Guest post written by Immortal Game author Allison Saft
Allison Saft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Starlight, A Dark and Drowning Tide, A Far Wilder Magic, and other romantic fantasy novels. Her work has won a Scribe Award and has been translated into over ten languages. She holds an MA in English Literature from Tulane University and teaches creative writing at Wilkes University. In her free time, she practices aerial circus arts. She lives in West Virginia with her partner and an Italian greyhound named Marzipan.
About Immortal Game: In this Irish folklore-inspired sapphic fantasy from #1 New York Times bestseller Allison Saft, a chess grandmaster must team up with her fae rival to save the person she loves the most. Releases August 4th 2026.
Before I wrote Immortal Game, I learned to play chess. I was driven partly by a desire to understand the game well enough that I could bring it to life for readers who’ve never played before. The problem is that chess isn’t a very visual game, even when it’s live broadcasted. All of the drama and tension lives within each player’s mind. To make it exciting and accessible, then, descriptions of the games have to be less about the strategy behind the moves and more about the emotion that drives them.
Everyone who writes about chess, I think, comes to this same conclusion. In most chess stories, chess becomes a metaphor for emotional and political conflicts. It can be both a lifeline and an instrument of torture, a means of either connection or isolation. It’s often figured as a battleground for competing ideologies, as it was during the 1972 World Chess Championship, where the American challenger Bobby Fischer took on the reigning Soviet champion, Boris Spassky.
The game itself fascinates me, but not as much as the people who devote their lives to it. Elite chess players are obsessive, talented, and often troubled people. Such is the case of Shea Fury, Immortal Game’s protagonist. To make her feel as authentic as possible, I read as much as I could about chess players, both real and fictional. Common themes emerged: burnout, perfectionism, loneliness, the struggle to recover love for a thing you’ve instrumentalized. These are struggles all of us can relate to, even if we’ve never sat down in front of a board. If you’re hungry for extraordinary but deeply human stories, here are my favorite books about chess players, which run the gamut of age category and genre.
May the Best Player Win by Kyla Zhao
I loved May The Best Player Win, a layered middle grade novel about May Li, a twelve-year-old chess player. The novel explores how complicated friendships can be at that age. May has to grapple with what happens when jealousy makes your so-called friends reveal their true colors. But what I enjoyed most was the examination of perfectionism. May is so desperate to prove herself to the people who doubt her, she begins to poison her love for chess. Her performance is hindered by pressure, she devotes all of her time and energy to tournament prep to the detriment of her relationships, and she increasingly fixates on external metrics of success. It’s a simple but powerful message at its heart: Winning isn’t everything. Joy has to be what guides us.
Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood
Check & Mate is my favorite Ali Hazelwood novel, partly because of the chess and mostly because I love a romance dynamic built on the characters’ mutual respect for (and sometimes mutual awe of) each other’s talents. Mallory, the protagonist, also felt very real to me. She hates the game she once loved and neglects her own talent out of fear and an outsized sense of duty to her family. But slowly, the prospect of competing against someone who can match or exceed her skill begins to restore her love for the game. Winning or losing doesn’t matter; it’s the pure thrill of a challenge that brings her joy. Mallory’s relationship with her coach, Defne, is just as textured and interesting as her relationship with the love interest. Defne is deeply devoted to Mallory’s career and to give Mallory opportunities Defne never had. It draws out a thoughtful plotline about sexism in the chess world.
The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
You’ve most likely watched Netflix’s version of Beth Harmon’s story, but the novel it’s adapted from is just as brilliant. The show follows the book pretty closely. The Queen’s Gambit is an exploration of single-minded obsession, addiction, and the power and solace broken people find within the sixty-four squares of a chessboard. Chess players will be rewarded because it’s clear that Tevis loves chess; the games Beth plays are lovingly rendered, move by move. But if you don’t play, the glimpse we get into Beth’s mind is fascinating and devastating. The high point for me is, of course, her relationship with Borgov. We can so viscerally feel her fear of him, and how much emotional weight she places on the outcomes of their games.
Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How A Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine by David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Bobby Fischer Goes to War was hands-down my favorite book I read while researching Immortal Game. It’s breezily written and a lot of fun, even if you don’t play chess. It tells the bizarre, engrossing, and incredibly dramatic story of the 1972 World Chess Championship. It also paints sympathetic, nuanced portraits of the two competitors, Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, both of whom were complicated men and both of whom faced enormous pressure going into the match. The book captures something meaningful about the Cold War era, chess history, and the price of brilliance.
Dark Squares: How Chess Saved my Life by Danny Rensch
If you follow online chess at all, you probably know who Danny Rensch is: the Chief Chess Officer of chess.com. But you may not know his life story. As a child, Rensch was at the bottom of the spiritual and social hierarchy of a cult called The Church of Immortal Consciousness, until its magnetic leader realized Rensch had an innate gift for chess. Dark Squares is a heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting memoir about the fruitlessness of seeking perfection and regaining control of your life by finding your true purpose.
