The Gameshouse

April 8, 2019
Luck and skill clash in this morally nuanced novel of gamesmanship and civilization. Joining up three novellas originally published in 2015, it traces the arcs of people who find the interdimensional Gameshouse and progress from piece to player to Gamesmaster. In “The Serpent,” 16th-century Jewish heiress Thene escapes her brutish, gambling-addicted husband by orchestrating the election of a Venetian Supreme Tribune. In “The Thief,” a veteran player unwisely falls into a game of hide-and-seek in Thailand with an ambitious upstart who wants the veteran’s memories as a prize. In “The Master,” a challenge comes to the Gameshouse itself, issued by Silver, a longtime player who wants to recruit others into his own Great Game. World Fantasy Award winner North (The Sudden Appearance of Hope) melds her separate tales into an intricate critique of world history as a game board controlled by competitive and coolly disinterested gamers who are willing to sacrifice their pawns without regret or remorse. The true threat to the Gameshouse is not winning, but altering the perception of the “pieces” and restoring their humanity. Only a muddled, tension-leaking ending mars this philosophical exploration of global intrigue. Agent: Meg Davis, Ki (U.K.).

April 15, 2019
A twisty tale of intrigue and games played for the highest possible stakes. The Gameshouse is always the same, though it is not always in the same city; always home to a strange crowd of gamblers, some of whom don't seem to belong in this time and place. If you play well, you may be invited to join the higher league. There, your pieces are people, and you must wager part of yourself to join the game: "Your skill with language, perhaps. Your love of colour....Years of your life." We begin in Venice, 1610, where a woman named Thene will be invited to play a game of Kings. We will travel many miles and centuries from this beginning but must always remember that anyone we meet might later become a player--or a piece to be played. North (84K, 2018, etc.) creates a dark, atmospheric world in 17th-century Venice, then moves to a high-stakes, suspenseful game of hide-and-seek all over Thailand in 1938, and finally a world-spanning game of chess played for control of the Gameshouse itself. The first two parts are stronger than the third, because the stakes feel more immediate and less theoretical, but the whole adds up to something quite rich. An unusual, intriguing novel that's both a paranoid fantasy about a world where anyone can be bought and a broody tale about what really matters when anything can be gambled away.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.