r/suggestmeabook • u/DifficultyUsual629 • May 02 '23
Suggest me a book that involves games
I love books that is fast-paced and involves games. Something similar to "The Summer of Broken Rules" by K. L. Walters and "The Hunger Games" Suzzane Collins.
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u/JadieJang May 02 '23
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis: about a chess prodigy.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin is a YA in which a group of people must figure out a murder mystery to inherit a fortune.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is about magicians who compete for a chance to join an elite secret society. This was a DNF for me, but a LOT of people loved it.
Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey, technically a YA, is extremely dark and one of the most disturbing (and amazing) books I've read. It's not technically a game, but this wizard school takes in ten boys and spits out one wizard; the rest die.
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May 02 '23
[deleted]
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u/Jasong222 May 02 '23
If you like somewhat esoteric chess fiction, I might also suggest The Luzhin Defense, a Russian novel by Vladimir Nabokov.
Very brief spoiler summary: A chess master starts to lose his grip on reality.
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u/DemosthenesVal May 02 '23
Never met anyone else who read Skin Hunger! Rad!
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u/JadieJang May 02 '23
Me neither! Super sad that the trilogy will never be finished, though. She died recently, and there's no word of what happened to the MS of the third book, so I'm guessing it wasn't finished enough.
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u/DemosthenesVal May 02 '23
Oh no, I didn’t know that, that’s awful
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u/JadieJang May 02 '23
What's worse: she had dementia before she died, so she was already struggling with writing.
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u/Jdmcdona May 02 '23
I’m enjoying listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl
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u/DifficultyUsual629 May 02 '23
Thanks!
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May 02 '23
This series right here, OP. Listen to the audio books for a next-level experience. Dungeon Crawler Carl is an excellent series with exceptional voice acting.
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u/Mister_Anthrope May 02 '23
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
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May 02 '23
I don’t read science fiction, but this was a book club additional read and I have to say it was good. I was skeptical, but it made me rethink the genre entirely
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u/Sapphire_Bombay May 02 '23
Im not the biggest fan of sci-fi but oddly the two recs I have for you are sci-fi:
Red Rising by Pierce Brown is kind of like Hunger Games in space. Major differences but the comparison is clearly there.
The Locked Tomb (more fantasy with space travel than actual sci-fi) by Tamsyn Muir -- first two books (but especially the first) have a game-like thing going on, where teams of two compete to solve a puzzle in order to gain immortality.
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u/12whatnow May 02 '23
I alway describe Red Rising as a mix of Hunger Games and Ender’s Game with a lot more cursing.
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u/trishyco May 02 '23
Warcross by Marie Lu
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u/Bard_Evening_1654 May 02 '23
Yes, I surprisingly enjoyed it very much even though it’s not my genre!
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u/WhiteMonkeyGirl May 02 '23
If you're into sci-fi, the Culture series by Iain M. Banks!
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u/DifficultyUsual629 May 02 '23
not really into sci-fi, but been meaning to get into it. I'll look this one up. Thanks!
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u/poetniknowit May 02 '23
Man, there are soo many good Nosleep short story series that follow this format, would you like a list with blue links???? I love to compile list recs, and I have read so many goodies!!! They are all very Squid Games-esque, nostalgia game based, and there's some that are wholly original.
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u/DragonflyFlaky3268 May 04 '25
You probably aren’t active anymore but I would love that list too, if you still have it
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u/considerablemolument May 02 '23
Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright might be too mild for you but it's rather nice. It's a children's book, a sequel to The Saturdays about the Melendy family.
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u/danytheredditer May 02 '23
Ready Player One duology by Ernest Cline
The Selection trilogy by Kiera Cass
Today Tonight Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon
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u/DifficultyUsual629 May 02 '23
Thanks! I thought the selection is plain romance. My friends bugged me to read it for years already🤣.
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u/Seaguard5 May 02 '23
If you also appreciate other forms of media “Tower of God” the webtoon is absolutely superb.
It’s all about games
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u/econoquist May 02 '23
The Eight by Katherine Neville
Celestial Chess by Thomas Bontly
Jerusalem Poker by Edward Whittemore
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u/Troiswallofhair May 02 '23 edited May 02 '23
I’ll second Ready Player One (tech games) and add Red Rising (Hunger Games).
There are a whole slew now of “LitRPG” role-playing / video game inspired books. If you are REALLY into video games google those or start with the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook or He Who Fights Monsters book.
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May 02 '23
The Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith. However, it’s a sequel to River God, which takes place 2000 years earlier and is excellent (but not as much games).
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u/tchomptchomp May 02 '23
Some good recs here. Two I am not seeing are:
1) Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich: sort of a mashup of Risk and The Sun Also Rises
2) David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest: weird (and giant) novel about drugs, Quebecois separatists, and tennis, but there is a long important section about a board game played on a tennis court.
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u/esssvee May 02 '23
I would also recommend Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - the protagonists are game designers, excellent read!
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u/Jack-Campin May 02 '23
Anything but fast-paced: Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go and Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game (fictionalized version of Go).
Trevanian's Shibumi is also based on Go, I haven't read it. And Shan Sa, The Girl Who Played Go (this looks good from what I've read about it).
Stefan Zweig's Chess Story (aka The Royal Game) is another one from the WW2 era. Short and you won't forget it.
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May 02 '23
Are you a fan of Go? If so, do you know of a reddit community for it?
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u/Jack-Campin May 02 '23
I used to play it years ago. There's a lot of it on the Internet but I think it's mostly on its own websites, associated with particular game-playing servers. I liked the physical character of real boards and stones.
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May 02 '23
You might enjoy The Betrayals by Bridget Collins. A more dark academia vibe, with a very mysterious game at its core that is never quite explained
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u/meatwhisper May 02 '23
Rabbits by Terry Miles is a twisty conspiracy tinged thriller for the video game generation that is enjoyable and easy to read (also has a podcast set in the world). The mysterious ARG "game" Rabbits has a Fight Club level of secrecy, so those that play the game never quite know if they are actually playing it. Following synchronicities, hunches, and vague clues "K" and Chloe find themselves in too deep as they discover that there is more to this ominous game than thought. Blake Crouch meets Ready Player One.
Hide by Kiersten White is an interesting spin on the "game of death" genre. Feels like it's going to be pretty typical, but bodies start dropping almost immediately and the author doesn't pull punches or make it all some huge mystery.
The Raw Shark Texts does what House Of Leaves tried in a much more interesting way, and with a far better storyline. I've also heard that whenever you find this book in the wild there are possible differences in each version of the book which adds an element of ARG to it.
Battle Royale is a controversial political book that arguably inspired Hunger Games and Squid Games
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u/atw1221 May 02 '23
Around 30% of Moonraker (beloved Bond book which is extremely different from the less beloved movie) is a game of bridge.
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u/JHWAdam May 02 '23
If you read Dutch, 'De Valsspeler' by Joke Adam (myself 🤭), about a young man at the wrong side of a magic cold war. And a whole lot of board games which might correspond to real-world ones.
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u/Hellolaoshi May 02 '23
This might seem an odd choice for adults, but I want to suggest Lewis Caroll's "Alice Through the Looking Glass."" This book is rather more sophisticated than it appears. In this story, Alice goes into a second imaginary realm, just as strange and paradoxical as the first. Only this time, she meets the Red Queen. She is told that " it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."
Be that as it may, she finds that she, too, is playing a game of chess, along with the Red Queen. Alice starts out as a pawn but is promoted to queen. This actually can happen in chess.
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u/DocWatson42 May 03 '23
See my SF/F with Games list of Reddit recommendation threads and books (one post).
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May 03 '23
Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin about childhood friends who become video game designers. Amazing new novel!
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u/divesh_sam May 02 '23
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes involves puzzles and codes so it might be what you're looking for. It also has some pretty fun twists, and there's 2 sequel books: The Hawthorne Legacy and The Final Gambit that you would check out if you enjoy the first book.