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The King in Yellow is one of the most brilliant–and one of the most disappointing–collections of short stories I have ever read. The first five stories were tremendous, transcendent, stunning. I could not look away. The last few stories were woefully disappointing. It is clear to me that they were added solely to fill out a word count. It’s disappointing, but it does not diminish the power of those five stories. Pick the book up and read those stories. You will not be disappointed.

4 Stars

‘Tis the night – the night
Of the grave’s delight,
And the warlocks are at their play;
Ye think that without
The wild winds shout,
But no, it is they – it is they.

Arthur Cleveland Coxe

We stepped into the darkness, the sky as clear as it had been that day, but with a bright full moon serving as a poor imitation of the sun.  Its fragile light was enough to guide our steps to a place we had been countless times before.

Huntington Library stood like a monolith in the distance, a great cyclopean monstrosity of learning.  There had been rumors, of course.  Like all of witch-haunted Arkham it seemed, Huntington had a history.  It had been the first permanent building in that ancient town.  It was constructed in 1640, only four years after the founding of Harvard, and a full decade before Miskatonic University came into being.

Legend had it the people of Arkham had found something on that little mound above the river.  Something ancient and arcane, something built of mighty stone blocks, the working of which was far beyond the skills of the native Wampanoag, something that covered a great, but ruined, staircase that ran into the center of the Earth itself.  It was a bizarre legend, an impossible tale.  But it didn’t end with that great vestibule.

On December 21, 1639, during the darkest and longest night of the winter, three great ships sailed into the mouth of the Miskatonic River.  The people of Arkham awoke to the sound of chisels and hammers, of stone cutting and construction.  The men who labored on the hill were unknown to them, clad in strange raiment, faces hooded and cloaked.  But fear was greater than the people of Arkham’s curiosity.  For the four months that followed, the men continued their work, from the rising of the sun until it disappeared behind the western Berkshires.

Each night, the people of Arkham cowered behind their flimsy wooden doors, terrified of what lurked beyond.  But it was the Beltane Eve, the night of Walpurgis, that the old men of Arkham still speak of in whispered words and phrases.  They say the hills burned with an unnatural glow that night, that satanic psalms floated down to the town below, as creatures of darkness danced and gibbered in the moonlight.

When the sun rose on the first day of May 1640, the men were gone.  What they left behind was a great edifice of stone.

Three days passed.  When the workers did not reappear, it was determined a contingent of the town’s men should go up and investigate the structure that had been left behind.  It was led by Isaac Huntington.  It was no great distance from the edge of the town to the hill above, but the men advanced slowly.  When they reached the palace of granite, only Huntington was willing to enter.

For half an hour the men waited outside, many of them growing increasingly certain Huntington would never return.  But he did.  There was nothing inside, he reported.  Nothing but several great open spaces, and some steps leading down to a vault below.  In the vault were four murals.  These four murals represented the four great societies of antiquity – Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome.  They were exquisitely constructed, and some say at night, if the air is right, they each glow in the candlelight.  But the ancient staircase, the one that the people of Arkham had always feared, was nowhere to be seen.

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I’m donating all proceeds from copies of The Void and That Which Should Not Be that are sold today to the Wounded Warriors Project, but you have to use the links below (only way I know). So if you haven’t had a chance to pick up your copy, do so today and help a great cause. 9/11 may have been 11 years ago, but the impact is still felt today in every corner of our nation and by many of our greatest heroes.

http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/

http://www.amazon.com/The-Void-Brett-J-Talley/dp/1936564432/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1347364303&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936564149/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1936564149&linkCode=as2&tag=thsithshnobe-20

Very interesting blog post. Worth checking out. My money is on Teddy.

In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why?.

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Stuff like this makes it worth it to endure the slings and arrows from some reviewers.

My son just finished reading my copy of Brett Talley’s The Void. He says it’s excellent, one of the best stories he’s ever read and now his favorite.

August 28, to be precise. The best way to celebrate? Pick up one of my books! Here they are, all in one place.

That Which Should Not Be

The Void

Haunted Tuscaloosa

Nor is it to be thought, that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They rule again.

Sunday video chats: Adam Niswander, Ellen Datlow.

Lovecraft eZine’s excellent series of Sunday video chats continues . . .

via Sunday video chats: Adam Niswander, Ellen Datlow.

A warning though, it can get a little political on there . . .  Unlike the blog, twitter is not a politics free zone for me.

@brettjtalley