[BOOKS OF THE DEAD] The Ship of Death - Kyle Winkler

The Ship of Death - Books of the Dead Review

Welcome to Books of the Dead. A monthly series by published author and founder of The Readers in the Rue Morgue Book Club Victoria Brown where she deep dives into some of her favourite (and not so favourite) authors and books.

Author: Kyle Winkler

Publication Date: 29^th September 2026

Synopsis:  Cole and Lorraine playtest board games for some extra cash as they save up to buy a house. But after a series of bizarre coincidences, and signing a strange NDA, the couple finds a mysterious tabletop role-playing game on their doorstep: The Ship of Death.

The game feeds on the players' imaginations and takes up an ever-growing amount of space: in their home, and in their minds. As its true sinister nature becomes clearer and more victims fall under its spell, the boundary between the game and reality begins to dissolve. . . and the pair are instructed to possess a stranger's soul. But with the stakes this high, losing this game might just mean the end of everything . . .

Thoughts:

I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but that is exactly what I did with Kyle Winkler’s ‘The Ship of Death’. I spotted it while scrolling through Instagram and became entranced, obsessively counting down the days until it was published. I was initially hooked by its marketing as a haunted boardgame story, but another marketing stream’s comparison of ‘House of Leaves meets Jumanji’ fits much better. 

Our protagonist Cole tests RPG games on the side to supplement his crappy bar tending job’s salary as he saves up for a house deposit, and he often brings his wife Lorraine along for the ride. A mysterious game called ‘The Ship of Death’ is sent to Cole in the post by his industry contact. Its origins are unclear and spookily occult, the rules are bizarre, and the game’s fictional events and characters soon start to seep into Cole and Lorraine’s lives in increasingly negative ways. 

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While Winkler’s writing style is arguably a little basic (not that that’s a bad thing, not everything needs purple prose), the plot was intriguing and it kept me hooked right to the end. The set-up felt plausible, if a little unusual, the character’s journeys felt earned and often uncomfortable, and the ending was tinged with tragedy. It worked perfectly for the kind of story Winkler was telling. And Winkler does an incredible job of making you feel more and more dread with each turn of the page.

While I enjoyed the plot immensely – Cole, Lorraine, and the various side characters felt believable and sympathetic – I am a little torn about the author’s narrative approach. The novel is told via game reports, playing cards, diary entries, emails, online forum posts, police reports, and even a fictional Wikipedia page, and while the idea is certainly interesting, I don’t feel like writing in that way added anything unique to the story, or gave the reader any additional information that our protagonists don’t already know or find out. But saying that, I also don’t feel like it took away or distracted from the story. Do you see why I’m torn? It’s a minor gripe. 

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I was also underwhelmed by the cosmic horror. It felt more like a twist on ‘Alice in Wonderland’. I was expecting more from the story in that sense but I’m not sure what else Winkler could have done to infuse more cosmic horror in without doing it at the expense of the story. 

I enjoyed ‘The Ship of Death’ very much, but the longer I’ve been away from it, the more issues I find. I would still highly recommend it to anyone who wants an unusual premise and enjoys epistolary novels; I just wish I’d enjoyed it more than I did. I will, however, definitely be picking up Kyle Winkler’s books in the future. 

Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½

-Victoria Brown, Author of The Death Ship: Recovering The Bodies of Titanic's Dead

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