There’s a long tradition in horror fiction of entities and objects so shocking they drive anyone who encounters them completely mad. It’s a device exemplified by Robert W. Chambers’ seminal 1895 story collection, The King in Yellow, but even Chambers only went so far in attempting to describe what that madness actually looked like, and how the fictional play of his title worked its dark spell. It’s easy to understand why, because in horror, the results are often much more interesting than the mechanics. But Hailey Piper’s latest novel is deeply interested in both.
Sexy, complex and confident, A Game in Yellow expands the mythology of Chambers’ work while focusing on a single, complex relationship between three people. The dread-wrapped, bewitching and terrifying result is a novel that’s not only among Piper’s best work yet, but also one of the best horror novels of the year.
Carmen is a submissive in the elaborate BDSM games she plays with her partner, Blanca. Carmen is deeply in love with Blanca, but lately she’s been struggling, worried that she’s not giving enough to the relationship, and that Blanca’s efforts to further spice up their love life are failing. So, she agrees to meet a mysterious woman named Smoke, a potential third in their game who promises fulfillment and thrills through the pages of a mysterious, seemingly magical play she shares with a select few readers. The play is called The King in Yellow, and it’s about to change all three women’s lives forever.
What sets Piper apart in the realm of weird and cosmic horror is her investment in her characters: She’s just as interested in probing their deepest thoughts and vulnerabilities as she is in subjecting them to the torments of the unknown. While A Game in Yellow unfolds from Carmen’s point of view, Piper’s rich, textured prose lends equal space to Blanca and Smoke: what they want, what they’re willing to give and what it really means to be wrapped up, emotionally and physically, in a kink game like the one Carmen and Blanca have designed. The result is a take on BDSM that is never exploitative but instead is thoughtful, emotionally resonant and deeply engrossing.
But Piper’s greatest accomplishment in this novel is what she does with Chambers’ Yellow King mythos, a piece of weird fiction whose lore has long been referenced to and built upon by other genre writers (perhaps most famously in HBO’s True Detective). Rather than simply taking The King in Yellow and transplanting it into a new time and place, Piper is deeply curious about how this document gets into people’s minds, how it warps them and how it manifests in the real world. She builds what may be the most ambitious expansion of Chambers’ mythos yet, a towering work of madness and horror that is nonetheless also an intimate, sometimes even claustrophobic story of three people caught in a maelstrom of desire and fear. You have never read another piece of weird fiction like this one, and given the subgenre’s endless permutations, that’s really saying something.