between a traveler and a mysterious and beautiful
young woman. After a brief but blissful time to-
gether, the traveler must leave, but he does so only
after promising to return. At that very moment he
discovers that she is a ghost and that she died cen-
turies earlier, although somehow the cause of that
death was heartbreak over losing him. The final
paragraphs suggest that his own death is imminent
and that they will be reunited shortly. In “In the
Court of the Dragon,” a visitor to a church is
chased from the building by a frightening appari-
tion whose nature is unclear.
“The Repairer of Reputations” is also linked
to the underlying mythos, although it is science
fiction rather than horror, a story set in a future
America that has become a totalitarian state and
whose pressures are so great that insanity has be-
come a common problem. The remaining story,
“The Mask,” is also science fiction and has no ap-
parent relationship to the others. Additional sto-
ries were included in a 1970 edition titled The
King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories.Although
Chambers continued to produce stories of the oc-
cult and black magic, few of his later works ri-
valed those in his first collection. The device of
an imaginary book of powerful magic undoubtedly
influenced the creation of the Necronomiconby
H. P. LOVECRAFT.
Klasky, Mindy L.(1964– )
Most new writers in any genre require at least a
few books to build a following, but Mindy Klasky
attracted enough attention with her first novel,
The Glasswright’s Apprentice (2000), to make a
strong first impression, and her continuation of
that story into a series has been solidly entertain-
ing. A young woman serving as an apprentice arti-
san in the glasswright’s guild is mistakenly
identified as a traitor when one of her instructors is
judged responsible for the assassination of the
crown prince. She is forced to go into hiding
among the worst elements of the city, where she
quickly acquires self-confidence and eventually
clears her name by tracking down the people who
are actually responsible for the murder.
Rani Trader, now promoted to the nobility as
a reward for her service to the throne, returns in
The Glasswright’s Progress(2001), intent upon re-
building the guild that was destroyed during the
first book. Her plans go awry when she is kid-
napped by a foreign ruler who has a particularly
unpleasant habit of selling children into slavery to
finance his mercenary army. In The Glasswright’s
Journeyman(2002) she accompanies her king to a
foreign land where he is reluctantly agreeing to a
marriage of state, because the bride’s dowry will
help to rebuild the capital city and provide treat-
ment for the many people injured in the recently
concluded conflict. Rani’s quick wits end up help-
ing both nations.
The political maneuvering between and
within the two countries gets even more complex
in The Glasswright’s Test(2003), complicated by in-
ternal struggles within the newly reformed guild as
well as the active intervention of the gods. Rani’s
most recent and perhaps final adventure is The
Glasswright’s Master(2004), which ties up many of
the loose ends from the previous books and forces
Rani to reevaluate the choices she has already
made as well as the ones immediately confronting
her. Klasky’s only other novel is Season of Sacrifice
(2002), in which a young woman must respond to
a crisis even though she is not yet fully schooled in
the tree magic that protects her people. It is decid-
edly inferior to the Glasswright series. “Saving the
Skychildren” (2000) is her only notable short story.
Klasky is still in the early stages of her career but
has already demonstrated the ability to produce a
sustained series with a protagonist who develops
more fully in each successive volume. She seems
likely to be a steady and perhaps major new talent
in fantasy.Klein, T. E. D.(1947– )
Although Klein has produced only one novel and a
dozen or so short stories over the course of 30
years, he is still recognized as a significant figure in
the field, partly because of the quality of his pub-
lished horror fiction and partly because of his role
as a founding editor of the short-lived but highly
regarded Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine
during the early 1980s. His long story “The Events
at Poroth Farm” (1972) had already established his
credentials as a writer, a moody, highly literateKlein, T. E. D. 193