The Master is the third book in the Games House trilogy by award-winning British author, Claire North. After centuries of preparation, Silver judges it’s time to play the Great Game. At the Gameshouse’s current location in New York City, Silver challenges the Gamesmaster. The decide on chess. It’s the Great Game, so the board encompasses the whole globe, and the stakes are their lives, for the players are the opposing Kings. And while Silver has amassed many resources, the Gamesmaster has the wealth of the Gameshouse at her disposal.

Silver quickly relocates to a tiny island in the Caribbean, but stays mobile: he’s soon on an Interpol watchlist. This is chess, so strategy is all important, and he has to be careful not to use his key pieces prematurely. Those pieces are many and wide-ranging, from American Senators to German police to net hackers to FBI agents, cyber-security experts.

The game is serious and there are many casualties: “I activate the Union of South American Nations; she plays two of the big four oil companies; I launch environmental terrorists and an insurance broker in retaliation. She turns the head of the Greek police against the insurance company; I turn the interior minister against the police. She unleashes a nationalist opposition movement against my minister; I play an orthodox patriarch and evangelical Christian TV station back at her” etc etc etc.

The action, and there is plenty of it, sends Silver all over the world as he and the Gamesmaster battle to win. Some years into the Game, Silver reveals to one of his pieces his ultimate aim should he win, it provokes an unanticipated reaction from an unexpected quarter. This eventually leads to a very bloodthirsty climax and a rather predictable ending. A disappointing conclusion.