Ten writers are selected for a summer-long writing retreat with the most celebrated and reclusive author in the world. Their host is the legendary Roderick Wells. Handsome, enigmatic, and fiendishly talented, Wells promises to teach his pupils about writing, about magic, about the untapped potential that each of them possesses. Most of all, he plans to teach them about the darkness in their hearts. 

The writers think they are signing up for a chance at riches and literary prestige. But they are really entering the twisted imagination of a deranged genius, a lethal contest pitting them against one another in a struggle for their sanity and their lives. They have entered into Roderick Wells’s most brilliant and horrible creation. 

The Dark Game.  In addition to Kealan Patrick Burke, the other author that I most closely associate with the indie horror scene is Jonathan Janz. Dude is prolific as hell!! I’ve had a copy of Children of the Dark for a few months now, but just haven’t gotten to it quite yet. I was VERY excited to get the chance to work with Flame Tree Press & review Janz’s new book, The Dark Game!

The book starts off with a premise that’ll feel really familiar to most horror fans: a group of writers, gathered in a creepy gothic house, in the middle of nowhere. The premise here is that these ten writers have been selected to be part of a writing contest, the winner of which will be guaranteed fame, money, and publishing contracts. Their host & creator of this contest is Roderick Wells, the world’s most famous writer. Also a demented & pretentious monster. More on him later.

The writers have varying levels of success in their past. Some moderately successful, some as yet unpublished, or in the case of Lucy, a meteoric rise to fame, followed by an epic crash & burn. They all believe they’ve been selected for this contest for what they can bring to the table in terms of their writing, but soon enough, we learn that each of these contestants has an incredibly dark moment in their past, and that Wells intends to exploit that to satisfy his own ghoulish desires.

Here’s where I’ll mention my main issue with the book: I think there were too many characters. I think starting with ten contestants made it a bit difficult to keep track of who was who, and which terrible secret each person was keeping. On top of that, it felt like the characters could’ve been better developed if there were less contestants to start with. Granted, they start getting…*ahem*…culled sooner rather than later. But I just think I would have preferred getting to know, say five characters really well, instead of ten not as well. If that makes sense…

All that being said, I really did enjoy several of the characters in this book, and was definitely rooting for some more than others. Rick, in particular, just felt like that classic horror novel guy…likable & flawed, just on the realistic side of heroic, gutsy. He really reminded me (in some vague ways) of different Stephen King characters I’ve met over the years.

One of the cooler aspects of The Dark Game is getting to read excerpts from the novels that the contestants are working on, as well as some personal correspondences. Janz really gets to explore some different voices this way, and it’s pretty effective.

There’s some incredibly dark & gruesome shit happening here, and some of the things these folks have buried in their past are unimaginably bleak & disturbing. The villain of the piece, Wells, is the kind of character that gets way under your skin. Take away all the dark & supernatural stuff, and he’s still a monster of a human being.

In many ways, this feels like a rather personal story. There are lots of anecdotes in here about the nature of publishing, and of storytelling in general. I couldn’t help but wonder if some of these characters represent different people that Janz may have encountered over the course of his career.

All in all, I dug this one! As I mentioned, I wish the initial cast of characters was a bit smaller, but this story is very cleverly told, and I think it was a great introduction to Jonathan Janz’s writing!

Big thank you to Flame Tree Press for sending me a copy! The Dark Game was released April 11th!