Synopsis:
Euphoria meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in this latest novel by the Bram Stoker Award–winning author Hailey Piper, following a couple whose search to spice up their sex life leads them down a path of madness.
A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who holds pages to a strange play, The King in Yellow. Read too much, and you’ll fall into madness. But read just a little and pull back, and it gives you the adrenaline rush of survivor’s euphoria, leading Carmen to fall into a game of lust at a nightmare’s edge.
As the line blurs between the world Carmen knows and the one that she visits after reading from the play, she begins to desire more time in this other world no matter what horrors she brings back with her.
Bram Stoker Award–winning author Hailey Piper masterfully blends horror, erotica, and psychological thriller in this captivating and chilling story.
Review:
There’s been an odder-than-usual streak of puritanism running amok these last few years when it comes to sex in media. Some argue that sex scenes are unnecessary or, at the more extreme ends, spout spurious claims of mental harm because they, as the consumer, did not consent to read or witness sex scenes. And that’s not even getting into the weirdo spinster Moms for Liberty whackadoos storming libraries and local school board meetings who can find porn in even the most sterile texts outside their Holy Bible. Or the big, tough manly men in state and local legislatures who cower in terror at the mere mention of gay love and launch a proliferation of book banning laws targeting schools, libraries, and bookstores. The more obsequious among us proclaim that sex scenes don’t serve the plot, as if every line of dialogue, every interaction and character beat, every scene of unrelenting wholesale slaughter must serve that unerringly, grimly strict taskmaster. God forbid that both characters and consumers find joy in sex!
Thankfully, Hailey Piper is not one of these odd prudes, and with A Game in Yellow, she even manages to get ahead of these critics arguing that sex scenes don’t serve the plot by making sex integral to the plot. Kink and the submissive and dominant roles that Carmen and her lover, Blanca, inhabit fully inform these characters and their relationship. They have wants and desires, and their sexual intimacy is a cornerstone of their relationship. Their passions, as detailed to us in various roleplay scenarios and breathing and rope play, and later the addition of a third partner, reveal the level of trust that exists between them beyond the physical and the ways that trust and emotional connectivity can be upended and weaponized by outside forces. These moments don’t exist solely to titillate readers — although if that were their only purpose, that would OK too! — but to give life and definition to these women, to present them as fully-formed, three-dimensional human beings, warts and all.
And oh boy, are there ever warts a plenty. Carmen and Blanca are messy, messy lesbians. Carmen, particularly, is about two steps shy of being an actual walking disaster when we meet her. Their relationship has hit a plateau after two years and Carmen is struggling to maintain an interest in sex with her lover. Blanca is willing to do anything for her partner, as Piper lays out in the first chapter, which sees the couple engage in bondage and asphyxiation play with submissive Carmen tied to a chair and smothered with a plastic bag. For Carmen, ecstasy can only be found in that narrow line between life and death.
But even increasingly dangerous kinks can only hold Carmen’s attention for so long before her disinterest returns. Blanca takes her to The Underground to meet a friend and eventual hookup partner, Smoke. Smoke holds the key to sparking Carmen’s interest and introduces her to a dangerous text, the infamous play The King in Yellow. Those who read the play are driven to madness… or worse. Smoke’s copy is incomplete, but what she possesses is enough to drive Carmen wild. But as one reads the play, so does the play read them, and Carmen is forced to weave between this world and another, plagued by nightmares and waking terrors, performing actions that are out of her control. Or are they? Is, perhaps, the submissive the one who is ultimately in control, or is the living city of dead Carcosa, which exists beyond the veil, the one in charge?
Piper’s writing is positively hypnotic, both cutting and cunning in equal measures, and I found my own reading experience with A Game In Yellow dovetailing Carmen’s obsession with the ancient French play. Much like Carmen, I quickly grew obsessed with these pages, desiring to sink ever deeper into the lush world present in this text, to the point of addiction. I was fully enamored with A Game In Yellow, made drunk on it by the time it was finished. It’s the kind of book I’m torn between hyping up loud enough to see it become a best-seller while also wanting it to become an underground cult classic that inspires obsessive devotees. The kind of book that should be talked about in hushed tones at concerts and convention circuits, with worn, coffee- and nicotine-stained, dog-eared copies passed around by hand to help initiate the curious. One of those reads that’s just our little secret, and if you know, you know, like a modern day “Do you read Sutter Cane?” passphrase that helps one find their tribe.
Pulling plenty of inspiration from Robert W. Chambers The King In Yellow, Piper’s work serves as a modern-day sequel and a welcome addition to the canon of cosmic horror. Chamber’s titular King has enjoyed a bit of a resurgence of late, playing a key role in Jonathan Maberry’s Kagen the Damned horror-fantasy series and Todd Keisling’s The Final Reconciliation, and influencing the first season of HBO’s True Detective. It’s nice to see a forebear to and influence on H.P. Lovecraft enjoying their time under the (twin) sun(s).
Some might claim, and a few might even try to argue, no doubt unsuccessfully, that this story could have been told without such a heavy focus on sex and kink play. To eliminate these elements would wholly undermine Piper’s intent, ambitions, and narrative prowess. The sex, and how Carmen, Blanca, and eventually Smoke, connect with each other via sex, is every bit as important an element as Chambers’s foundational text and provides vital insights in these characters relationships and Carmen’s psychology. Sex is the instigating action from which all else here is derived. To remove these elements from A Game In Yellow would be to destroy it.
If this were the ’90s, A Game In Yellow would sit proudly alongside the works of Kathe Koja or Clive Barker, possibly as a Dell Abyss title, resplendent in its griminess and eroticism. There would still be controversy, to be sure, but I suspect it would feel less like a flashpoint than today. In 2025, with Americans having voted for fascism, where race, gender, sexual identities and preferences are the new Satanic Panic with scores of anti-LGBT and anti-trans legislation, oftentimes coded as anti-pornography bills, sweeping through too many state governments, A Game In Yellow is a timely piece of resistance fiction thanks to its mere existence and the human beings it represents. Focusing on gay relations and sexuality, and authored by a trans woman, it’s the type of work mouth-breathing right-wingers would decry as pornographic (it isn’t), shrieking as they do about the safety of the children while simultaneously clamoring for the elimination and undermining of school lunch programs, child labor laws, environmental protections, sensible gun laws, and vaccination requirements. Piper and her stories are welcome — and, particularly now, vital — works of OwnVoices horror fiction, offering seedy, hallucinatory scares, frightening worlds, and plenty of much-needed representation during a time when it is sorely needed to help push back against Christofascist propaganda.
Even beyond the politics of its existence, A Game In Yellow is just a frighteningly damn good book. It’s easy to get lost in these pages, to lose yourself to the story, to the point that you can very nearly see the twin suns setting across the lake of Hali and the shimmer of lost Carcosa. Just try not to lose yourself, dear reader. I can assure you it’s all to easy to do so.
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