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mr_bartleby's review against another edition
4.0
A game of poker played on Lake Mead with a strange deck of Tarot cards kicks off a harrowing adventure to save a man's soul. Pacing is excellent, solid storytelling all around, but where this book really shines is the bizarre magic system Powers puts together. Tarot symbolism meets Vegas odds and runs smack dab into the real world. This might be the best soft magic system I've ever come across, and I'll be recommending the book on that alone.
jayshay's review against another edition
I set this aside after a very long 90 pages.
The underlying Carl Jung/Joesph Campbell archetype stuff, something like the 'skeleton of the universe', was interesting but I just couldn't latch on to any of the characters or their situations.
Perhaps it was something about the professional card player/grifter setting that didn't appeal. Though I was fine with that in Ondaatje's Divisadero and the writing in Last Call reminded me of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I quite enjoyed.
I also wonder if it wasn't a problem, problem for me at least, of how the book kept jumping back and forth in time to fill in the story that totally derailed any narrative momentum.
All in all, not something that I wanted to spend 536 pages on, or 200 pages waiting for it to get started.
The underlying Carl Jung/Joesph Campbell archetype stuff, something like the 'skeleton of the universe', was interesting but I just couldn't latch on to any of the characters or their situations.
Perhaps it was something about the professional card player/grifter setting that didn't appeal. Though I was fine with that in Ondaatje's Divisadero and the writing in Last Call reminded me of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I quite enjoyed.
I also wonder if it wasn't a problem, problem for me at least, of how the book kept jumping back and forth in time to fill in the story that totally derailed any narrative momentum.
All in all, not something that I wanted to spend 536 pages on, or 200 pages waiting for it to get started.
bent's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this book. Found some of the poker stuff confusing - I have a basic understanding of poker, but this was way over my head, and whenever there was a description of an actual poker game I found myself losing interest. Some of the climatic scenes were a little over-the-top, but overall the plot moved at a good pace, the characters were interesting, and the world-building was well-done. There is a lot going on in this book but Powers makes it all pretty digestible so the reader doesn't get lost. Another good read by Tim Powers.
carolined314's review against another edition
4.0
A twisty tale full of mythic and enormous powers, kept me hooked right to the end.
kellanemc's review against another edition
3.0
I always think of Gaiman as having one of the most unique voices of his generation, and yet here in “Last Call” I find the bones and blood of “American Gods”, the original conceit and original sin all rolled up in the same old myths (gods, tarot, witchcraft) meet new myths (Vegas, the open road, the American West) noir package.
After my initial positive review I stayed intrigued by the concept of the novel but found the last third kind of plodding. I’d suggest Declare instead if you want to try out Tim Powers.
After my initial positive review I stayed intrigued by the concept of the novel but found the last third kind of plodding. I’d suggest Declare instead if you want to try out Tim Powers.
miggsisalot's review against another edition
4.0
My knowledge of poker is shoddy at best, but it didn't keep me from enjoying this book. Reading the poker playing scenes was sort of like watching my husband play at a Vegas casino; sometimes quietly playing his cards while standing behind him and struggling to keep my own facial expression from giving away his hand, and other times preferring to preoccupy myself with my phone.
The protagonist reminded me a bit of Michael Crawford from Powers's other novel 'The Stress of Her Regard': flawed, sometimes not your favorite person, but you still grow to care about him. The supporting characters were stand-out for me, especially Ozzie.
All in all, an engrossing and intriguing read.
The protagonist reminded me a bit of Michael Crawford from Powers's other novel 'The Stress of Her Regard': flawed, sometimes not your favorite person, but you still grow to care about him. The supporting characters were stand-out for me, especially Ozzie.
All in all, an engrossing and intriguing read.
kateofmind's review against another edition
5.0
"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." - Steven Wright
While finishing with The Stand, the climax of which takes place in a haunting, demonic ghost town version of Las Vegas, I had to struggle not to compare King's version of bad magic in Sin City to Tim Powers' in Last Call, one of my all-time favorite novels. And the comparison was totally unfair of me to make, because as far as I'm concerned, Tim Powers is the sine qua non of making the ordinary strange, and the strange ordinary, and nowhere has he to date done it better than in this bizarrely awesome novel, in which the archetypes of the Tarot meet the warty fat man in the famous Mandelbrot fractal and Bugsy Siegel was once the Fisher King of the American West.
And it all happens because of poker. Well, poker and a special kind of demented hunger for power, the latter satisfied in an exceedingly strange way by means of an extremely strange version of the former. As in a poker game played with an exceptionally powerful Tarot deck. If you get a full house in this game, you don't kill people a la Steven Wright, but you do risk losing your immortal soul, or at least your body; you risk becoming a new host for an evil magician type who is doing his damndest not only to become the new Fisher King, but to stay king forever. Yowza.
Our hero is an aging beery bum of a semi-professional poker player, adopted by a poker legend as a young child after being deposited, Moses-like, in a trailered boat by a doomed mother frantic to escape her terrifying husband. Scott "Scarecrow" Crane is literally and physically scarred by this barely-remembered childhood trauma even before he is manipulated into joining a certain game played with a certain deck under the aegis of a certain mysteriously powerful someone who has been desperately seeking a way to become a metaphysical parent since he was thwarted in being a real one...
The dual nature of the relationship between our man Crane and the evil magician Georges Leon is the first of many neat parallels with the dual Fisher King/Wounded King motif in Arthurian legend, and is just one of the many delights awaiting the literary nerd, the student of nature and human nature, the math and probability geek, the gambling aficionado, the archetypal psychology fan. Powers' magical system, developed here and revisited in later semi-sequels/sidequels (Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather now marketed after the fact with Last Call as a trilogy called "Fault Lines") is the most compellingly believable I've ever encountered, logical and thoroughly imagined and plausible to the point where to this day if I happen to see peoplebplaying cards, I catch myself watching how cigarette smoke billows across the table or levels in drinks tilt or don't tilt, as clues to how the game is going, what the stakes might be, who is going to win -- and how all of this might somehow predict the future. And we won't even talk about what I think of a certain mathematical set, which gives me the creeps to this day.
And oh, the characters. Especially the villains, of whom there are many, in a stunning variety. Al Funo, the social maladroit who thinks he's some kind of major smooth operator, whom Powers imbues with stunning creepiness, banal phrase by banal phrase. Ray-Joe Pogue, resplendent in Elvis gear (hey, this is Vegas, baby) and the Amino Acids (who else but Tim Powers could make a bunch of guys in El Caminos scary?). Vaughan Trumbill, the illustrated fat man with the world's weirdest case of Renfield syndrome.* Dondi Snayheever, raised in a series of Skinner boxes to become the world's greatest poker player, abused into becoming a demented psychic dowsing rod instead. And then there's the bad king, Georges Leon himself, tapped into all of the godlike power this archetypal kingship offers, using it only to prolong his life and keep swapping.
What really sells this novel, though, is the magic, rendered by Powers as a precise set of analogy and correspondence between will and result. It's consistent, powerful and, unlike what we usually see in the urban fantasy genre (I've argued elsewhere that Powers was writing urban fantasy before urban fantasy was a thing), contemporary, even as it also hooks into the good old Jungian archetypes represented by the Tarot and Arthurian legend. These are not people adhering to the rituals and rites found in some dusty 500 year old spell book; there is creativity and cleverness in what they do as a result of observing and learning and, OMG, thinking for themselves. No wise old man is handing out quests here. Hooray!
Since I last read this book, I got to visit Hoover Dam, where one of the climactic scenes of the novel takes place (just before Holy Week, yet, which is next week as I dictate these lines). So of course I shivered, looking out at Lake Mead and wondering if maybe Bugsy Siegel's head wasn't down in the depths somewhere. I watched the other visitors for telltale herky-jerky movements. I prayed I wouldn't see an Elvis. Even though I knew Diana had tamed the water.
Happy Easter, everybody!
I swear all of that will make sense if you read the book. All of that and more.
*There's an illustration by the brilliant J.T. Potter of him as the Mandelbrot Man in the deluxe hardcover edition that will scare the crap out of you.
While finishing with The Stand, the climax of which takes place in a haunting, demonic ghost town version of Las Vegas, I had to struggle not to compare King's version of bad magic in Sin City to Tim Powers' in Last Call, one of my all-time favorite novels. And the comparison was totally unfair of me to make, because as far as I'm concerned, Tim Powers is the sine qua non of making the ordinary strange, and the strange ordinary, and nowhere has he to date done it better than in this bizarrely awesome novel, in which the archetypes of the Tarot meet the warty fat man in the famous Mandelbrot fractal and Bugsy Siegel was once the Fisher King of the American West.
And it all happens because of poker. Well, poker and a special kind of demented hunger for power, the latter satisfied in an exceedingly strange way by means of an extremely strange version of the former. As in a poker game played with an exceptionally powerful Tarot deck. If you get a full house in this game, you don't kill people a la Steven Wright, but you do risk losing your immortal soul, or at least your body; you risk becoming a new host for an evil magician type who is doing his damndest not only to become the new Fisher King, but to stay king forever. Yowza.
Our hero is an aging beery bum of a semi-professional poker player, adopted by a poker legend as a young child after being deposited, Moses-like, in a trailered boat by a doomed mother frantic to escape her terrifying husband. Scott "Scarecrow" Crane is literally and physically scarred by this barely-remembered childhood trauma even before he is manipulated into joining a certain game played with a certain deck under the aegis of a certain mysteriously powerful someone who has been desperately seeking a way to become a metaphysical parent since he was thwarted in being a real one...
The dual nature of the relationship between our man Crane and the evil magician Georges Leon is the first of many neat parallels with the dual Fisher King/Wounded King motif in Arthurian legend, and is just one of the many delights awaiting the literary nerd, the student of nature and human nature, the math and probability geek, the gambling aficionado, the archetypal psychology fan. Powers' magical system, developed here and revisited in later semi-sequels/sidequels (Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather now marketed after the fact with Last Call as a trilogy called "Fault Lines") is the most compellingly believable I've ever encountered, logical and thoroughly imagined and plausible to the point where to this day if I happen to see peoplebplaying cards, I catch myself watching how cigarette smoke billows across the table or levels in drinks tilt or don't tilt, as clues to how the game is going, what the stakes might be, who is going to win -- and how all of this might somehow predict the future. And we won't even talk about what I think of a certain mathematical set, which gives me the creeps to this day.
And oh, the characters. Especially the villains, of whom there are many, in a stunning variety. Al Funo, the social maladroit who thinks he's some kind of major smooth operator, whom Powers imbues with stunning creepiness, banal phrase by banal phrase. Ray-Joe Pogue, resplendent in Elvis gear (hey, this is Vegas, baby) and the Amino Acids (who else but Tim Powers could make a bunch of guys in El Caminos scary?). Vaughan Trumbill, the illustrated fat man with the world's weirdest case of Renfield syndrome.* Dondi Snayheever, raised in a series of Skinner boxes to become the world's greatest poker player, abused into becoming a demented psychic dowsing rod instead. And then there's the bad king, Georges Leon himself, tapped into all of the godlike power this archetypal kingship offers, using it only to prolong his life and keep swapping.
What really sells this novel, though, is the magic, rendered by Powers as a precise set of analogy and correspondence between will and result. It's consistent, powerful and, unlike what we usually see in the urban fantasy genre (I've argued elsewhere that Powers was writing urban fantasy before urban fantasy was a thing), contemporary, even as it also hooks into the good old Jungian archetypes represented by the Tarot and Arthurian legend. These are not people adhering to the rituals and rites found in some dusty 500 year old spell book; there is creativity and cleverness in what they do as a result of observing and learning and, OMG, thinking for themselves. No wise old man is handing out quests here. Hooray!
Since I last read this book, I got to visit Hoover Dam, where one of the climactic scenes of the novel takes place (just before Holy Week, yet, which is next week as I dictate these lines). So of course I shivered, looking out at Lake Mead and wondering if maybe Bugsy Siegel's head wasn't down in the depths somewhere. I watched the other visitors for telltale herky-jerky movements. I prayed I wouldn't see an Elvis. Even though I knew Diana had tamed the water.
Happy Easter, everybody!
I swear all of that will make sense if you read the book. All of that and more.
*There's an illustration by the brilliant J.T. Potter of him as the Mandelbrot Man in the deluxe hardcover edition that will scare the crap out of you.
wealhtheow's review against another edition
4.0
Twenty years ago, the main character lost his soul in a game of cards. To prevent his foster sister from suffering as well, he enters into a battle for godlike power—literally. He and many others race across the country trying to become the new embodiment of the legendary personas that guide humanity unseen. The writing is taut and the pacing is great; the detailed descriptions and various characters’ introspection serve the plot rather than hinder it. The basis for the novel is twisty and complicated, yet at its heart very believable. This is modern fantasy at its best.
riduidel's review against another edition
3.0
Une histoire complexe mettant en scène une famille recomposée de joueurs de poker, aux prises avec un jeu pouvant leur arracher l'âme. C'est bien écrit, et ça me rappelé par certains aspects Dirk Gently et ses histoires bizarres.