The King in Yellow: Don’t Trust Yourself

I had no idea what I was getting into with this one. A friend of mine just insisted that I really should read it. So here we are. Cheers, mate.

The King in Yellow is a bizarre book. It’s a psychological horror that does lots of interesting things. However, in terms of actually reading it, it can be dreadfully dull. It was a rollercoaster, in which one paragraph could be horrifically boring or positively gripping!

This book doesn’t have one single connective narrative. Rather, it’s a series of short stories focused on entirely different things every few chapters. Each one starts out fairly grounded and innocent. But by the end, it takes a turn for the wild and the dark.

One thing I really loved about this book was its use of unreliable narration. While the short’s narrator may give you one bit of information, the author cleverly adds in other details given by other characters that call that information into madness. Is the diadem an actual piece of jewelry, or was it a cardboard prop tied together by a lunatic?

This gives each short an uneasy tension for almost the entire thing. You genuinely have no clue whether you can trust what you’re being told. It feels like something is going to go horribly wrong, all the way up until it finally does.

Just one problem: this book can be boring. Like, really boring. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to bother with several paragraphs of 20th century American history, especially when it doesn’t add anything to the story! Can we get on with it, please?!

Still, if you have some patience, this book is worth the read. It’s an interesting collection of psychological horror stories that are genuinely shocking. It may not always be fun to read, but the end results cannot be denied.

Hindsight being twenty/twenty, I should’ve seen this coming. This is exactly the kind of thing that buddy of mine likes. I really should have been prepared for this.