Tarot
As someone who reads tarot cards professionally, I was excited about Tarot, a YA novel about a young woman named Anna locked in a Tower in the Land of Pentacles who escapes and flees to the Land of Cups. Alas, this book fails as an allegory, because it casts certain elements of Tarot in a villainous light in a way that is inconsistent with the actual nature of the deck.
It fails even more so as a novel. The characters have no personality and are painted in the broadest of strokes. The plot drags on and on as the denzions of the Land of Cups frolic about. I made it about a third of the way through and gave up. I did peek at the ending, and…
the problems of the characters are suddenly and magically solved by new characters who suddenly appear a few pages prior to the book’s ending to fix everything.
A lot of allegorical works forget that in order to work as allegories, they also have to work as novels (or in whatever medium they are expressed). My problem with this book was the flatness of everything. Anna is Perfect. The King is Very Bad. The people in Cups are Nice. This book needed an infusion of the Witch from Into the Woods, who famously sings, “You’re so nice! You’re not good, you’re not bad, you’re just nice!” Any level of nuance or texture or suspenseful pacing would have helped. This book is not good as a novel and (since I disagree with it’s portrayal of certain characters from tarot) it’s not good as an allegory. I finally had to throw up my hands in despair and move on.
For a Holistic Tarot consultation, you can contact CarrieS at sessarego1@gmail.com!
– Carrie S
Her fate is so much more than the cards she was dealt.
Born of a forbidden union between the Queen and the tyrannical King’s archnemesis, Anna is forced to live out her days isolated in the Tower, with only her mentors and friends the Hermit, the Fool, and the Magician to keep her company. To pass the time, Anna imagines unique worlds populated by creatives and dreamers–the exact opposite of the King’s land of fixed fates and rigid rules–and weaves them into four glorious tapestries.
But on the eve of her sixteenth birthday and her promised release from the Tower, Anna discovers her true lineage: She’s the daughter of Marco, a powerful magician, and the King is worried that his magical gifts are starting to surface in Anna. Fearing for her life, Anna flees the Tower and finds herself in Cups, a lush, tropical land full of all the adventure, free-spiritedness, and creativity she imagined while weaving.
Anna thinks she’s found paradise in this world of beachside parties, endless food and drink, and exhilarating romance. But when the fabric of Cups begins to unravel, Anna discovers that her tapestries are more than just forbidden expression. They’re the foundation for a new world that she is destined to create–as long as the terrors from the old world don’t catch up with her first.
Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult
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