Demonata #1, The: Lord Loss
The first book of Darren Shan's Demonata series. Grubbs Grady's ordinary adolescence ends when his family is killed by demons, and he is drawn into a world of magic and monsters ruled by the demon master Lord Loss. It is markedly more violent than Shan's Cirque du Freak books, with body horror played straight rather than softened for its young-teen audience. Chess turns out to matter to the plot in a way that sounds absurd and is not.