Gregory recieves a strange invitation from his weird Uncle Max, instructing Gregory to come visit him in Vermont and bring "a companion." When they get there, Uncle Max picks him up in a horse-drawn carriage. When they reach Uncle Max's house, they find an old game board entitled "The Game of Sunken Places." Later they find an old egg timer bearing the same name, and when they flip it over, a trumpet sounds, and the Game begins. They meet many strange creatures, including a troll, an ogre, two warring fairy nations, and mechanical servants.

This is a story about the time when two young boys, Brian and Gregory, and invited to their uncles house for a visit. In the house, they find a mysterious game board. They never knew that something so simple as a seemingly childs game could be the decision of their staying alive. I love the imagination of the author and their descriptions of the monsters and beasts in the book. Some of them were well known creatures, such as trolls, but many of them were completely made up by the author himself. The plot is a little bit hard to understand, because the history of the game is confusing.