, it is this.
Some of the characters in the anthology are not so complacent to go gently into that good night and, in the truest form of empowerment, fight to take it back from the knuckle-draggers who would otherwise oppress them. In “Grave-Worms,” Molly Tanzer’s heroine undergoes a reawakening through the benefit of the cursed play that allows her to realize that men are blatant losers who will never be hep to Carcosa’s groove. Here the night is literally reclaimed by the feminine, all condescending males sent shrieking into the hills and leaving the world a darker albeit more peaceful place for the ladies to smoke and chill with one another.
Although both Nicole Cushing’s “Yella” and S. P. Miskowski’s “Strange is the Night” are related from the male perspective (and gaze), the “heroes” of these stories find themselves over a barrel when the King in Yellow, the ultimate subjugator, “makes them sissy” for sins of their own both implied and overt. The two authors handle the various shades of their damaged protagonists with aplomb, neglectful husbands questioning their courage and serial predators reflecting on unfulfilled lives described with a level of empathy that we see all too infrequently in works of this kind. The redneck colloquialisms of Cushing’s story and the measured dread of Miskowski’s gradually build to levels of primeval grossness and terrifying righteousness that cap their respective narratives nicely.
Readers wary of investing in a tribute anthology such as this for fear of carbon copy pastiche need not worry a moment longer. A good many of the scribes here use Chambers’ themes as springboards for their own distinctive interests and obsessions, crafting tales that pay homage rather than lifting wholesale from the original cycle. Both Chesya Burke’s “In the Quad of Project 327” and Nadia Bulkin’s “Pro Patria!” examine the concept of suppression through the politics of life in the ghetto and under the reign of dogmatic government leaders. The stories use the lightest dabbling of Chambers’ yellow palette, showing how the forces of Carcosa can be used for retributive action against oppression and tip the scales one of two ways, conquering racists on one end and transforming revolutionaries into the mongers they’ve overthrown on the other.
Other authors use the mythos to navigate the choppy emotional waters of familial and romantic love. The isolated narrator in Ursula Pflug’s “Stones, Maybe” speaks from an insecure and intense longing for the life he could have had instead of caretaking the dreary boating resort inherited from his father with only a ratty copy of a strange play to keep him company, making this the story with the leanest strain of supernaturalism and feminine presence, but the interchangeably familiar and alien quality of the narrator’s surroundings and the melancholy air of his thoughts gives the story a hypnotic air of subdued misery.
Anya Martin and Maura McHugh ably demonstrate that having a family carries its own slings and arrows. The Irish siblings of McHugh’s “Family” must face the notion of returning to the old abandoned homestead, the brother particularly discomfited by the idea of potentially resurrecting the ghosts of past cruelties that he’d hoped would remain buried in the old stones of their rustic cottage. Martin takes a more unconventional route by relating her drama through the eyes of “Old Tsah-Hov,” a street dog adopted by the loving Cassilda who is gradually relegated to the sidelines with each human addition to their home. Both stories convey the willingness with which we make sacrifices for the ones we love, how devotion and intimacy blind us to our own private fears and make us traverse the darkly wooded path that, had we no company but our own, would look like the road better left less-traveled. Both brother and dog are eventually spurned for their devotions, yet we feel that if both characters were given the opportunity to change the course of their eventual destinies, they’d only turn and walk down that brambled path alongside their adored companions.
With Cassilda’s Song, Pulver and his contributors have successfully tapped the weird majesty of Chambers’ mythos and constructed their own kingdoms in honor of Carcosa. Their spires are topped with flags bearing the tattered likeness of the King as signs of honor, but the shifting corridors within promise to take the reader on journeys both unexpected and enjoyable. Stay long enough and you just might catch Cassilda take the grand stage for her nightly aria. We suggest that you stay and listen; she’s in fine voice tonight, and you just may hear the song you’ve been waiting for your entire life.
A number of discoveries are made upon reading Cassilda’s Song, one being that volumes such as these are not only welcome but immensely valuable in exposing readers to a wide range of talent that might have fallen outside their original purview, and two being that, in spite of their limited numbers, Chambers’ “King in Yellow” stories contain enough potency and mystification to fuel the febrile imaginations of the entire cast of impressive players here.
The dynastic order at the heart of Chambers’ mythos, the one that lords over everything that the twin suns touch in Carcosa, lends a fairy tale-vibe to the narratives that explore the theme of princesses who have either become lost or have abandoned the tattered courts of their all-seeing father. The contributions from E. Catherine Tobler (“She Will Be Raised a Queen”), Allyson Bird (“Les Fleurs du Mal”), and the joint effort of Tobler and Damien Angelica Walters (“Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning”) all explore this theme literally and explicitly, placing us alongside the magical women who find passionate lovers, historical enemies, and countless victims as they traverse dimensions and time in the forms of selkies, muses, and Fates. These tales prove more difficult to engage with than others, their prose, in spite of the fecundity of rich imagery, at times too ephemeral to get a grasp of just what is occurring, dulling the keen edge they might have possessed, but each story does provide pleasures aplenty for those who enjoy getting drunk on the wine of language.
The entries from Lynda E. Rucker (“Yellow Bird”) and Helen Marshall (“Exposure”) place this lost princess theme in a more modern light, the former dealing with a Southern “wild girl” whose readings of an old family diary and the visions conjured in the flames of an accidental inferno reveal her true almighty parentage, while the latter story introduces us to another maturing woman who finds out just how big and bad the real world is when she’s left to fend for herself on a Grecian island where the corpse-tide rises high. Both stories nicely complement the other, the half-formed, imperfect personalities of the characters fueling their individual desires for acceptance and independence, their fitting narrative voices—the homespun charm of Rucker’s, the mood-swinging snap of Marshall’s—compelling us to follow these girls through their journeys. The best of the stories working in this thematic wheelhouse is undoubtedly Mercedes M. Yardley’s “Just Beyond Her Dreaming.” Like others in the collection, it’s a story about a woman attempting to free herself of the masculine bonds that shackle her, but in the antiquated setting and lush prose of a Romantic novel Yardley makes the plight of her heroine feel especially damning. Instead of placing the threat of subjugation in the fantastic context of Chambers’ all-ruling King, Yardley grounds her conflict in the very real social mores of the time and explores it with quiet grace. “Just Beyond…” hardly qualifies as a traditional horror story; we become caught up as the protagonist maneuvers through the minefield of 19th century marriage and exults in the beautiful freedom that nature and her masked lover afford her, but it’s with the satisfying click of a tumbler falling into place that the tale’s last sinister revelation is made, and slowly we become aware that a new set of shackles may have just been snapped in place.
Several authors take advantage of the milieu of artists and bohemians that populated Chambers’ original stories to examine one of the genre’s pet relationships, that of creativity and madness. Many of these stories are quite good, such as Damien Angelica Walters’ solo effort, “Black Stars on Canvas, A Reproduction.” The story is a great choice for an opener, establishing as it does the recurring vision of those inky novas and speaking to the inherent frustration faced by artists of all stripes but perhaps especially those of Weird fiction: the task of reproducing madness or the instigation of madness with words that always manage to feel inadequate, useless rusty things. One of the reasons that Chambers’ stories still feel so vital is because the author circumvented the shortcomings of the form by keeping all passages of his insanity-inducing play to a minimum, just enough to provide a whispery suggestion of the horrors within. It’s become a well-worn trope of the field since then, so it must be commended that authors like Walters are able to expand upon those few scant hints and reveal their own vistas while still managing to cloak their stories in tantalizing darkness. Walters’ fascination with the scarring and shedding of skin melds well with the obsessive drive of her heroine—and all the other characters in the book—to fly away to that golden realm of dreaming.
Carcosa is lensed through a variety of other artistic mediums, such as ballet (Ann K. Schwader’s “Dancing the Mask”) and music (Lucy A. Snyder’s “While the Black Stars Burn”), the latter bolstered by an overall fierceness and robustness of visuals that doesn’t shy away from viscera like ripped spines and rat-chewed corpses. This sub-school of homages comes with a top contender as well, this time arriving in the form of Selena Chambers’ patently masterful “The Neurastheniac.” The story’s documentarian opening serves as the sizzling fuse on this powder-keg of ideas and imagination, the one entry from the collection that seeks to elaborate on the suicide chambers, one of the most disturbingly fascinating facets of Robert W. Chambers’ “The Repairer of Reputations.” It’s a marvelously intricate piece, one that breaks down forms even as our self-destructive, Diane Arbus-esque poet breaks down within the corridors of the disused chambers, the cold delivery of the prelude giving way to narrative journal entries before finally diving open veins-first into the emotional hallucigenia of poetry, a musical wonder that deftly shows the magic that authors can achieve with the turning of a single, brief verse. If any one story is poised to claim top honors in the anthology, it is this.
Some of the characters in the anthology are not so complacent to go gently into that good night and, in the truest form of empowerment, fight to take it back from the knuckle-draggers who would otherwise oppress them. In “Grave-Worms,” Molly Tanzer’s heroine undergoes a reawakening through the benefit of the cursed play that allows her to realize that men are blatant losers who will never be hep to Carcosa’s groove. Here the night is literally reclaimed by the feminine, all condescending males sent shrieking into the hills and leaving the world a darker albeit more peaceful place for the ladies to smoke and chill with one another.
Although both Nicole Cushing’s “Yella” and S. P. Miskowski’s “Strange is the Night” are related from the male perspective (and gaze), the “heroes” of these stories find themselves over a barrel when the King in Yellow, the ultimate subjugator, “makes them sissy” for sins of their own both implied and overt. The two authors handle the various shades of their damaged protagonists with aplomb, neglectful husbands questioning their courage and serial predators reflecting on unfulfilled lives described with a level of empathy that we see all too infrequently in works of this kind. The redneck colloquialisms of Cushing’s story and the measured dread of Miskowski’s gradually build to levels of primeval grossness and terrifying righteousness that cap their respective narratives nicely.
Readers wary of investing in a tribute anthology such as this for fear of carbon copy pastiche need not worry a moment longer. A good many of the scribes here use Chambers’ themes as springboards for their own distinctive interests and obsessions, crafting tales that pay homage rather than lifting wholesale from the original cycle. Both Chesya Burke’s “In the Quad of Project 327” and Nadia Bulkin’s “Pro Patria!” examine the concept of suppression through the politics of life in the ghetto and under the reign of dogmatic government leaders. The stories use the lightest dabbling of Chambers’ yellow palette, showing how the forces of Carcosa can be used for retributive action against oppression and tip the scales one of two ways, conquering racists on one end and transforming revolutionaries into the mongers they’ve overthrown on the other.
Other authors use the mythos to navigate the choppy emotional waters of familial and romantic love. The isolated narrator in Ursula Pflug’s “Stones, Maybe” speaks from an insecure and intense longing for the life he could have had instead of caretaking the dreary boating resort inherited from his father with only a ratty copy of a strange play to keep him company, making this the story with the leanest strain of supernaturalism and feminine presence, but the interchangeably familiar and alien quality of the narrator’s surroundings and the melancholy air of his thoughts gives the story a hypnotic air of subdued misery.
Anya Martin and Maura McHugh ably demonstrate that having a family carries its own slings and arrows. The Irish siblings of McHugh’s “Family” must face the notion of returning to the old abandoned homestead, the brother particularly discomfited by the idea of potentially resurrecting the ghosts of past cruelties that he’d hoped would remain buried in the old stones of their rustic cottage. Martin takes a more unconventional route by relating her drama through the eyes of “Old Tsah-Hov,” a street dog adopted by the loving Cassilda who is gradually relegated to the sidelines with each human addition to their home. Both stories convey the willingness with which we make sacrifices for the ones we love, how devotion and intimacy blind us to our own private fears and make us traverse the darkly wooded path that, had we no company but our own, would look like the road better left less-traveled. Both brother and dog are eventually spurned for their devotions, yet we feel that if both characters were given the opportunity to change the course of their eventual destinies, they’d only turn and walk down that brambled path alongside their adored companions.
With Cassilda’s Song, Pulver and his contributors have successfully tapped the weird majesty of Chambers’ mythos and constructed their own kingdoms in honor of Carcosa. Their spires are topped with flags bearing the tattered likeness of the King as signs of honor, but the shifting corridors within promise to take the reader on journeys both unexpected and enjoyable. Stay long enough and you just might catch Cassilda take the grand stage for her nightly aria. We suggest that you stay and listen; she’s in fine voice tonight, and you just may hear the song you’ve been waiting for your entire life.
Want to read
March 4, 2016Contents:
007 - Introduction
011 - "Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic" by Damien Angelica Walters
025 - " She Will Be Raised a Queen" by E. Catherine Tobler
037 -" Yella" by Nicole Cushing
045 - "Yellow Bird" by Lynda E. Rucker
055 - "Exposure" by Helen Marshall
069 - "Just Beyond Her Dreaming" by Mercedes M. Yardley
085 - "In the Quad of Project 327" by Chesya Burke
097 - "Stones, Maybe" by Ursula Pflug
109 - "Les Fleurs Du Mal" by Allyson Bird
119 - "While The Black Stars Burn" by Lucy A. Snyder
129 - "Old Tsah-Hov" by Anya Martin
143 - "The Neurastheniac" by Selena Chambers
161 - "Dancing The Mask" by Ann K. Schwader
169 - "Family" by Maura McHugh
181 - "Pro Patria!" by Nadia Bulkin
195 - "Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning" by E. Catherine Tobler & Damien Angelica Walters
221 - "Grave-Worms" by Molly Tanzer
237 - "Strange is the Night" by S.P. Miskowski
255 Author Biographies
007 - Introduction
011 - "Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic" by Damien Angelica Walters
025 - " She Will Be Raised a Queen" by E. Catherine Tobler
037 -" Yella" by Nicole Cushing
045 - "Yellow Bird" by Lynda E. Rucker
055 - "Exposure" by Helen Marshall
069 - "Just Beyond Her Dreaming" by Mercedes M. Yardley
085 - "In the Quad of Project 327" by Chesya Burke
097 - "Stones, Maybe" by Ursula Pflug
109 - "Les Fleurs Du Mal" by Allyson Bird
119 - "While The Black Stars Burn" by Lucy A. Snyder
129 - "Old Tsah-Hov" by Anya Martin
143 - "The Neurastheniac" by Selena Chambers
161 - "Dancing The Mask" by Ann K. Schwader
169 - "Family" by Maura McHugh
181 - "Pro Patria!" by Nadia Bulkin
195 - "Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning" by E. Catherine Tobler & Damien Angelica Walters
221 - "Grave-Worms" by Molly Tanzer
237 - "Strange is the Night" by S.P. Miskowski
255 Author Biographies
September 19, 2015
Pulver is the first to highlight female voices in Carcosan fiction with this anthology, and many of the tales included all have a distinctly female voice. Most of the stories are centered around art, as is to be expected. But stories such as Nadia Bulkin's "Pro Patria!" and Molly Tanzer's "Grave-Worms" give Carcosan mythos a political angle that is unexpected but rather overdue.
What keeps me from giving this anthology 5 stars is that, while the stories are of a uniformly high quality, I'm not sure some of them really had anything to do with The King In Yellow. They could have had the Carcosan elements removed and it wouldn't have changed the story much.
This book is highly recommended for weird fiction fans in general and Carcosa fans especially.
What keeps me from giving this anthology 5 stars is that, while the stories are of a uniformly high quality, I'm not sure some of them really had anything to do with The King In Yellow. They could have had the Carcosan elements removed and it wouldn't have changed the story much.
This book is highly recommended for weird fiction fans in general and Carcosa fans especially.
September 3, 2015
A fine anthology with a wide variety of approaches to the King in Yellow theme. I was genuinely moved by some of these stories with their tones of despair and helplessness. One theme that seemed to repeat in several of these tales is how crushing everyday life is and how difficult it is to just continue on. Joe Pulver did a fine job of selecting these stories. I look forward to seeing what future works that these authors produce.
January 17, 2016
Another great collection of King in Yellow-inspired weird stories curated by Pulver (following from A Season in Carcosa). Particular standouts for me were Nadia Bulkin's "Pro Patria!" and Selena Chambers' dreamlike "The Neurastheniac", but there are no duds.
January 29, 2016
Almost bought this at NecronomiCon 2015 when I spotted some early release dead tree copies and my only regret is that I didn't buy it then and read it sooner! This is an awesome collection of stories, and the ToC practically reads like a Who's Who of the Women of Weird Fiction - Cassilda's Sisters as it were - and every story offers an intriguing take on the mythos of the mysterious King in Yellow. Especially intriguing (for me at least, in my not-so-humble opinion) are Nadia Bulkin's "Pro Patria!", which treats of colonialism intersecting with the play "The King in Yellow"; Anya Martin's "Old Tsah-Hov", featuring an unusual manifestation of the being known as the King in Yellow and a creature's encounter with it; and my favorite "Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning" by E. Catherine Tobler and Damien Angelica Waters, in which Cassilda moves between times and places, sharing her mad inspiration with persons great and small over the ages. Joe Pulver, the cartographer of Carcosa, chose an excellent, madly inspired collection of stories, and if you're intrigued by Robert W. Chambers's King in Yellow stories, or weird fiction in general, this is a must-read!
July 6, 2016
Pro Patria! -- a newly fledged 3rd world democracy meets a certain play. With horrifying results. Interesting take on the corruption aspects of the KIY.
Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning -- Cassilda, or possibly 2 Cassildas, travel through time on a mysterious quest. Lyrical & highly poetic, but a slow read.
Grave-Worms -- An Ayn Rand heroine finds the Yellow Sign in a strangely fading NYC. Intriguing, and just long enough.
Strange is the Night -- a vicious theatre critic is invited to yet another unpromising dress rehearsal. But sometimes, justice is yellow. A strong finish to this anthology.
In general, this anthology pretty much expects its readers to be familiar with the original Chambers material. The overall quality of the writing here is high, though not every approach will appeal to every reader.
Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning -- Cassilda, or possibly 2 Cassildas, travel through time on a mysterious quest. Lyrical & highly poetic, but a slow read.
Grave-Worms -- An Ayn Rand heroine finds the Yellow Sign in a strangely fading NYC. Intriguing, and just long enough.
Strange is the Night -- a vicious theatre critic is invited to yet another unpromising dress rehearsal. But sometimes, justice is yellow. A strong finish to this anthology.
In general, this anthology pretty much expects its readers to be familiar with the original Chambers material. The overall quality of the writing here is high, though not every approach will appeal to every reader.
April 14, 2016
An great anthology of stories inspired by and / or set in Robert W. Chambers 'King in Yellow' Mythos. A notable feature of this collection is the theme that each writer is a women and the focus generally leans towards Cassilda, one of the other characters in the Carcosa / KIY Mythos. Every story in this collection is good, even the least among them is still a solid tale, and a few of them rise above to the level of excellence. A definitive recommendation to fans of The King in Yellow, or anyone who enjoys weird fiction.
January 21, 2024
I really enjoy authors riffing off Robert W. Chambers’s King in Yellow, even when the stories are dreamy and like holding water in your hands. Whether you can recall specific details, this book leaves you feeling unsettled but with a calm satisfaction in the pit of your belly. The mood conveyed reflects the unraveling of your sanity after exposure to a certain play. “Grave-Worms” by Molly Tanzer epitomizes this effect.
The anthology kicks off with “Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic” by Damien Angelica Walters. This is a great story about the madness of falling into artistic creation. Maybe it is a hopeful ending, maybe the protagonist has fully succumbed to the madness. “While the Black Stars Burn” hits all my buttons including the destructive nature of art, along with its ability to revel the darkness underneath everything. “Exposure” by Helen Marshall follows a Mediterranean tour that goes awry. “Just Beyond Her Dreaming” by Mercedes M. Yardley aches with the discomfort of an unhappy marriage. “Old Tsah-Hov” is a delightfully weird fantasy. Our titular hero is a stray mongrel adopted and civilized by Cassilda and then torn from this comfort by misfortune and his old master, The Street King. “The Neurastheniac” by Selena Chambers is wonderful. The language, the structure, and the mythos built around the suicide booths that were only glimpsed in “The Repairer of Reputations” elevates this comfortably above homage and into a liminal space of its own.
The anthology kicks off with “Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic” by Damien Angelica Walters. This is a great story about the madness of falling into artistic creation. Maybe it is a hopeful ending, maybe the protagonist has fully succumbed to the madness. “While the Black Stars Burn” hits all my buttons including the destructive nature of art, along with its ability to revel the darkness underneath everything. “Exposure” by Helen Marshall follows a Mediterranean tour that goes awry. “Just Beyond Her Dreaming” by Mercedes M. Yardley aches with the discomfort of an unhappy marriage. “Old Tsah-Hov” is a delightfully weird fantasy. Our titular hero is a stray mongrel adopted and civilized by Cassilda and then torn from this comfort by misfortune and his old master, The Street King. “The Neurastheniac” by Selena Chambers is wonderful. The language, the structure, and the mythos built around the suicide booths that were only glimpsed in “The Repairer of Reputations” elevates this comfortably above homage and into a liminal space of its own.
September 9, 2019
The reason I like the King in Yellow and Carcosa more than other elements of what is usually called the Cthulhu Mythos is because they're terrifying on a fundamental level.
Most of the horror in the Mythos comes from the knowledge that the world isn't what we thought it was, that there are secrets out there and a greater world that was hidden from us, but the expression of this often isn't any different than, say, a conspiracy thriller. Instead of secret technology, it's pre-human technology. Instead of government agencies, it's cults. Shoggoths don't map very well, but while shoggoths are horrifying and being eaten by one would be one of the worst ways to die, it's still fundamentally understandable. Deep Ones being fertile with humans raises questions about evolution and how genetics work, but you can talk to them, and if you shoot them, they die.
The King in Yellow is none of that. It's not even clear what Carcosa is, or what was so terrible about the Phantom of Truth, but it's more like a memetic infection than an alien living in the shadows. Words and a play that have the ability to warp reality. A specific sigil that spreads unchecked like cancer. The implications of Carcosa and the titular play aren't that aliens exist, or that there are alchemical processes that can raise the dead, or even that dreaming things-that-might-be-gods exist. It's that reality itself is unstable. That what we think of as "the world" is a covering--a mask, one might say--over something else, and whatever else that is, it is too terrible to be borne. And that someday our own Stranger might arrive to tear the mask off and stop the revels in their tracks.
Cassilda's Song is a collection of stories on that theme, written entirely by women.
My favorite story was probably "Grave-Worms," written in the style of Atlas Shrugged. A titan of industry, after breaking up with another titan of industry, accepts a theatre critic's invitation to attend a party and from that party, she is invited to attend a certain play. The critic offends her by suggesting that only abstract art is really capable of representing reality, because any other art leaves out too much, whereas attempting to capture one's sensations or impressions provides something more true than an attempt to represent the thing itself. But the critic flees after the first act of the play, terrified that this play was more real than any other art he had seen, and the titan of industry remains and is drawn in. If Objectivists are interested in what is real, Carcosa is more real than anything else.
I wasn't quite sure what to think about "Pro Patria." It's about a colony somewhere that has gained its freedom from the empire and now tries to form its own society, seen from the point of view of a political science professor, but it slides along the way. The president dispenses with the interim constitution and takes on excessive ceremony, wearing a military uniform and holding parades. Eventually he is executing perceived "counter-revolutionaries" and imprisoning intellectuals and all the promise of the revolution is squandered. But this is a path that plenty of real countries have followed, and I'm not sure how much adding the King in Yellow to the mix matters. It makes it seem a little like the King is the cause, which removes human agency for evil. People can decide that they are the state without any external influence.
"Yellow Bird" stuck out to me for adding another verse to the famous song:
"Dancing the Mask" is one of the many stories on the theme of people whose lives are in ruins around them. An accident ruins a ballet dancer career, and her boyfriend leaves her for someone else, and in the ruins of her dreams, she receives an invitation for one final performance. The dancer's name is "Cee," and what it's short for becomes obvious near the end (in a theme repeated throughout the anthology, another indication of the unreliable nature of reality when Carcosa is involved).
Another excellent story, "Her Beginning Is Her End Is Her Beginning" is about truth and how unbearable it is. Cassilda (or two Cassildas?) flee through realities from Carcosa, trying to find someone who can bear to hear the capital T Truth. Every time she fails, and her target is taken into Carcosa. Until one time she succeeds and finds an artist who can bear the tale, only to find that the tatters of the King extend everywhere and they are far more enticing than she expected.
"The Neurastheniac" is unique in that it's actually set in the world indicated in The Repairer of Reputations, but I would have preferred a more narrative story rather than the poetry and fictional biography. Still, I have to admit that this is perhaps the most Carcosan in mood without the temptation of making the King or Carcosa appear. The woman fails college, trespasses in the ruins of the Lethal Chambers, and writes her poetry as her life and mind crumbles around her.
"Just Beyond Her Dreaming" is about a woman of an artistic bent who marries a rich man and feels her life imprisoned by a cage of propriety and custom. She tries to accustom herself to it and cannot, and then tries to find a way out and finds the play awaiting her. This was another story where Carcosa fit well enough, but it could easily have been something else.
Overall, Cassilda's Song succeeds, despite the few missteps, and its greatest success is the mood. Even stories that I thought had only a tenuous connection to Hastur still conveyed hopelessness, the sense of something else waiting behind reality, and art as a gateway to truth. For the mood alone this is a good book, but some of the stories were genuine gems on their own.
Most of the horror in the Mythos comes from the knowledge that the world isn't what we thought it was, that there are secrets out there and a greater world that was hidden from us, but the expression of this often isn't any different than, say, a conspiracy thriller. Instead of secret technology, it's pre-human technology. Instead of government agencies, it's cults. Shoggoths don't map very well, but while shoggoths are horrifying and being eaten by one would be one of the worst ways to die, it's still fundamentally understandable. Deep Ones being fertile with humans raises questions about evolution and how genetics work, but you can talk to them, and if you shoot them, they die.
The King in Yellow is none of that. It's not even clear what Carcosa is, or what was so terrible about the Phantom of Truth, but it's more like a memetic infection than an alien living in the shadows. Words and a play that have the ability to warp reality. A specific sigil that spreads unchecked like cancer. The implications of Carcosa and the titular play aren't that aliens exist, or that there are alchemical processes that can raise the dead, or even that dreaming things-that-might-be-gods exist. It's that reality itself is unstable. That what we think of as "the world" is a covering--a mask, one might say--over something else, and whatever else that is, it is too terrible to be borne. And that someday our own Stranger might arrive to tear the mask off and stop the revels in their tracks.
Cassilda's Song is a collection of stories on that theme, written entirely by women.
My favorite story was probably "Grave-Worms," written in the style of Atlas Shrugged. A titan of industry, after breaking up with another titan of industry, accepts a theatre critic's invitation to attend a party and from that party, she is invited to attend a certain play. The critic offends her by suggesting that only abstract art is really capable of representing reality, because any other art leaves out too much, whereas attempting to capture one's sensations or impressions provides something more true than an attempt to represent the thing itself. But the critic flees after the first act of the play, terrified that this play was more real than any other art he had seen, and the titan of industry remains and is drawn in. If Objectivists are interested in what is real, Carcosa is more real than anything else.
I wasn't quite sure what to think about "Pro Patria." It's about a colony somewhere that has gained its freedom from the empire and now tries to form its own society, seen from the point of view of a political science professor, but it slides along the way. The president dispenses with the interim constitution and takes on excessive ceremony, wearing a military uniform and holding parades. Eventually he is executing perceived "counter-revolutionaries" and imprisoning intellectuals and all the promise of the revolution is squandered. But this is a path that plenty of real countries have followed, and I'm not sure how much adding the King in Yellow to the mix matters. It makes it seem a little like the King is the cause, which removes human agency for evil. People can decide that they are the state without any external influence.
"Yellow Bird" stuck out to me for adding another verse to the famous song:
On great grey plains the dead stones lieBut the actual story is less interesting. A woman whose mother disappeared one day keeps going to her great-grandfather's ruined shack, in which she finds a copy of the play. One day she hears a group of meth addicts rummaging through the shack and flees, and comes back to find it on fire. The play is destroyed, but she thinks about it and researches it on the internet and worries that her mother isn't dead, she's merely elsewhere and will come for her. This piece relied a lot on mood and didn't necessarily need the Carcosan elements, but I liked the sense of creeping terror and the feeling of not knowing what was real at the end of the story.
Here time itself will someday die
So strange the tales of
Lost Carcosa
"Dancing the Mask" is one of the many stories on the theme of people whose lives are in ruins around them. An accident ruins a ballet dancer career, and her boyfriend leaves her for someone else, and in the ruins of her dreams, she receives an invitation for one final performance. The dancer's name is "Cee," and what it's short for becomes obvious near the end (in a theme repeated throughout the anthology, another indication of the unreliable nature of reality when Carcosa is involved).
Another excellent story, "Her Beginning Is Her End Is Her Beginning" is about truth and how unbearable it is. Cassilda (or two Cassildas?) flee through realities from Carcosa, trying to find someone who can bear to hear the capital T Truth. Every time she fails, and her target is taken into Carcosa. Until one time she succeeds and finds an artist who can bear the tale, only to find that the tatters of the King extend everywhere and they are far more enticing than she expected.
"The Neurastheniac" is unique in that it's actually set in the world indicated in The Repairer of Reputations, but I would have preferred a more narrative story rather than the poetry and fictional biography. Still, I have to admit that this is perhaps the most Carcosan in mood without the temptation of making the King or Carcosa appear. The woman fails college, trespasses in the ruins of the Lethal Chambers, and writes her poetry as her life and mind crumbles around her.
"Just Beyond Her Dreaming" is about a woman of an artistic bent who marries a rich man and feels her life imprisoned by a cage of propriety and custom. She tries to accustom herself to it and cannot, and then tries to find a way out and finds the play awaiting her. This was another story where Carcosa fit well enough, but it could easily have been something else.
Overall, Cassilda's Song succeeds, despite the few missteps, and its greatest success is the mood. Even stories that I thought had only a tenuous connection to Hastur still conveyed hopelessness, the sense of something else waiting behind reality, and art as a gateway to truth. For the mood alone this is a good book, but some of the stories were genuine gems on their own.
December 21, 2017
It's hard to judge a book with short stories, mainly cause despite being thematically similar, they still approach it very differently - something which worked for me and I found most of the stories very interesting and entertaining.
Some stories stuck out more for me, and those were:
- Black Stars on Canvas
- Exposure
- While The Black Stars Burn
- Old Tsah-Hov
- Pro Patria!
- Her Beginning is Her End is her Beginning
Not to say the others were bad, but some left a bigger impression on me than others. Overall I'd recommend this book.
Some stories stuck out more for me, and those were:
- Black Stars on Canvas
- Exposure
- While The Black Stars Burn
- Old Tsah-Hov
- Pro Patria!
- Her Beginning is Her End is her Beginning
Not to say the others were bad, but some left a bigger impression on me than others. Overall I'd recommend this book.
July 11, 2016
An interesting and for the most part successful anthology of King In Yellow inspired short stories by female authors, edited by Joseph S Pulver.
My favourite pieces were those by Nadia Bulkin, SP Miskowski, Selena Chambers, Lynda E Rucker and Helen Marshall. But nearly all of them were engaging takes on the mythos and worthy of your time. Recommended.
My favourite pieces were those by Nadia Bulkin, SP Miskowski, Selena Chambers, Lynda E Rucker and Helen Marshall. But nearly all of them were engaging takes on the mythos and worthy of your time. Recommended.
January 20, 2018
(Originally posted on Mad Scientist Journal, 7/5/2017)
Cassilda’s Song, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., contains 18 tales of the mythos of the King in Yellow, all written by female authors. These stories explore many facets of Cassilda, one of the characters from Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow collection of short stories. As Chambers’ stories and the purported apocryphal play revolve around madness induced by contact with the King in Yellow, so too do the stories in this anthology.
At the same time, however, some of the stories celebrate the power that Cassilda and her namesakes possess. In “Yellow Bird” by Linda E. Rucker, the main character discovers an old book inside an abandoned house, which unlocks strange power in her. The writing on this story was fantastic, and I really liked the protagonist and her quick thinking. “Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning” is a collaboration between E. Catherine Tobler and Damien Angelica Walters, both of whom have solo stories in the anthology as well. It clocks in as easily the longest story in the anthology, but it’s so beautifully written as to hold your attention for the entire story, and presents an interesting take on Cassilda.
Other stories that I particularly liked shared a theme of reconnection with aspects of Carcosa. In “Dancing the Mask” by Ann K. Schwader, the protagonist is an injured dancer, down on her luck. Though perhaps her luck isn’t improved by reconnecting with the mythos, it does at least give her a place in the world again. And “Family” by Maura McHugh weaves a tale of a normal family that has been touched by the play The King in Yellow and the strife that ensues. The main characters, a pair of siblings, are particularly well-rounded and relatable.
As is the case with many anthologies, some stories will resonate more strongly with different readers. But all of the stories in the anthology are well written and interesting, and you’re certain to find a favorite or several amongst the bunch. Cassilda’s Song is available directly from Chaosium on their website or at other booksellers like Amazon.
The publisher provided us with a free copy of this publication in exchange for an honest review.
Cassilda’s Song, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., contains 18 tales of the mythos of the King in Yellow, all written by female authors. These stories explore many facets of Cassilda, one of the characters from Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow collection of short stories. As Chambers’ stories and the purported apocryphal play revolve around madness induced by contact with the King in Yellow, so too do the stories in this anthology.
At the same time, however, some of the stories celebrate the power that Cassilda and her namesakes possess. In “Yellow Bird” by Linda E. Rucker, the main character discovers an old book inside an abandoned house, which unlocks strange power in her. The writing on this story was fantastic, and I really liked the protagonist and her quick thinking. “Her Beginning is Her End is Her Beginning” is a collaboration between E. Catherine Tobler and Damien Angelica Walters, both of whom have solo stories in the anthology as well. It clocks in as easily the longest story in the anthology, but it’s so beautifully written as to hold your attention for the entire story, and presents an interesting take on Cassilda.
Other stories that I particularly liked shared a theme of reconnection with aspects of Carcosa. In “Dancing the Mask” by Ann K. Schwader, the protagonist is an injured dancer, down on her luck. Though perhaps her luck isn’t improved by reconnecting with the mythos, it does at least give her a place in the world again. And “Family” by Maura McHugh weaves a tale of a normal family that has been touched by the play The King in Yellow and the strife that ensues. The main characters, a pair of siblings, are particularly well-rounded and relatable.
As is the case with many anthologies, some stories will resonate more strongly with different readers. But all of the stories in the anthology are well written and interesting, and you’re certain to find a favorite or several amongst the bunch. Cassilda’s Song is available directly from Chaosium on their website or at other booksellers like Amazon.
The publisher provided us with a free copy of this publication in exchange for an honest review.
September 8, 2020
A collection of contemporary short stories by women authors, based on Chambers' "King in Yellow" stories, mostly centered around the figure of Cassilda. Short stories can be a mixed bag for me, and I didn't tear through this like I did, say, the "Behold the Undead of Dracula" collection. I'd read a few and then take a break, then read a few. Maybe I'm not steeped enough in the Chambers mythos to be invested, but also, the nature of that mythos is largely in vagueness, suggestion, and dream-like imagery. So in a lot of these stories, there was a sense of "what is happening?" -- reality and time being bent, encounters with surrealistic realities, etc. So in these stories, there are central figures who might be immortals, or archetypes, and it might be a hallucination in our world, or a full-on fantasy environment, and you have to figure out where you are and whether linear time exists. But there wasn't space to really settle into one before the story was over.
The writers involved all are good, and I'd read other of their works. Not sure I have a favorite, although Nakia Bulkin's "Pro Patria!" was maybe the most effective. If you're interested in Chambers, or other Lovecraft-related mythos writers, and don't mind a lack of linearity or clear narrative, you would probably like this more than the average reader off the street would. Worth checking out, but if I had access to it from the library, I probably wouldn't have bought it myself.
The writers involved all are good, and I'd read other of their works. Not sure I have a favorite, although Nakia Bulkin's "Pro Patria!" was maybe the most effective. If you're interested in Chambers, or other Lovecraft-related mythos writers, and don't mind a lack of linearity or clear narrative, you would probably like this more than the average reader off the street would. Worth checking out, but if I had access to it from the library, I probably wouldn't have bought it myself.
January 18, 2021
LES FLEURS DU MAL by Allyson Bird
“Dumas had the black tulip.”
‘The Black Tulip’ (based on Dumas) is the first TV drama serial I remember watching as a child in the 1950s.
And that is just the start of a dark cornucopia of artistic and literary references. Probably this Bird story is the most amazing work within this book’s fields we know that you might ever read, and need to read again, but perhaps without fully transcending its apparent personal aspects (one of the paintings discovered by a writer of weird in New Zealand and “Jealousy within groups of artists”) and also its universal references – a work to be read time and time again to try find the pure base colours of its foundation canvas that truly underpins some of these creatively staccato sentences and its otherwise poetic tentacles of Carcosan rhapsody and intentional fallacy.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
November 3, 2017
I can't lie. This was a disappointment. Out of 18 stories, maybe three or four of them were particularly good. There were two or three real clunkers. And the rest was filler. I'd been very excited about this collection and was looking forward to reading it. The King in Yellow, the Yellow Sign, the Pallid Mask...It's some of my favorite stuff from the whole Lovecraft circle. Robert W. Chambers was, overall, kind of a crap writer. But his stories dealing with a cursed play and mad artists are the stuff of dreamy horror gold. Having fairly recently read the excellent anthology devoted to the themes, "Rehearsals for Oblivion," and generally liking Chaosium's fiction anthologies, I didn't see how this one could be anything but good.
Alas...
Alas...
November 12, 2018
A bunch of weak stories and a few good ones. My favorite was the Ayn Rand pastiche Grave-Worms. Pro Patria was also pretty good. Generally, though, I found this pretty lukewarm. Lots of dreamy and rambling stories with buzz words like Camilla, Cassilda, Carcosa, pallid, mask, King, Yellow Sign, etc. thrown in that didn't particularly seem to connect with Chambers' work. There was a story told from a dog's point of view that wasn't half bad, but it felt like a general story with a few King in Yellow references thrown in at the last minute.
February 6, 2020
I read this in bits and pieces over a span of time. I found trying to read it in one fell swoop to be a bit repetitive and lost interest in the content. After stepping away from the nook for a while and reading one story a week for a while I found the book to be much more enjoyable. The stories are well written, and the authors all share a unique perspective on the Chambers myths while still staying true to the core tenants of his tale.
February 4, 2017
some birlliant things along with a lot of mediocre stuff. "Black stars on canvas", "Pro Patria!", "While the black stars burn", "Old tsah-hov", "Grave-worms" are among those worth 4 and 5 stars, most of the other works hardly reach 2.
August 24, 2017
Disappointing. To me most of the stories were boring, pointless and weird. There were only two I really liked: "Black Stars on Canvas" by Damien Angelica and "While the Black Stars Burn" by Lucy A. Snyder.
October 19, 2022
Commits the sin of incorporating a few stories which don't really want to be cosmic horror and don't try to be, but otherwise a very solid collection. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...
November 11, 2025
I spent so long reading this, in installments, that I can't really remember the details of the individual stories. But I do know that I was impressed by the dreamlike, ethereal atmosphere of them. A strong selection which do the King in Yellow and His Queen justice. Good stuff!
October 14, 2016
Striking and diverse stuff. My only slight reservation is it misses some of the pure apocalyptic horror of Chambers himself. And in any collection there are some hits and some misfires. Still great.
November 18, 2017
Cassilda’s Song is a newer book published by Chaosium, edited by Joseph S. Pulver Sr.. Featuring many fantastic and horrifying tales of weird fiction for a wonderful collection pertaining to Cassilda, Carcosa, the King in Yellow, the Yellow Sign, Hastur, and other allusions to horror and weird fiction authors of the past. These stories tend to be a bit more Robert W. Chambers & Ambrose Bierce, than HP Lovecraft & August Derleth.
Thankfully, one can only take so much of Derleth.
This is one of the first books I read for the Third season of my lovecraftian literature podcast.(PGttCM.com)
One of my favorite colors from the Pantone Color Matching System is mentioned(379c) in a wonderful story by Damien Angelica Walters called Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic. Many of these stories involve queens, the color yellow, artists, models, drugs, sex and everything else one expects in a tale from the Hastur Myth Cycle. Every story in this collection is a well written story, this is not a slapped together”True Detective/King in Yellow” cash grab.
The Neurastheniac by Selena Chambers is one of my favorites in this book, it defies typical narrative in favor of a fractured journal with poetry, it feels like an odd mix Lovecraft and Chambers. It feels informative, but not a cheap trick.
I would love a second book in this series personally, or another collection with these authors. If I had a rating system I would give this Five out of Five Joe Pulver mustaches.
Thankfully, one can only take so much of Derleth.
This is one of the first books I read for the Third season of my lovecraftian literature podcast.(PGttCM.com)
One of my favorite colors from the Pantone Color Matching System is mentioned(379c) in a wonderful story by Damien Angelica Walters called Black Stars on Canvas, a Reproduction in Acrylic. Many of these stories involve queens, the color yellow, artists, models, drugs, sex and everything else one expects in a tale from the Hastur Myth Cycle. Every story in this collection is a well written story, this is not a slapped together”True Detective/King in Yellow” cash grab.
The Neurastheniac by Selena Chambers is one of my favorites in this book, it defies typical narrative in favor of a fractured journal with poetry, it feels like an odd mix Lovecraft and Chambers. It feels informative, but not a cheap trick.
I would love a second book in this series personally, or another collection with these authors. If I had a rating system I would give this Five out of Five Joe Pulver mustaches.
abandoned
May 15, 2018I was looking forward to this collection because Chambers is a classic example of an early weird fiction writer who had an unusual approach but failed to complete its potential. There's something really compelling about the combination of subtlety, theater, squalor, politics, and dark romantic landscapes in the Carcosa mythos, and I was looking forward to seeing how modern authors, who are actually good at writing, could deliver on that.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I found pretty much every story in the first half of this collection just bounced right off me. Maybe I was reading it at the wrong time of day or in the wrong mood or something – they seem like find stories, but somehow none of them ever felt that all compelling. And they're all that kind of super subtle story that doesn't have much to offer unless you can really get on its wavelength tonally.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I found pretty much every story in the first half of this collection just bounced right off me. Maybe I was reading it at the wrong time of day or in the wrong mood or something – they seem like find stories, but somehow none of them ever felt that all compelling. And they're all that kind of super subtle story that doesn't have much to offer unless you can really get on its wavelength tonally.
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