Rick Lai

After finding the recent Pulver edited anthology [b:A Season in Carcosa|16062930|A Season in Carcosa|Joseph S. Pulver Sr.|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349236706s/16062930.jpg|21851612] a very mixed bag, I thought Id try this collection by the man himself. It starts very, very strongly; the first five stories are gloriously creepy and scary, modern-set noir-tinged Yellow King tales fraught with menace and madness, utilising many of the tropes of Chambers' original stories to stunning effect. Publication dates aren't listed for individual stories, but I can well imagine these were an influence on the original True Detective TV show.


Unfortunately, nothing else in the book hits that level of quality. There are many good stories but, for me, nothing great and frankly too much filler. Part of the problem was, perhaps, reading it as a block rather than dipping in, as Pulver's reliance on Cassilda and other fragments from the Yellow King play becomes somewhat repetitive.


In many of the stories the author also writes in a style that is neither prose nor poetry (or possibly both), going from normal block paragraphs to

setting out
the words

in

poem-like


forms/that/use

white space


and make use
of

punctuation{in}odd[and]
experimental ways.



I didn't find this very effective - although, full disclosure, I have never been a fan of shape poems and find stream-of-consciousness writing generally insufferable, so perhaps I'm the wrong audience. The longer of these pieces I found myself scanning through as there didn't really seem to be a great deal of content within the form.


I will definitely return to Pulver, perhaps trying some of his longer work or something not so narrowly focused as he can undoubtedly be a great writer.… (mehr)

This is a great book for any fan of The Shadow! This book book helps make an accurate timeline of the events in the Shadows life according to the stories told in the pulp novels. It is very interesting to see the info from the pulps arranged in chronological order like this, especially if you have never read all of the stories yourself.

Instead of starting the timeline with the first pulp story, the time line would start with the origin of the Shadow's alias which is a story told later on down the line. A must have!… (mehr)