Authors love the thrill of playing games. Their stories are a way to toy with their readers, throw in hints and winks and maybe give a concrete answer at the end. Take Chuck Palahniuk and his novel “Survivor”: a story that manages to leave readers with more questions at the end than the beginning.

Narrator Tender Branson speaks into the black box of an empty passenger plane that he has hijacked and plans to crash. He explains the story of his life up to this spontaneous hijacking, knowing his words are being recorded. Branson was a member of the Creedish Church, seen by outsiders as a death cult after their infamous mass suicide 10 years before. However, when the last living Creedish members are murdered, Branson becomes the sole survivor and suddenly finds himself in the middle of an outrageous plot for fame.

Palahniuk is known for his ability to successfully bait and hook readers into the story through the trap of curiosity and questions. “Survivor” starts at the end, immediately prompting questions about what happened to this man to cause him to hijack a plane. Readers are pulled along in a state of suspense, waiting for the pieces to connect and culminate at the hijacking end point. This suspension and apprehension is a constant drone throughout the novel, not loud enough to distract from Branson’s story, but still barely audible in order to irk the reader’s conscience.

The story is narrated through a single perspective, bringing the reliability of the narrator, an unstable, innocent-minded and inexperienced individual, into question.

The novel toys with ideas of religion, suicide, murder, ideals, capitalism, morals, values and truth. Palahniuk’s talent lies in the dynamics of his stories. “Survivor” can’t boast the confusion and massive plot twist given to “Fight Club” (if you don’t know, read “Fight Club”); however, it can claim constant unpredictability and twists, even past the final period.