Disappointed by A Game in Yellow
I bought the book after having read the testimonies and the summary on the back-cover. I had never read any Hailey Piper before, but I'm familiar with Chambers' work. I also happen to love cosmic horror books, and I am a huge fan of Clive Barker. So given the praise on the back-cover, I figured I'd give the book a shot.
>A dangerous game of cat and mouse between a submissive lesbian at a dead end job and the Cthhonic powers that lurk between the pages of a certain yellow play, A Game in Yellow is a tightly plotted homage that builds upon lost Carcosa and spins you around in a shimmering masquerade of the senses.
>Surreal, disquieting, and wholly absorbing, Hailey Piper’s A Game in Yellow possesses such suffocating power to bewilder, to enchant, and to completely overwhelm the reader. Written with the provocativeness of a Lynchian fever dream and the sophistication of a story by Lovecraft, this is Piper’s most arresting and satisfying work yet. A novel centered around mythology, obsession, sexuality, fetish, and the facade of the dramatic and the theatrical—I surrendered gladly and this book melted my brain.
God was I mislead.
Instead of a queer cosmic horror book, I ended up with badly-written smut with a thin coat of cosmic horror. The writing is tasteless (as in bland) and raw (as in uncooked), every sentence feels like it's been carelessly put together, as if already discarded by its author. There's no pacing, no rhythm, no fluidity. The dialogues are inane and the characters are made of cardboard.
After having read Shirley Jackson's Haunting of House Hill, which is superbly written, I feel like I'm reading the 15 yo weird kid's assignment for the creative writing class, who fancied themselves a contemporary version of Marquis de Sade.
There's nothing surreal, or dream-like about this book. It's not weird, it's not interesting. There's no subtlety, no sophistication. The only good passages are those with no dialogue, pure descriptions, typically the start of each chapter. As soon as there are words spoken, or direct interactions between characters, everything falls apart, as if the author didn't know where to put the focus.
And reading the Goodreads reviews, people are either complaining about the characters being unlikable or praising the book. I'm having a hard time finding anyone voicing similar opinions. What's your take?