‘A Game in Yellow’ Review – Hailey Piper’s Cosmic Horror Book Is Sensual and Immersive

The cover of Hailey Piper’s A Game in Yellow features a woman in profile from the chest up, bent over…and melting. It’s an apt visual for the cosmic horror contained within the pages of the prolific Bram Stoker award-winning author’s latest novel, which is all about the collapse of boundaries – both personal and textual.

The protagonist is Carmen, a middle-aged woman working a non-descript office job that she doesn’t care about. What she does care about is her girlfriend, Blanca, who she fears is drifting away because of their issues in the bedroom. Carmen is desperate to keep Blanca engaged and satisfied, which has led to the couple pushing the boundaries of their kink from mild S&M into increasingly explicit fantasy/roleplay territory.

One night Blanca takes Carmen to visit Smoke, a young, hot, enigmatic woman who offers Carmen a fleeting glimpse of a play called ‘The King In Yellow.’ Set in a mysterious fantasy-adjacent world during a masquerade ball, the play has an immediate visceral effect on Carmen, re-energizing her sex life with Blanca in exciting and satisfying ways.

Like all good horror stories, however, there are side effects and consequences. ‘The King In Yellow’ has both addictive and mind-altering qualities: Smoke warns that no one is ever permitted to read more than a passage because the text has been known to drive its readers insane. But its impact is so immediate that Carmen begins to rely on it like a drug; she begins to seek out opportunities to read it again in order to recreate its effects.

There’s also a mystery at hand, such as where did the original text come from? Why does Smoke only have Act II of the play? And are the vivid, often lucid hallucinations that begin to dominate Carmen’s life actually happening?

The more Carmen reads, the more she begins to lose her sense of what is real and what is fantasy. As her world and the narrative of the play begin to blur together, the threat to Carmen and the people in her life escalates dramatically. Consuming ‘The King in Yellow’ may cost Carmen everything, including her life and maybe even her world.

The single best thing about A Game in Yellow is Piper’s prose: it has an almost lyrical component that is incredibly rich and evocative. The book feels uncomfortably immersive (complimentary), almost as if the reader is drowning alongside Carmen as she becomes more and more unmoored.

It’s a testament to Piper’s writing that even when the narrative hits familiar beats, A Game in Yellow remains a compelling and propulsive read. At around 270 pages, it’s extremely well-paced – in no small part because once Carmen begins to read the play, the outcome feels inevitable, which gives the book a certain nihilistic tone.

Even if the ending feels unavoidable, however, Piper keeps us trapped within the maelstrom by making us complicit in Carmen’s actions. This is achieved by filling the text with whole passages of the actual text of ‘A King in Yellow.’ Some readers may struggle with the change in format, but as the book progresses, it becomes evident that these passages are instrumental for advancing the narrative.

And then there is the queerness. One of the most refreshing elements of the book, in addition to its gorgeous language, is how unapologetically queer it is. Carmen is a sexually active woman and the passages describing her sex with Blanca are frank and candid. Is it provocative and occasionally confronting? At times, yes, but Carmen’s sex life is interwoven into the fabric of her character, as well as the larger plot of the novel.

Like Clive Barker, whose six volume ‘Books of Blood’ feels like this book’s spiritual predecessor, Piper understands that sex is a vital part of adult life. Much like the excerpts from the play, A Game in Yellow uses sex to inform both character actions and advance the story. After all, sexuality is a driving factor in most, if not all, of Carmen’s motivations.

Ultimately Piper has crafted something that’s lyrical, sensual, and unsettling. A Game in Yellow has morally complex characters, as well as vivid (hallucinatory) body and cosmic horror. It’s bold and uncompromising, and also just a damn fine read, especially if – like me – you’ve been missing that old school Clive Barker prose.

A Game in Yellow is available August 12 from Saga Press.

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