Subject: Tim Powers: The Last Call

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 92 00:39:04 GMT

"The Last Call" is a great improvement over the other books Tim Powers
has written since "The Anubis Gates".  Really, it resembles nothing
so much as a more ambitious "Drawing of the Dark."  In this case, the
book revolves not around beer, but around one of the other foundations
of western civilization, poker.  At least, poker as a use of cards,
cards as a manifestation of the tarot, and the tarot as a set of guide-
posts to underlying archetypes.

Cutting out the intermediate steps, we are left with a greatly updated
version of the Fisher King, who rules Las Vegas, and uses a poker deck
to maintain his throne.

Two decades earlier, professional poker player Scott Crane made the serious
mistake of getting into a game with the King, and now his only hope of
survival lies in somehow taking over that throne.  As in DotD, the
power which this throne represents draws other aspirants the way blood
in water draws sharks.

Maintaining the playfulness of "The Drawing of the Dark" without 
sacrificing the added depths which have characterized his more recent
works is quite a balancing act, but Powers pulls it off.  I enjoyed
DotD more, but "The Last Call" is the better book.

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope