Books › Last Call
Last Call
560 pages
A hallucinatory, neon-lit descent into a world where ancient myths are played out over high-stakes hands of poker.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting at a smoky, dimly lit poker table where the stakes are impossibly high and the rules are governed by ancient, esoteric magic. The narrative unfolds at a steady, deliberate pace, building a complex puzzle-box of a world that maps the Fisher King mythos onto the neon grit of Las Vegas and the dusty highways of the American West. The mood is deeply paranoid and hallucinatory, wrapping the reader in a dread-soaked atmosphere where every shuffled deck and flipped coin carries the weight of destiny. It is a dense, meticulously crafted experience that will delight readers who crave intricate urban fantasy, where the mundane is peeled back to reveal a terrifying, awe-inspiring reality governed by fate, addiction, and the desperate fight for one's own soul.
- Mood
- neon-lit
- paranoid
- hallucinatory
- dusty
- Tone
- gritty
- surreal
- fatalistic
- intricate
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- fate and free will · addiction and obsession · mythic cycles · the weight of the past · hidden magic in the mundane
- The writing
- Dense and meticulously detailed, the writing grounds bizarre, esoteric magic in the gritty, tactile reality of the American West.
- The arc
- The journey moves from a state of haunted, creeping dread into a desperate, high-stakes reclamation of self.
- Who it's for
- Fans of complex, puzzle-box urban fantasy who love seeing ancient mythologies mapped onto seedy modern landscapes.
Content notes
- gambling addiction
- alcoholism
- violence
- psychological distress
About the book
One–time professional gambler Scott Crane 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 –– a contest he believed he walked away from a big winner –– are drawing him back to the magical city. Because the mythic game did not end that night in 1969. And the price of his winnings was his soul. And now a pot far more strange and perilous than he ever could imagine depends on the turning of a card.
Description from Open Library.
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