The Exile and Other Tales of Carcosa

In the late 1970s, a series of tales inspired by The King in Yellow were published in the pages of Dark Fantasy, Dragonbane, Copper Toadstool, and Gothic under a memorable nom de plume. ’Galad Elflandsson’ captured the true spirit of Robert W. Chambers’ Carcosa mythology in all its terrifying fin de siècle strangeness. Collected in a vanishingly small edition in 2018, these tales again soon became nearly impossible to find. Now, they are gathered once more with three additional tales of fantastic horror-this time under the author’s real name. These stories are brimming with an originality that one seldom finds in pastiche or tribute, and the chills they inspire are as deep as they are genuine. Though diverse in content, these tales maintain a unified aesthetic. The Yellow King rises in 'How Darkness Came to Carcosa.' In the title story, a lonely student is saved from violence and despair by a mysterious exile who harbors a terrible secret. An artist rejects beauty in favor of the grotesque in 'The Dance.' The Yellow Sign exacts its gruesome toll in 'The Flat on Rue Chambard.' An impossibly old and hideous woman desires the love of a young man in 'The Basilisk.' An alchemist seeks to usurp the ruler of Carcosa in 'The Hand of the King.' And in 'Cauld Shoon,' a man visits his family in their ancestral castle in the company of his sensuous, exotic girlfriend-who may not be who or what she appears.Featuring a foreword by decadent writer Manuel Arenas and interior illustrations by Dan Sauer, The Exile and Other Tales of Carcosa is a surprising, darksome delight. 6