Very engaging read. There are A LOT of characters but you are introduced to them gradually. They are fleshed out and distinct so I never felt confused about who was who. I'm pretty sure one of the influences for this book was In the Mouth of Madness (which is one of my favorite movies BTW), and Janz runs with that idea and makes it his own. Very enjoyable to read and Janz is now one of my favorite authors. ( )

A few years ago I may have said Jonathan who? These days I need only see the name Jonathan Janz to know that I need to grab the book without even reading the description. Jonathan Janz knows horror, More than that he is an amazing story teller who doesn't need to go for the cheap scares or the gore only route. Every character has a purpose and I am not going to go into the plot much except to say each character has their own twisted little back story and the way in which it all played out was deliciously creepy. I also loved the way it mentioned The Siren and The Spector, which is another book by this author that you really need to read if you haven't yet.

I received an advance copy for review. ( )

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com. I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review consideration.
I spent 2018 only reading female authors. At the same time I was introduced to some of the new names in horror fiction through my involvement in Sci Fi and Scary and the horror fan community Instagram. Going into 2019 there were a bunch of male horror writers I really wanted to try for the first time. Jonathan Janz was definitely on that list, along with the likes of Josh Malerman and Keelan Patrick Burke. I’ve heard great things from people whose opinion I respect about other books by Janz (see Lilyn’s review of ‘The Siren and the Specter’ here), but I’m afraid that my experience with ‘ The Dark Game’ was massively disappointing so I won’t be rushing to read him again.
There is a fun concept at the core of ‘The Dark Game’, it just isn’t a very original one. 10 writers get invited on a retreat with a famous author who will reward one of them with his patronage. It quickly becomes obvious that sinister forces are at play and the 10 start being confronted with dark secrets from their pasts and dying one by one. The setup has promise, but soon gets overwhelmed by lazy writing and uninvolving characters. Perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that there’s noone to root for. The participants are equally dislikeable and boring. Watching them die was fun at times, and Janz is certainly creative, but any sense of horror was quickly dulled by the fact that just didn’t care about any of them.
On top of that there are plot holes you could drive a truck through and I was often left scratching my head at the twists. It feels like Janz had a decent idea to begin with, but any development of it into a story that actually worked was lost in the rush to get the book finished.
This being a book about writers having a writing competition, there is ample discussion of the craft and the horror genre. That can be fun in a book, but here I’m afraid it felt self-indulgent and the many references to better books simply highlighted the flaws with this one. The fact that pretty much all of the many chapters end with a “da da dahhh” type line was the straw that broke camel’s back for me, and the book ended up annoying me more than it entertained.
That’s a shame, because there are some good ideas here and many of the bloody set pieces are well handled. Overall this was definitely a miss for me, which is a shame as I had high hopes for it.

( )

There is a wide and varied cast of characters, but I didn’t find myself losing track of who’s who or disliking the number of perspectives; if anything, it was intriguing to watch the story-telling style change as the players began to exit the game. And believe me...they do exit quickly. The story’s action picks up early and never lets up. A word of warning: If you get a letter in the mail that begins with, “Mr. Roderick Wells invites you...”, just throw it away. Don’t read the rest. Don’t consider it for even a moment, and most importantly of all... DO NOT RESPOND!!!. ( )

The Dark Game by Jonathan Janz caught my attention as soon as I read the description, and it held my attention from the first page. Overall, I liked the book, but there were a few things that could have been better.

It was a bit confusing at first, trying to keep all of the characters straight in my head, but the saving grace there was that each has something that helps them stand out so you can (mostly) keep track once you discover their “thing”.

The supernatural elements to this book are well done, but I do wish there was a little more exploration of them. It feels like we’re supposed to just accept that this is the way this world works and not ask questions, but I honestly have questions and would like to know the answers.

I did really enjoy the writing in this book; it was fun to read excerpts of the writers’ work and their personal letters and diaries. And Janz makes excellent use of flashbacks to give us the backstories we need to understand why these particular writers were the ones chosen for the retreat.

This was my first time reading Jonathan Janz, although I’ve had two of his books on my shelf for a while, and I’m looking forward to reading more of his work.

I received a free e-copy of The Dark Game by Jonathan Janz from Net Galley and Flame Tree Press in exchange for my review. ( )