A Game In Yellow: Of Love, Sex, Madness, & Truth

"Between truth and madness lies ecstasy. Or perhaps between ecstasy and truth lies madness."

Before this book, I had never heard of The King In Yellow. I was talking about which books I should read next on a livestream, and when I read the description of this book, some excitedly mentioned that this was related to a 19th century work about a cursed play. Published in 1895, Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow is a collection of short horror stories about a madness-inducing play of the same name. For her novel, Hailey Piper has brought this disastrous work into the present day to torment a trio of lesbians: Carmen, her girlfriend Bianca, and their new playmate, the enigmatic Smoke, who introduces Carmen to the play in order to help jolt her out of her sexual rut.

Carmen and Blanca have been together for two years, and Blanca is doing everything she can to break through Carmen's disconnection. The novel opens with a scene of breath-play that reads like the beginning of a snuff film but quickly transitions into the dynamics and concerns of a well-constructed kink roleplay scene.

Carmen's disconnection is related to when she left home, rejected by her parents after coming out, and her guilt over abandoning a young lover named Aja. Carmen is unwilling to process these feelings and the situations that caused them, choosing instead to sublimate them through submission to Blanca's BDSM game. But this sublimation is what makes her a perfect target for Smoke's cursed manuscript that quickly begins to infiltrate Carmen's waking and dreaming consciousness.

This book is perfect for anyone who loves romantasy, but wants to add a bit of horror into the mix with the steamy scenes. There is a lot of sex here, but through the vulnerability of the intimate connections, we see a trio of women trying to come to terms with painful pasts. We are asked to question what it means to submit control to another. And we see what happens when past hurts are left to fester in the dark corners of our minds.

There is an element of this book that reminds me of the Smile movies: unresolved and unprocessed trauma can destroy you. And it made me curious to check out the history of this fabled play. Chambers' story collection will soon be added to my always growing "to be read" pile.