In the Valley of the Kings This story presents a foreboding and terror-driven psychological horror about a man who awakens in a dissheveled and abandoned building complex located on the surface of a distant planet, suffering from total amnesia and not knowing who he is or where he comes from. The eponymous and longest section of the book (deemed a novella by the author), "In the Valley of the Kings" tells the story of an obsessive Egyptologist who has discovered the most massive underground structure ever built: a giant tomb for an unnameable God-king of ancient Egypt whose powers of immortality the researcher tries to unveil,
In the Valley of the Kings Henry Prize Stories", "The Kenyon Review" and "" periodicals. Holt's book crosses a number of genres, placing several short stories in outer space under a Lovecraftian science fiction theme, while others are highly minimal in setting or consistently focus on the narrator's voice. Nearly all of the works exhibit an element of suspense and sometimes horror as well as an experimental or absurdist tendency. The book's cover art, a semi-transparent detail on a dark blue background, was produced by Ruth Martin. "In the Valley of the Kings" is divided into eight sections (according to the inner lining of the book's