A real-world game pulls people in and gets them killed. There’s something wrong with the game that’s causing the world to rupture. For some reason, the narrator is the savior of the game, though he appears to be the only one unaware that he is actually playing the game. Like most of the story, the climax is smoke and mirrors, as if the main character awakes from a dream at the end. This book feels like gorging on junk food and ending up in a stupor of satisfaction despite the queasiness. Like the answer to a secret taken to the grave, it leaves the reader with a suspended sense of closure, prolonging the unease of real-life unanswerable questions. For some reason, this works for me, and I really wanted the game to be real despite the death toll, because that would never happen to me, right? Read this book and explain it to me! I was fortunate to receive a digital copy from the publisher Del Ray Books through NetGalley.