Along the way, Ben is told his only solution is to find a demigodlike character called only “The Producer.” “I don’t even know if I’m still on Earth, or if I ate some kind of bad mushroom or something,” Ben tells his only companion, a talking crab named Crab. He’s left messages with his name on them that read, “Stay on the path, or you will die.” He’s kidnapped by a cannibal giantess named Fermona who forces him to fight a man to death in her arena, and that’s before she sics the dwarves on him. Ben is soon pursued by a pair of killers who wear the disembodied faces of skinned Rottweilers. For starting out with such a grounded setup, Magary isn’t shy about getting weird fast. We meet Ben as the suburban family man has left his family in Maryland and arrives at a hotel in rural Pennsylvania for a business meeting the next day. Magary channeled postmodern horror-comedy in his first novel, The Postmortal, and here taps into a similar vein that posits an Everyman in a video game–like setting, with a Kafka-esque transformation thrown in for good measure. The second, equally creepy novel from Deadspin columnist Magary ( Someone Could Get Hurt, 2013, etc.).
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