Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Collins (1993), Paperback
Description
Fantasy. Fiction. HTML: Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player twenty years ago and hasn't returned to Las Vegas, or held a hand of cards, in ten years. But troubling nightmares about a strange poker game he once attended on a houseboat on Lake Mead are drawing him back to the magical city. For the mythic game he believed he won did not end that night in 1969�??and the price of his winnings was his soul. Now, a pot far more strange and perilous than he ever could imagine depends on the turning of a card. Enchantingly dark and compellingly real, this World Fantasy Award�??winning novel is a masterpiece of magic realism set in the gritty, dazzling underworld known as Las Vegas
User reviews
LibraryThing member dukedom_enough
Ah, now this is the[[Tim Powers]] novel I needed to read. Reputed to be one of his best, 1992's [Last Call] follows his usual practice of building intriguing secret histories by mixing bits of actual history with the fantastic. Here, history and fantasy meet in Las Vegas, that strange kingdom in
The most important bit of real history in the book is the story of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the gangster who began Las Vegas's journey to becoming a gambling paradise. History tells us that Siegel was gunned down in his girlfriend's house on June 20, 1947, by unknown persons. In [Last Call], we learn that Siegel was the Fisher King, ruling over this arid land, and that his killer, one Georges Leon, went on to replace him as Vegas's secret master.
In the Fisher King story, the King has an injury which hinders his ability to rule, and which is reflected in a sickness in the land. The lurid towerscape of modern Las Vegas, gulping water unsustainably, drawing people who desperately game away their savings and the precious energies of their lives, provides Powers's main setting, and an emblem of its ruler's sickness, a sickness derived from Leon's selfish quest for a terrible immortality.
It seems that games of chance link our ordered, daylight world with the chaotic depths of the human subconscious. In those depths swim the great archetypes that rule our selves and our actions. Leon learns to use card games, played not with the standard 52-card deck but with the larger Tarot deck, to steal his opponents' bodies. He can replace their personalities with his own, possessing several at one time, switching his consciousness between them, acquiring younger ones as the current ones age. Only once in 20 years can he play the great game that enables this theft. There, several opponents become marked, slated to be dispossessed of their bodies after the subsequent game, 20 years in the future.
In 1948, Leon tries to short-circuit the process, to capture the body of his five year old son, Scotty. Leon's wife sacrifices her life to get Scotty away from his father, and the boy ends up with a caring, adoptive father, Ozzie, who teaches him to become a superb poker player. In 1969, Scotty defies Ozzie, plays in a game which turns out to be Leon's, and is marked for assimilation in two decades. In 1990, the heart-attack death of his wife, the need to earn more poker money, and increasing attention from Leon's agents bring Scotty Crane, as he's now known, back into his father's kingdom. He must find some way to escape his doom.
The story belongs almost as much to Ozzie's second adopted child, Diana, as to Scotty. Diana's mother was the hidden Queen of Las Vegas, murdered by Leon's agents, for this King will brook no Queen at his side. As the Queen's daughter, Diana is also a murder target, facing attacks against herself and her young sons. As Diana's mother was, in this world, Isis, so Diana's story adds the Osiris and Isis myth to the novel. Tarot lore is relevant throughout. Also hitting Vegas are various other characters who also understand the powers in play, seeking the King's or Queen's seats for themselves, serving as Leon's criminal henchmen, or looking for some sort of rescue or shelter. Chaos theory and the Mandelbrot set make appearances. And the gods and goddesses of the great archetypes are most intent on what may happen.
Despite the many elements in play, Powers maintains a thriller's pace. The several crucial card games are suspenseful, vividly recounted, and easy to follow. The foundational stories of myth are well-integrated and brought up to date. For example, when Scotty's desperate mother, chased by Leon, must give her child to the world, she puts him in a boat, which sits on a car trailer, bound out into the desert - there being no reed baskets or streams available.
Powers takes time for humor, too. Here, Scotty is seeking a copy of Leon's preternaturally dire Lombardy Zeroth Tarot deck. He phones a specialist bookseller, who says none can be found:
"Bullshit," said Crane. "I've seen two different complete decks, one in 1948 and one in 1969. And I've talked to the man who painted one of them."
There was a long silence from the other end of the line. Finally the man said, quietly, "Was he all right?"
"Well, he was blind." Crane was silent now for a few seconds. "He, uh, cut out his eyes twenty years ago."
"Did he indeed. And you've seen the cards, a full deck. Are you all right."
(...)
"No"
"Trust me," said the voice on the telephone, "it won't help you to look at those things again. Absorb yourself with crossword puzzles and daytime soap operas. Actually, obtaining a lobotomy might be your wisest course."
There are sequels, but the book stands alone perfectly well, with a satisfying conclusion.
Show More
the desert, built on hopes for the supernatural in the form of luck at gambling.The most important bit of real history in the book is the story of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the gangster who began Las Vegas's journey to becoming a gambling paradise. History tells us that Siegel was gunned down in his girlfriend's house on June 20, 1947, by unknown persons. In [Last Call], we learn that Siegel was the Fisher King, ruling over this arid land, and that his killer, one Georges Leon, went on to replace him as Vegas's secret master.
In the Fisher King story, the King has an injury which hinders his ability to rule, and which is reflected in a sickness in the land. The lurid towerscape of modern Las Vegas, gulping water unsustainably, drawing people who desperately game away their savings and the precious energies of their lives, provides Powers's main setting, and an emblem of its ruler's sickness, a sickness derived from Leon's selfish quest for a terrible immortality.
It seems that games of chance link our ordered, daylight world with the chaotic depths of the human subconscious. In those depths swim the great archetypes that rule our selves and our actions. Leon learns to use card games, played not with the standard 52-card deck but with the larger Tarot deck, to steal his opponents' bodies. He can replace their personalities with his own, possessing several at one time, switching his consciousness between them, acquiring younger ones as the current ones age. Only once in 20 years can he play the great game that enables this theft. There, several opponents become marked, slated to be dispossessed of their bodies after the subsequent game, 20 years in the future.
In 1948, Leon tries to short-circuit the process, to capture the body of his five year old son, Scotty. Leon's wife sacrifices her life to get Scotty away from his father, and the boy ends up with a caring, adoptive father, Ozzie, who teaches him to become a superb poker player. In 1969, Scotty defies Ozzie, plays in a game which turns out to be Leon's, and is marked for assimilation in two decades. In 1990, the heart-attack death of his wife, the need to earn more poker money, and increasing attention from Leon's agents bring Scotty Crane, as he's now known, back into his father's kingdom. He must find some way to escape his doom.
The story belongs almost as much to Ozzie's second adopted child, Diana, as to Scotty. Diana's mother was the hidden Queen of Las Vegas, murdered by Leon's agents, for this King will brook no Queen at his side. As the Queen's daughter, Diana is also a murder target, facing attacks against herself and her young sons. As Diana's mother was, in this world, Isis, so Diana's story adds the Osiris and Isis myth to the novel. Tarot lore is relevant throughout. Also hitting Vegas are various other characters who also understand the powers in play, seeking the King's or Queen's seats for themselves, serving as Leon's criminal henchmen, or looking for some sort of rescue or shelter. Chaos theory and the Mandelbrot set make appearances. And the gods and goddesses of the great archetypes are most intent on what may happen.
Despite the many elements in play, Powers maintains a thriller's pace. The several crucial card games are suspenseful, vividly recounted, and easy to follow. The foundational stories of myth are well-integrated and brought up to date. For example, when Scotty's desperate mother, chased by Leon, must give her child to the world, she puts him in a boat, which sits on a car trailer, bound out into the desert - there being no reed baskets or streams available.
Powers takes time for humor, too. Here, Scotty is seeking a copy of Leon's preternaturally dire Lombardy Zeroth Tarot deck. He phones a specialist bookseller, who says none can be found:
"Bullshit," said Crane. "I've seen two different complete decks, one in 1948 and one in 1969. And I've talked to the man who painted one of them."
There was a long silence from the other end of the line. Finally the man said, quietly, "Was he all right?"
"Well, he was blind." Crane was silent now for a few seconds. "He, uh, cut out his eyes twenty years ago."
"Did he indeed. And you've seen the cards, a full deck. Are you all right."
(...)
"No"
"Trust me," said the voice on the telephone, "it won't help you to look at those things again. Absorb yourself with crossword puzzles and daytime soap operas. Actually, obtaining a lobotomy might be your wisest course."
There are sequels, but the book stands alone perfectly well, with a satisfying conclusion.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SaintBrevity
Exquisite book by Tim Powers that blends together the Tarot, poker, semi-ancient mythology, and Las Vegas in ways that I thought not possible. Highly recommended, and especially recommended for those who think that fantasy is all pointy ears and chainmail bikinis.
LibraryThing member KateSherrod
"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
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
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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.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kd9
There are some classic science fiction and fantasy novels that don't hold up when when you read them years later. This is not one of them. Now that I have lived in Las Vegas for four years, the book is actually better since I know the places that are described here.
In one sense this novel is the
If you only read one Tim Powers book, read this one.
In one sense this novel is the
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oft told tale of the Fisher King. The old King fails and grows weaker, but tries for one more session on the throne he has stolen from his predecessor. But there are Jacks, possible kings in the making, just waiting for the King to make a mistake and take over the throne themselves. What makes this novel different and deeper is the solid reality of this magical story. The magic is a mixture of cigarette smoke, chaos theory, unlevel glasses, Tarot decks, body substitutions, and the Moon Goddess. Many of the tropes in Tim Powers more recent books are seen here; the Secret History, the power of alcohol and tobacco, the fringes of society that control primal forces. What makes it compelling are the characters of the old King, his son Scott Crane, Scott's foster father, Ozzie, and Scott's adopted sister, Diana.If you only read one Tim Powers book, read this one.
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LibraryThing member clfisha
It's a great idea;
There’s a cyclical battle to become The Fisher King, war waged by violence, gambling and magic. Souls are bought and sold, ghosts become real and the archetypes wait behind the tarot to give you power or drive you mad.
The problem is about half way through the paces starts
However did I mention the world? It's not spelt out in detail (which I love), its chaotic with a blend of religions and magic; tarot cards and ancient gods, chaos magicks and hidden royalty all blended in with the seedy side of crime. There are some great exciting action pieces, some wonderfully eccentric characters and Las Vegas makes a great backdrop.
So I do recommend it, it's worth reading for the idea and none of it's boring, just the end is slightly disappointing.
One for a long journey perhaps?
There’s a cyclical battle to become The Fisher King, war waged by violence, gambling and magic. Souls are bought and sold, ghosts become real and the archetypes wait behind the tarot to give you power or drive you mad.
The problem is about half way through the paces starts
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slowing a bit and by 3/4s the cracks in the plot are starting show. Although don't get me wrong it's still very readable but the direction the plot takes isn't as interesting as I thought it might be, partly because it needs a bit of tightening up but also its starts to get too pat: the ending is unsurprising and seems a bit forced.However did I mention the world? It's not spelt out in detail (which I love), its chaotic with a blend of religions and magic; tarot cards and ancient gods, chaos magicks and hidden royalty all blended in with the seedy side of crime. There are some great exciting action pieces, some wonderfully eccentric characters and Las Vegas makes a great backdrop.
So I do recommend it, it's worth reading for the idea and none of it's boring, just the end is slightly disappointing.
One for a long journey perhaps?
Show Less
LibraryThing member ben_a
This is by far the worst Tim Powers I have read. It is Powers, so there are vivid, hard to forget moments (the skinny man trying to get out, the inner dialog of Al Funo, etc). Alas, it is overall something of a mess. 1.15.07
LibraryThing member bespen
Last Call
by Tim Powers
Perennial 2003
$15.95; 535 pages
ISBN 038072846X
Last Call is one of my all time favorite books. I can return to this book again and again, and find something different in it each time. According to LibraryThing, the last time I read this book was in May of 2011, almost exactly
But I get ahead of myself. Tim Powers is a long time favorite author, and this was one of the first books of his I ever read. I am amazed that I persisted, because on first read, the book is bizarre. Who is the Fisher King? Why does Bugsy Siegel feature so prominently? Why does everyone keep quoting T. S. Eliot? What about the fractals and chaos theory? How does this all fit in with poker?
That very first reading, I was very, very confused. But I was also deeply intrigued. I immediately read the book again, and I tried to put the pieces together into a coherent whole. I didn't get there, but I started looking into the mythology of the Fisher King, and the historical events referenced in the book. I learned about the history of playing cards, and how they related to the Tarot. I tried to read The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.
That last proved too dense and esoteric even for me. But I persisted. Last Call is the first book of a trilogy by Tim Powers, and reading the other two books did actually help fill some of what is going on, but I think Last Call is by far the best of the three. I got quite a bit of help from the collected works of John J. Reilly, who while not a Tim Powers fan, was conversant with Jung, comparative mythology, and the Fisher King.
I learned that all of the things about Bugsy Siegel actually happened. When I first read Last Call, I wasn't familiar with Powers' secret history style of writing, but his fastidious research paid off in hooking me forever. I learned about the Arthurian legend of the wounded King who ate nothing but fish and represented the health of the land and its people, and how this figures into the legitimacy of the Emperor who rules the Earth. I learned of the way in which the Tarot cards had morphed into the playing cards we use today. Finally I understood why early Protestants were so opposed to card games. I was intrigued by the sacramental imagination of Powers, who made the Eucharist real to me.
Last Call is part of the reason I mostly read fiction. Many people otherwise like me mostly read non-fiction, but I find that I learn the most about the world from fiction. This is probably a function of the kind of fiction I read. And probably the kind of person I am. Last Call is also the reason I deeply distrust Tarot cards, and all forms of fortune-telling and gambling. It just isn't worth the risk.
Also, Las Vegas will never, ever be the same to me after reading this book. I've never really been the kind of person who enjoyed the spectacle and excess of Vegas, but now that I've seen Las Vegas as the fortress of a bad King and a shrine and sacrifice to the gods of chaos and randomness, I really don't like it. Which is unfair to the people who work and live there, but what has been read cannot now be un-read.
A nuclear weapon test from Las Vegas
A NUCLEAR WEAPON TEST FROM LAS VEGAS
Returning to where I started, this time through the aspect of the book that was foremost in my mind was Scott Crane and his fathers, both real and adoptive. Fatherhood: real, adoptive, and mystical, is central to Last Call. The King is in a sense a father to us all, and thus the character of the King matters in the same manner as a father's does. Powers sets this up in the prologue, where we meet five-year-old Scott on a fun outing with his real father. They eat breakfast at the Flamingo, and flatten pennies on the railroad tracks. Scott worships his father, as most five-year-olds do.
Cronus
CRONUS
Then we learn exactly what Georges is willing to do for power. What he has already done to Scott's older brother Richard. For just a moment, Georges finds his resolve wavering. To his own surprise, he actually loves his son. But he sets his face against his weakness, and proceeds.
Only the rebellion of Georges' wife saves Scott before Leon can consummate the ritual. Which Georges should have seen coming, because his life is an archetype. Scott is thus set up to displace his father in a re-enactment of mythology. The epilogue is a refrain of the prologue, and very bittersweet.
Sci-fi or fantasy novels that have mythological themes are not difficult to find. What makes Last Call remarkable is Powers' ability to make Georges Leon and Scott Crane seem like real people, while still instantiating a type. They seem real to me, rather than characters in a book. Each one, their loves and loss and failings, is like a person. That human verisimilitude is what balances out the craziness of a world where Tarot cards can kill you.
Powers has a fierce love of particular places, specifically Los Angeles and the areas nearby. Since I live across the Mojave desert from LA, and I have family there, I have driven across the Mojave more times than I would like to.
The highway was a straight line in the twilight, a tenuous line between the dark horizon so far ahead and the red horizon so far behind. The old Suburban barreled along steadily, squeaking and rocking but showing low temperature and a full tank of gas in the green radiance of its gauges. On either side of the highway the desert was pale sand, studded as far as the eye could see with widely spaced low markers that looked like, but couldn't have been, sprinkler heads.
This is exactly what the inhuman vastnesses of the Mojave feel like. I've been to LA and Vegas often enough to validate Powers' descriptions of them. Suspension of disbelief is a lot easier when you've been to all of the places in a book and find the descriptions spot-on. I imagine Tim and his wife Serena taking trips on the I-15 to get it just right.
I am a bit late this year, but I may make this a regular feature of my celebration of Easter. Much like Tolkien, and more inventively than Blish, Holy Week, the week of Passover and Easter, is at the center of the chronology of Last Call. This week represents an ending and a beginning, and certain things can only happen during this time. Classical allusions are one thing, but to interleave them with Christian sacraments and eschatology and make it look easy is quite another.
Tim Powers is the only author I know who can do all these things well. And Last Call is one of his best. Read it.
by Tim Powers
Perennial 2003
$15.95; 535 pages
ISBN 038072846X
Last Call is one of my all time favorite books. I can return to this book again and again, and find something different in it each time. According to LibraryThing, the last time I read this book was in May of 2011, almost exactly
Show More
six years ago. Which probably explains why I find the father/son relationships of the book so gripping now.But I get ahead of myself. Tim Powers is a long time favorite author, and this was one of the first books of his I ever read. I am amazed that I persisted, because on first read, the book is bizarre. Who is the Fisher King? Why does Bugsy Siegel feature so prominently? Why does everyone keep quoting T. S. Eliot? What about the fractals and chaos theory? How does this all fit in with poker?
That very first reading, I was very, very confused. But I was also deeply intrigued. I immediately read the book again, and I tried to put the pieces together into a coherent whole. I didn't get there, but I started looking into the mythology of the Fisher King, and the historical events referenced in the book. I learned about the history of playing cards, and how they related to the Tarot. I tried to read The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.
That last proved too dense and esoteric even for me. But I persisted. Last Call is the first book of a trilogy by Tim Powers, and reading the other two books did actually help fill some of what is going on, but I think Last Call is by far the best of the three. I got quite a bit of help from the collected works of John J. Reilly, who while not a Tim Powers fan, was conversant with Jung, comparative mythology, and the Fisher King.
I learned that all of the things about Bugsy Siegel actually happened. When I first read Last Call, I wasn't familiar with Powers' secret history style of writing, but his fastidious research paid off in hooking me forever. I learned about the Arthurian legend of the wounded King who ate nothing but fish and represented the health of the land and its people, and how this figures into the legitimacy of the Emperor who rules the Earth. I learned of the way in which the Tarot cards had morphed into the playing cards we use today. Finally I understood why early Protestants were so opposed to card games. I was intrigued by the sacramental imagination of Powers, who made the Eucharist real to me.
Last Call is part of the reason I mostly read fiction. Many people otherwise like me mostly read non-fiction, but I find that I learn the most about the world from fiction. This is probably a function of the kind of fiction I read. And probably the kind of person I am. Last Call is also the reason I deeply distrust Tarot cards, and all forms of fortune-telling and gambling. It just isn't worth the risk.
Also, Las Vegas will never, ever be the same to me after reading this book. I've never really been the kind of person who enjoyed the spectacle and excess of Vegas, but now that I've seen Las Vegas as the fortress of a bad King and a shrine and sacrifice to the gods of chaos and randomness, I really don't like it. Which is unfair to the people who work and live there, but what has been read cannot now be un-read.
A nuclear weapon test from Las Vegas
A NUCLEAR WEAPON TEST FROM LAS VEGAS
Returning to where I started, this time through the aspect of the book that was foremost in my mind was Scott Crane and his fathers, both real and adoptive. Fatherhood: real, adoptive, and mystical, is central to Last Call. The King is in a sense a father to us all, and thus the character of the King matters in the same manner as a father's does. Powers sets this up in the prologue, where we meet five-year-old Scott on a fun outing with his real father. They eat breakfast at the Flamingo, and flatten pennies on the railroad tracks. Scott worships his father, as most five-year-olds do.
Cronus
CRONUS
Then we learn exactly what Georges is willing to do for power. What he has already done to Scott's older brother Richard. For just a moment, Georges finds his resolve wavering. To his own surprise, he actually loves his son. But he sets his face against his weakness, and proceeds.
Only the rebellion of Georges' wife saves Scott before Leon can consummate the ritual. Which Georges should have seen coming, because his life is an archetype. Scott is thus set up to displace his father in a re-enactment of mythology. The epilogue is a refrain of the prologue, and very bittersweet.
Sci-fi or fantasy novels that have mythological themes are not difficult to find. What makes Last Call remarkable is Powers' ability to make Georges Leon and Scott Crane seem like real people, while still instantiating a type. They seem real to me, rather than characters in a book. Each one, their loves and loss and failings, is like a person. That human verisimilitude is what balances out the craziness of a world where Tarot cards can kill you.
Powers has a fierce love of particular places, specifically Los Angeles and the areas nearby. Since I live across the Mojave desert from LA, and I have family there, I have driven across the Mojave more times than I would like to.
The highway was a straight line in the twilight, a tenuous line between the dark horizon so far ahead and the red horizon so far behind. The old Suburban barreled along steadily, squeaking and rocking but showing low temperature and a full tank of gas in the green radiance of its gauges. On either side of the highway the desert was pale sand, studded as far as the eye could see with widely spaced low markers that looked like, but couldn't have been, sprinkler heads.
This is exactly what the inhuman vastnesses of the Mojave feel like. I've been to LA and Vegas often enough to validate Powers' descriptions of them. Suspension of disbelief is a lot easier when you've been to all of the places in a book and find the descriptions spot-on. I imagine Tim and his wife Serena taking trips on the I-15 to get it just right.
I am a bit late this year, but I may make this a regular feature of my celebration of Easter. Much like Tolkien, and more inventively than Blish, Holy Week, the week of Passover and Easter, is at the center of the chronology of Last Call. This week represents an ending and a beginning, and certain things can only happen during this time. Classical allusions are one thing, but to interleave them with Christian sacraments and eschatology and make it look easy is quite another.
Tim Powers is the only author I know who can do all these things well. And Last Call is one of his best. Read it.
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LibraryThing member delphica
Urban fantasy, set in Las Vegas, where a grittier, American-style version of the Fisher King legend is playing out, driven by the mechanisms of the tarot, which of course is being fueled by the amount of card play going on at any given moment. The whole thing is framed as a poker game, but I
This is the kind of fantasy book where a goodly number of the characters start off with complete knowledge of all the magic and the rules and have a good grasp of what's going on right out of the gate. I always find something slightly unsatisfying about this, as a fairly pragmatic person myself, it always helps when characters need to be convinced so that I can be convinced by proxy.
Lately I've been finding that books written in the early 90s make the oddest impression on me because they seem both modern, and at the same time, positively in the Dark Ages because they're just a little before that technology crest that brought the internet and cell phones to the masses.
Grade: B
Recommended: This reminded me of things like American Gods and even a little of The Stand (but you know, shorter), and I think it has a similar appeal.
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confess that I'm bad enough at following normal poker and thus didn't try very hard to parse out the mystical poker so I can't speak to how convincing that aspect is.This is the kind of fantasy book where a goodly number of the characters start off with complete knowledge of all the magic and the rules and have a good grasp of what's going on right out of the gate. I always find something slightly unsatisfying about this, as a fairly pragmatic person myself, it always helps when characters need to be convinced so that I can be convinced by proxy.
Lately I've been finding that books written in the early 90s make the oddest impression on me because they seem both modern, and at the same time, positively in the Dark Ages because they're just a little before that technology crest that brought the internet and cell phones to the masses.
Grade: B
Recommended: This reminded me of things like American Gods and even a little of The Stand (but you know, shorter), and I think it has a similar appeal.
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LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
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
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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. Show Less
LibraryThing member PamelaDLloyd
It had been many years since I read this book, so all I really remembered going in was that it involved poker, superstitions, and California. Of course, as this is a book by Tim Powers, it was far more complex than that. I love Powers' ability to weave seemingly diverse concepts into a whole, and
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the way his stories make sense, if one can only bend one's mind into a pretzel. I also love the many literary references, although I'm sure I caught only the top of the iceberg.This book was crazy, wild, anxiety producing, and a whole lot of fun. Go read it. Show Less
LibraryThing member heidilove
One of my favorite books ever. A fantastic exploration of the Aurthurian myth translated into modern times, but no knowledge of Arthur required to love and appreciate this work.
LibraryThing member flutterbyjitters
good book. especially if you like fantasy. i recommend other tim powers books as well...
LibraryThing member timjones
Tim Powers writes fantasy. Here’s what his fantasy doesn’t have: elves, orcs, trolls, dwarves, wizards (well, OK, it has some magicians sometimes), maps of imaginary countries, thick heroes to whom everything endlessly has to be explained.
Tim Powers writes alternate history, but the ‘what
Start on a Tim Powers book, and you’re quickly thrust into a paranoid world in which nothing is an accident. As a professional gambler, Scott Crane is fairly susceptible to that point of view in any case, and things are getting worse, because he sold his soul nearly twenty-one years ago, and now the buyer is preparing to collect.
The plot’s a roller-coaster ride which is well worth the price of admission, and in a few chapters, if you’re like me, Powers will have you taking for granted the most improbable things. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Tim Powers writes alternate history, but the ‘what
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ifs’ in Tim Powers novels are fantasy ‘what ifs’ rather than science-fictional ‘what ifs’: not ‘what if the Spanish Armada had conquered England’ but ‘what if the Egyptian gods were real and still out there, held at bay by the Christian God, and what if there was a powerful sect of sorcerers dedicated to bringing them back’? That was The Anubis Gates. In Last Call, the premise is simpler: what if Tarot Cards really do have power, and ordinary playing cards have a corrupted, cut-down version of that power? And what would that mean if you lived in Las Vegas?Start on a Tim Powers book, and you’re quickly thrust into a paranoid world in which nothing is an accident. As a professional gambler, Scott Crane is fairly susceptible to that point of view in any case, and things are getting worse, because he sold his soul nearly twenty-one years ago, and now the buyer is preparing to collect.
The plot’s a roller-coaster ride which is well worth the price of admission, and in a few chapters, if you’re like me, Powers will have you taking for granted the most improbable things. Sit back and enjoy the ride.
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LibraryThing member tanenbaum
This is the book that I give friends when I want them to be exposed to Tim Powers, and it hasn't failed me yet. Like most of Powers' work, it posits a "secret" or alternate version of the world, one where poker cards can determine your fate and a Las Vegas mobster can be the Fisher King. But it's
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also a narrative about family-the wounds of childhood (emotional and physical), the trials of love, and ways the past can haunt you. With compelling and rich characters, an engrossing and intricate mythology, and a fast-paced plot, this is one of my favorite books, re-read regularly. Show Less
LibraryThing member icarusgeoff
I'm a big fan of [author: Tim Powers]. He has this strange ability to take bizarre and disparate elements and weave them together into a cohesive and engaging story. This particular example of his work involves (among other things) poker, chaos theory, Jungian archetypes, Tarot, and The Fisher
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King. These things seem to have little or no relation to each other, but it all works, and it does so brilliantly. The best thing he's written, in my opinion. Show Less
LibraryThing member iayork
Myth meets the Mundane: This book is definitely not for everybody. The story places a battle of mythic proportions (literally) on the tawdry streets of Las Vegas. I got a big kick our of the way Powers combined the banal with the mystic (e.g., in one scene, two characters find a location in Vegas
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by shaking silver dollars in an empty vanilla wafers box, and seeing if they turn up heads). The dialog has the tough-guy quality of a roman noir, but they are discussing tarot cards and moon goddesses. If you like that kind of thing, then you will probably enjoy this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member NatalieSW
This book was fantastic. I was listening to it on Audible, and I found myself sitting in a chair for over an hour at a time doing nothing but listening to it. Really fascinating take on tarot and playing cards, mind control, psychic links, and the like. I got the book on Kindle to read it
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physically the next time around, and bought the next two books in the trilogy as well. Show Less
LibraryThing member Anome
Probably Powers' best novel. A blend of magic, poker, and chaos theory set in Las Vegas. The usual Powers suspects are here: The Grail, body swapping magicians, and Egyptian mythology, but with a new spin on them.
Powers tried to unify this with his next novel, the vastly inferior Expiration Date in
Powers tried to unify this with his next novel, the vastly inferior Expiration Date in
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the novel after that Earthquake Weather, but neither of these quite lived up to the promise of Last Call. It wasn't until Declare that we got to see Powers back on form. Show Less
LibraryThing member pgmcc
This is the first in a series of three books, the others being, "Expiration Date" and "Earthquake Weather". I don't know where the second and third books go, but I will get around to them eventually.
"Last Call" was entertaining and intriguing enough to keep me interested to the end. It involves
Powers created good characters, put them in realistic emotional situations, and portrayed their actions well in those situations, albeit with a backdrop of magical kings, queens and godesses.
Much play was made of the magical powers of chance and the concentration of the related forces in Las Vegas where chance is the focus of the towns existence.
Apart from the magic and supernatural activities, "Last Call" is an action thriller with poker playing. A bit like Gandalf meets the Cincinati Kid.
"Last Call" was entertaining and intriguing enough to keep me interested to the end. It involves
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poker playing and a magical power struggle that takes place in the contemporary (as of when it was written-1992) world of Las Vegas.Powers created good characters, put them in realistic emotional situations, and portrayed their actions well in those situations, albeit with a backdrop of magical kings, queens and godesses.
Much play was made of the magical powers of chance and the concentration of the related forces in Las Vegas where chance is the focus of the towns existence.
Apart from the magic and supernatural activities, "Last Call" is an action thriller with poker playing. A bit like Gandalf meets the Cincinati Kid.
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LibraryThing member NovaStalker
Very weird but very enjoyable.
LibraryThing member LastCall
One of my all time favorites and Powers best. There is so much going on in the book that it not only begs but demands to be re-read. One of the great all time fantasy novels.
LibraryThing member williemeikle
My first read of 2017 straddled the old and new year, which is pretty apt for a tale of the death of an old king and the ascension of a new one.
LAST CALL is a dazzling jewel of a book. Powers pulls out all of his vast array of literary tricks, and not for the first time drags his Jungian archetypes
In this one we get Fisher Kings, blasted lands, fools and knaves, queens and one eyed jacks, all vying for control of the Kingdom and the power that comes with the role of the new King in a plot centered around the casinos of Las Vegas and the surrounding area.
So there's that, but there's also an almost noir feel to the book, like Raymond Chandler filtered through the eyes of a burned out poker player ready to cash in his chips for the last time.
As ever with Powers there's wonderful characterization, tremendous set pieces, wild flights of fancy, and lyrical flourishes of brilliance.
This one won the World Fantasy Award in 1993 and fully deserves every plaudit thrown at it. It hasn't dated either - you can still feel the desperation and despair in those Vegas casinos, and still see the lost and fractured people chasing their places in the Kingdom.
The old King wants to be reborn in a new body at the start of a new cycle, and will stop at nothing to avoid slipping away into the waiting dark. But the throne comes at a price, one that many others are also willing to pay. There's a game being played, a high stakes one, and Powers makes sure the tension is ratcheted up all the way to the final hand.
It's a great, great novel, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone with a taste for dark tinged, modern Arthurian Fantasy.
LAST CALL is a dazzling jewel of a book. Powers pulls out all of his vast array of literary tricks, and not for the first time drags his Jungian archetypes
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to center stage to show off for him.In this one we get Fisher Kings, blasted lands, fools and knaves, queens and one eyed jacks, all vying for control of the Kingdom and the power that comes with the role of the new King in a plot centered around the casinos of Las Vegas and the surrounding area.
So there's that, but there's also an almost noir feel to the book, like Raymond Chandler filtered through the eyes of a burned out poker player ready to cash in his chips for the last time.
As ever with Powers there's wonderful characterization, tremendous set pieces, wild flights of fancy, and lyrical flourishes of brilliance.
This one won the World Fantasy Award in 1993 and fully deserves every plaudit thrown at it. It hasn't dated either - you can still feel the desperation and despair in those Vegas casinos, and still see the lost and fractured people chasing their places in the Kingdom.
The old King wants to be reborn in a new body at the start of a new cycle, and will stop at nothing to avoid slipping away into the waiting dark. But the throne comes at a price, one that many others are also willing to pay. There's a game being played, a high stakes one, and Powers makes sure the tension is ratcheted up all the way to the final hand.
It's a great, great novel, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone with a taste for dark tinged, modern Arthurian Fantasy.
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LibraryThing member quondame
This book is compelling and, for me, difficult. Neither understanding or liking card games, I have to accept Powers statements at least within the world of this novel, and it is a strange, dangerous, and fascinating world. His characters aren't innately attractive, rather the reverse, but he wields
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them to collective and individual ends that suit them and the structure of a fantasy quest. Show Less
LibraryThing member unsquare
This was one of those rare page-turners... after a certain point I just could not put it down, which is why I started in on the second half of the book around midnight tonight and am just now finishing at 6am. This is a book firing on all cylinders - pitch-perfect characterization, a deep and
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involving mythology, suspense, thrills, and incredible high stakes. Highly recommended, even to people who don't understand poker (like myself). Show Less
LibraryThing member RandyStafford
My reactions to reading this in 2002. Spoilers follow.
This is the first in a trilogy consisting of Last Call, Expiration Date, and Earthquake Weather. There are few obvious links between the first two novels. Neal Obstadt shows up in both books as sort of an occult underworld figure. In Expiration
Here Powers' blends the history and present of Las Vegas, chaos physics, Arthurian lore, the legend of the Fisher King, pagan myth, gambling, and Tarot lore to produce a compelling plot. On one level, the plot is similar to Expiration Date: a bunch of people engage in violent machinations to attain power or persons who represents great power. That pursued person or person has to take steps to save their life and extricate themselves from danger. The specifics: protagonist Scott Crane is pursued by the soul of his father so his father can possess Crane's soul, which he won in a game of Assumption (a peculiar card game played with a Tarot deck where hands are "married" and "conceived") and others seek to kill him because they suspect he will try to replace the current Fisher King, his father. Here Scott's adopted sister, Diana, is also pursued.
Last Call, though, is a grimmer book; it's characters more desperate, its plot more violent. Scott's adopted father, Ozzie, dies. Indeed, death and onstage violence is more integral to this plot than that of Expiration Date. The book opens with Scott's biological father trying to prepare his body as a repository for his consciousness (as his brother has already been used) and relates how he's wounded "in the thigh" by his wife and how he's killed the old Fisher King, Bugsy Siegel, founder of Las Vegas. (Here a Perilous Castle in a wasteland and a nexus for the gods of randomness and chance.) Human sacrifice is even an integral part of the heroes as well as the villains. (The gods, it seems, are probably not satisfied with the fake sacrifices of mannequins in Doom Town, the atomic bomb testing site outside of town). Each must kill, or facilitate, the death of someone to achieve their ends. (And Powers does a nice job showing how reluctant Scott, Mavranos, and Ozzie are to shed blood.)
Each book has relatively short sections of dialogue (though some of the short exchanges in Last Call, where various people suggest to Scott that he'd just be better off killing himself before father Georges Leon assumes his body, are pretty creepy and memorable). In both cases, the dialogue is sometimes built around literary works -- Lewis Carroll's Alice books in Expiration Date and T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land", Tennyson's "Idyls of the King", and Ben Jonson's Volpone, amongst others (as well as several popular songs from the Andrew Sisters to the Eagles) in Last Call. As to desperation, Scott Crane is out to save his soul and body (bodyswitching, a prime thematic preoccupation of Powers); Diana Crane must save her children; Mavranos (one of my very favorite characters -- I was very glad he was cured of his cancer) seeks a cure for his illness. It is that increased level of violence and desperation and the presentation of the literal Vegas and its mythic underpinnings (including the giant statues outside of the casinos representing archetypes come to life and threatening Diana Crane and Bernardette Dinh) which make this book more resonant and effective than the still good Expiration Date.
However, I think the presence of poker and the Tarota is what really makes this book more memorable. English, particularly American English, is full of idioms derived from poker. Tarot cards are fascinating, even to a non-mystic like me, for their relation to regular playing cards and their fascinating, often macabre pictures standing in for various elements of the human experience, their combination a colorful, allegedly prophetic version of solitaire. I suspect most of the details Powers relates about it are correct. He does a good job with his factual research. (His gun stuff is good though his guns, at least for his characters, seem to pack a bit too much recoil.) He mentions, in passing, the myth the Studies and Operations Group used against the Viet Cong: the liberator Le Loi and his legendary struggles against Chinese invaders. I also liked his details about the life of a professional poker player like Ozzie and Scott.
Both Expiration Date and Last Call are full of plot coincidences and narrow misses and portentous chance meetings, but that's how is should be in plots dealing with magic and fate. There are some interesting juxtapositions of plot. I find it very interesting that both books end with the assembly of families -- and also heavily feature the destruction of families. At the conclusion of Last Call, Diana and Scott marry and will adopt her children and, symbolically, Dinh. (Interestingly, both novels touch on incest. Diana notes that her marriage to Scott, which, as a child she always assumed would happen before Ozzie cut off contact with Scott after the latter lost his soul in a game of Assumption with Leon, is not really incestuous since they are Ozzie's adopted children with different parents. Also, their marriage is somewhat fated when Scott becomes the Fisher King; indeed, for him to reign wisely (and what he will do with his power is covered vaguely though it seems that it will be restrained and good) he must be married. In Expiration Date, Sukie is incestuously attracted to brother Pete.)
Both books bring in scientific jargon to bolster their magic. In Expiration Date, it's electromagnetism. Here, it's chaos theory. Both novels feature a whole world of magic and myth operating underneath contemporary reality. Last Call, except for the ultimate question of how the Cranes will use their power, ties up more loose ends as a self-contained novel. I did wonder whether Oliver was haunted by an archetype of a boy without a child or a ghost. The archetype option seemed to be the correct one. I was also unclear as to exactly how Bugsy Siegel survived to do in Leon at novel's end. I did like the Fat Man playing into the Green Knight myth, and, as a character, feeling the compulsion to avoid the physical dissolution following death. (He wants to be buried in an airtight, concrete vault so his atoms won't mingle with the soil and being absorbed by organisms. He fears the Thin Man, death.)
A very impressive novel both in its linking of so many disparate elements but also its narrative power and memorable characters and dialogue.
This is the first in a trilogy consisting of Last Call, Expiration Date, and Earthquake Weather. There are few obvious links between the first two novels. Neal Obstadt shows up in both books as sort of an occult underworld figure. In Expiration
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Date, he is a dealer and user of ghosts to inhale. Here he is one of those hunting for protagonist Scott Crane. The issue of ghosts does show up here with the creepy ghost of Susan Crane, Scott Crane's dead wife who is not only a creepy ghost hanging around his house and later haunting him but also a representative of Death who tries to lure Scott into giving up and dying rather than struggling to reclaim his soul. Both books exhibit what seems to be Powers' characteristic blend of history, science, literary allusion, and myth, all in the service of a secret history plot wedged into the interstices of historical fact. Here Powers' blends the history and present of Las Vegas, chaos physics, Arthurian lore, the legend of the Fisher King, pagan myth, gambling, and Tarot lore to produce a compelling plot. On one level, the plot is similar to Expiration Date: a bunch of people engage in violent machinations to attain power or persons who represents great power. That pursued person or person has to take steps to save their life and extricate themselves from danger. The specifics: protagonist Scott Crane is pursued by the soul of his father so his father can possess Crane's soul, which he won in a game of Assumption (a peculiar card game played with a Tarot deck where hands are "married" and "conceived") and others seek to kill him because they suspect he will try to replace the current Fisher King, his father. Here Scott's adopted sister, Diana, is also pursued.
Last Call, though, is a grimmer book; it's characters more desperate, its plot more violent. Scott's adopted father, Ozzie, dies. Indeed, death and onstage violence is more integral to this plot than that of Expiration Date. The book opens with Scott's biological father trying to prepare his body as a repository for his consciousness (as his brother has already been used) and relates how he's wounded "in the thigh" by his wife and how he's killed the old Fisher King, Bugsy Siegel, founder of Las Vegas. (Here a Perilous Castle in a wasteland and a nexus for the gods of randomness and chance.) Human sacrifice is even an integral part of the heroes as well as the villains. (The gods, it seems, are probably not satisfied with the fake sacrifices of mannequins in Doom Town, the atomic bomb testing site outside of town). Each must kill, or facilitate, the death of someone to achieve their ends. (And Powers does a nice job showing how reluctant Scott, Mavranos, and Ozzie are to shed blood.)
Each book has relatively short sections of dialogue (though some of the short exchanges in Last Call, where various people suggest to Scott that he'd just be better off killing himself before father Georges Leon assumes his body, are pretty creepy and memorable). In both cases, the dialogue is sometimes built around literary works -- Lewis Carroll's Alice books in Expiration Date and T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land", Tennyson's "Idyls of the King", and Ben Jonson's Volpone, amongst others (as well as several popular songs from the Andrew Sisters to the Eagles) in Last Call. As to desperation, Scott Crane is out to save his soul and body (bodyswitching, a prime thematic preoccupation of Powers); Diana Crane must save her children; Mavranos (one of my very favorite characters -- I was very glad he was cured of his cancer) seeks a cure for his illness. It is that increased level of violence and desperation and the presentation of the literal Vegas and its mythic underpinnings (including the giant statues outside of the casinos representing archetypes come to life and threatening Diana Crane and Bernardette Dinh) which make this book more resonant and effective than the still good Expiration Date.
However, I think the presence of poker and the Tarota is what really makes this book more memorable. English, particularly American English, is full of idioms derived from poker. Tarot cards are fascinating, even to a non-mystic like me, for their relation to regular playing cards and their fascinating, often macabre pictures standing in for various elements of the human experience, their combination a colorful, allegedly prophetic version of solitaire. I suspect most of the details Powers relates about it are correct. He does a good job with his factual research. (His gun stuff is good though his guns, at least for his characters, seem to pack a bit too much recoil.) He mentions, in passing, the myth the Studies and Operations Group used against the Viet Cong: the liberator Le Loi and his legendary struggles against Chinese invaders. I also liked his details about the life of a professional poker player like Ozzie and Scott.
Both Expiration Date and Last Call are full of plot coincidences and narrow misses and portentous chance meetings, but that's how is should be in plots dealing with magic and fate. There are some interesting juxtapositions of plot. I find it very interesting that both books end with the assembly of families -- and also heavily feature the destruction of families. At the conclusion of Last Call, Diana and Scott marry and will adopt her children and, symbolically, Dinh. (Interestingly, both novels touch on incest. Diana notes that her marriage to Scott, which, as a child she always assumed would happen before Ozzie cut off contact with Scott after the latter lost his soul in a game of Assumption with Leon, is not really incestuous since they are Ozzie's adopted children with different parents. Also, their marriage is somewhat fated when Scott becomes the Fisher King; indeed, for him to reign wisely (and what he will do with his power is covered vaguely though it seems that it will be restrained and good) he must be married. In Expiration Date, Sukie is incestuously attracted to brother Pete.)
Both books bring in scientific jargon to bolster their magic. In Expiration Date, it's electromagnetism. Here, it's chaos theory. Both novels feature a whole world of magic and myth operating underneath contemporary reality. Last Call, except for the ultimate question of how the Cranes will use their power, ties up more loose ends as a self-contained novel. I did wonder whether Oliver was haunted by an archetype of a boy without a child or a ghost. The archetype option seemed to be the correct one. I was also unclear as to exactly how Bugsy Siegel survived to do in Leon at novel's end. I did like the Fat Man playing into the Green Knight myth, and, as a character, feeling the compulsion to avoid the physical dissolution following death. (He wants to be buried in an airtight, concrete vault so his atoms won't mingle with the soil and being absorbed by organisms. He fears the Thin Man, death.)
A very impressive novel both in its linking of so many disparate elements but also its narrative power and memorable characters and dialogue.
Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Fantasy Novel — 1993)
Mythopoeic Awards (Finalist — Adult Literature — 1993)
World Fantasy Award (Nominee — Novel — 1993)
Italia Award (Finalist — 1996)
Language
Original publication date
1992-04
Physical description
352 p.
ISBN
0586214526 / 9780586214527