Books like this?
>>25088149
>>25088170Is that a short story? I think I read that
>>25088149Currently reading myself, in the middle of the Yellow Sign rn, with only the Demoiselle d'Ys story remaining from the main KiY cycle and I'm honestly really enjoying it so far, Chambers has a great sense of mystery and dread he brings to the whole affair.If you haven't already, check out Ambrose Bierce's anthology of (very) short stories "Can Such Things Be" which contain the first mentions of Carcosa (An Inhabitant of Carcosa) and Hastur (Haita the Shepherd). It's much less developed than Chambers, but the stories are so short you really aren't wasting any time on it, even if you don't find them particularly good, they'll at least give you some context. From Chambers himself you also have his other weird fiction cycle, "The Maker of Moons", which he published one year after the King in Yellow. It's apparently not as developed, but most reviews I've seen recommend it as entertaining enough.Then there's "À rebours" by Huysmans, a foundational text of Decadent literature, which was apparently the main inspiration behind the King in Yellow circle and later HP Lovecraft, with its neurotic artist main character. Another one I've spotted as potentially promising is another one of Chamber's later outings, "The Red Republic: A Romance of the Commune", which picks up the setting of one of latter, non-horror stories of the King in Yellow collection (The Street of the First Shell). It has pretty good reviews for the standards of Chambers' non-KiY work, which are generally pretty low since it hasn't really aged well and wasn't considered high literature even at the time. However apparently the Paris Commune war-time setting really helps it stand out from his otherwise indistinct mush of fin-de-siecle love stories.Finally, there's also Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" which are generally considered to have been a big influence, and a cousin in the genre for KiY, respectively.
Classic horror is the best horror.
>>25088227The KiY has also spawned a whole genre, "the yellow mythos" derived from Chambers' original work, that first started in the 30s and 40s within the circle of HP Lovecraft's followers and then from the 90s to today. From what I understand the new generation stuff is generally more interesting since it tends to concentrate more on the spirit of the original KiY rather than August Derleth's 30s work which was a very very Lovecraftian take on the mythos, with a tentacly Hastur that was directly integrated into the whole Old Ones mythos.I have a few anthologies saved, haven't read much, but from the little I've have I'd list in descending order of quality, A Season in Carcosa (2012), No Light in August (2014) and finally Under Twin Suns (2021), which I didn't really like, though tbf I've only gone through two of the stories included so far (Y2K and The Order of Wilde) so it's possible I'm being too harsh with it. Also worth mentioning is "The Hastur Cycle" (1993) by Chaosium which is meant as a primer to the "Yellow Mythos" as a whole and has all of Chamber's KiY stories, some Bierce, Lovecraft and others that came later in the genre. Good way to get one's feet wet.
>>25088223Yeah. Funnily enough Herland is the full length
I haven’t read KiY, but judging by various plot synopses of it that I’ve read, it sounds like the 2nd story in A Lush and Seething Hell by Jacobs might be similar. It’s a modern story, and although I read it quite a while ago, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Maybe someone that has read both can confirm if it’s similar enough to KiY. If you do pick up this A lush and Seething Hell, I recommend skipping the cringy foreword by chuck wendig. It almost made me put the book down before I even got started. I also liked the second story more than the first, so dont abandon ship too soon.
>>25088282I remember I enjoyed it but not really anything else about it so it must not have been memorable
>>25088549Just a campfire spooky tale about someone slipping into madness.
>>25088170interesting premise, I'll check it out of pure curiosity. But is there a more serious connection to the King in Yellow other than it being a decadence short story with yellow in the title?
Chambers became one of the most commercially successful writers of his time after he dropped horror and weird fiction and started pumping out romance slop for women, which he almost exclusively did for the rest of his writing career. Just a fun fact.
>>25088227The Maker of Moons (the story) is good. I also liked A Pleasant Evening. His collection In Search of the Unknown is good as well, though it's not really horror, more horror-adjacent, at least in terms of The Harbormaster.Maker of Moons is also pretty funny in concept>There's something out there in the woods>IT'S A CHINAMAN! HORRIBLE! HIDEOUS! BARELY EVEN HUMAN!>...his daughter's pretty hot though>don't worry, she's 18, I asked
>>25088283The first novella is a masterpiece, the second one is shit.
>>25088149If your aim is to find books like "The King in Yellow." Diving your local dumpster might produce best results.
>>25090068I wish there was an edition of all of Chambers' spooky and spooky-adjacent stuff available just for ease of use, but I guess it's really not much of a barrier nowadays since most of this stuff is on gutenberg or wikisource anyway.
