Still running, Travis and Leslie take shelter in a crumbling mansion deep in the woods. A place their pursuers won't approach, which should be reassuring but isn't. The house has its own agenda. Its doors don't open the way they came in. Its walls hold visions of the past that don't stay past. And somewhere in its rooms, a journal describes a dinner party that ended in a way nobody wrote down. The King in Yellow is patient. He has been patient for a very long time.
Overall, this was an immensely enjoyable continuation in the series. That this works so well as a standalone, where it manages to foregoes the adventures the couple has been on previously with a recap of their other missions that would've worked as a great refresher for previous readers to catch up on what happened or to turn into a chance for newcomers to get up-to-date on what their past stories, keeps up the previous traditions of starting everything on it's own story. This takes a fun turn away from the previous entries by offering their arrival and investigations with a new haunted house storyline that's immensely fun to explore, taking on the traditional tropes of the genre while introducing the kind of supernatural Lovecraftian-style that's incredibly satisfying overall.
That satisfaction comes about even more with the attention to the tone present here, as the same mixture of crime/noir-style interactions that the investigators partake in while also offering the kind of cosmic horror action that has been integrated since the beginning continues to be explored. Focused on their interactions at the abandoned mansion, where their slowly-dawning realization about the demonic forces controlling their stay in the house and how it all connects to the journey so far, this offers the chance to go into a surreal mixture at times with the interactions they endure, and the end result is a rather enjoyable time. With a zippy, brief reading time that makes for an immersive time that does have a minor issue in that there's little time to explain things, so a lot of the particulars in the story seem a bit overwhelming, this becomes a great time with a lot to like about it.
5/5
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