Cassilda’s Song Brings Female-Authored Tales Inspired by the King in Yellow Mythos
Debi Moore
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If, like many of us here at DC, you were obsessed with the first season of “True Detective,” you should be aware of the “King in Yellow” mythos created by Robert W. Chambers. Now a new book, Cassilda’s Song, has arrived from Chaosium Inc. to provide us with a collection of weird fiction and horror stories based on the King—authored entirely by women.
Synopsis:
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 cobblestones 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 was 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 transfigurations 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, 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 Cassilda’s Song, edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., 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
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