Read By: Bronson Pinchot

Rich, top-flight mythic fantasy based on Jungian archetypes, Tarot
symbolism, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and the Parsifal legend; by the
smartly acclaimed author of On Stranger Tides, 1987, etc. Luck could not
flow with more Jungian synchronicity for Powers than his having cast
Bugsy Siegel as The Fisher King in this long novel just as Warren Beatty's
Bugsy has fixed the nation's eye on the Oscar race, along with Robin
Williams's turn as The Fisher King. The scene is Las Vegas, the subject
supernatural poker using Tarot cards. Bugsy Siegel is the reigning Fisher
King whose new Flamingo Hotel gambling casino is modeled on the Tarot's
tower card, with the Flamingo as an inverted tower. Overthrowing Bugsy
is Georges Leon, who assassinates Bugsy in his mistress's home in L.A.
and prepares to become Fisher King. Leon has two sons, Robert and Scott.
He has already spiritually gutted Robert and now can see through Robert's
eyes, and is setting up five-year-old Scott for the same treatment while
inducting him into playing-card magic. But Leon's wife shoots him in
the groin, giving Leon the Fisher King's unhealing wound, and throws
Scott onto a yacht that's passing by on a trailer. Scott, who has been
blinded in one eye by Leon and become a one-eyed jack, is adopted and
raised by the yacht's wizardly owner, Ozzie (who is much smarter than
the Wizard of Oz). Scott faces his father in a weird poker game called
Assumption, which uses Tarot cards and allows Leon to assume the bodies
of losers for his future use, thus assuring him of immortality as long
as he has a stable of bodies. When Scott loses to Leon, his objective
becomes someday to beat Leon at Assumption and save his own soul by
depriving his beastly father of bodies. Scott is aided by the ghost
of Bugsy Siegel, which he meets at the bottom of Lake Mead. Knockout
poker sequences give the symbolism real sizzle, while the genre is
enlivened throughout with great lines from Eliot.

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