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Journal Entry 1 by choclaholic from San Antonio, Texas USA on Friday, August 15, 2003
 I saw a copy of this in the recently released column here at bookcrossing, and that reader seemed to enjoy the Tarot theme in this book. Since I love a good Piers Anthony, I bought myself used copies of Books 1 & 2 in this series. Unfortunately, there's lots of books in Mt. TBR ahead of it, but I'll try to make room in my reading schedule for this series soon.
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Journal Entry 2 by choclaholic from San Antonio, Texas USA on Sunday, January 09, 2005
2005/2
The book God of Tarot is the story Brother Paul Cenji. We are introduced to Paul as a conservative and pious man of God, while we follow his adventure from Earth to the planet Tarot. In an interesting twist at the end of the book, we learn more of the truth of him: that eight years ago, he was actually a drug-addicted, drug-running card shark. But that all changed one fateful night, while Paul was in a drug-induced paranoia. He believed a beautiful innocent girl was a actually a narq out to get him, and then due to his neglegence, she ended up dead. So, after a struggle with guilt, he joined the Holy Order of Vision in search of redemption. At first, when I read this ending, I thought the author was pulling a Total Recall kind of a twist on me, and Paul had just imagined all the previously described adventures -- from meeting the alien Antares to participiting in Animated Tarot -- but apparently that wasn't actually the case. Too bad -- it would've made a great ending that way, and I would've bumped my rating up a star to 8!
Anyway, Paul's religious sect, the Holy Order of Vision, was a Christian sect that is heavily steeped in the use of Tarot cards. In fact, on this Earth of the future, it turns out Tarot was very popular for quite a few purposes including entertainment like card games, or even just recreation that passed the time -- it's a fad and everybody's into it.
Anyway, Earth at this time was in a big upheavel, because of a new technology: instanteous matter transmission (think Beam Me Up, Scotty) that allowed for the exploration of other habitable planets -- and subsequently for the mass exodus of people to all corners of the Universe.
One planet that was being colonized was Tarot. And it was the subject of a haunting of a sort. On this planet, human imaginings were coming to life...physically, and sometimes with dangerous consequences. And so Paul was chosen to go there to find the root cause of the hauntings. In fact it's rumored that he may even be finding God! And if that were true, he hoped to find out how God really wanted to be worshiped ...and thereby which religion would prove to have the truth.
So, in order to investigate these unbelievable happenings, Paul employed his knowledge of Tarot...which, of course, on this planet became Animated to life. Paul had to live through the Animations like an Alice in a Wonderland. Fascinatingly, there was a guide through all this. Who? None other than that supreme Satanist himself, Aleister Crowley (but here is called Therion, as that is the pseudonym he used to create the Egyptian based Thoth Tarot). Anyway, Paul went through adventures of temptation, desire, fear, and the exploration of his own life, soul and will.
It was really interesting how in this book, the chapters were set up to mimic the sequence of Tarot cards in a deck. The first chapter starts off at zero (Folly) and worked through the arcana to number eight (desire); and the subject of each chapter really explored the prescribed concept. I imagine the next two books will take us through more of the symbolism of the Tarot deck.
I also liked learning about Tarot, since before I read this, I didn't really know anything about it. From Mr. Anthony, I feel like I got quite an education on it -- you can tell he did quite a thourough amount of research before he sat down to write this novel. Still, I can see how some readers might find all those cups and swords a bit tiresome after a while, though.
I don't know exactly how to release these books, as they really belong together as a set. I'll be holding on to them until I finish the lot; so for now this is reserved.
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God of Tarot
