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McMinn and Cheese @[email protected] · 2026-07-04 · 08:00 UTC

On Re-reading Last Call by Tim Powers

What a book. Older readers will know that my favourite Powers book is Declare, which pushes all my various buttons, but if I were to objectively point to just one of his novels and say, this is his absolute peak, it would be this. Though there are so many to choose from!

This is also a novel to give you a real sense of what Powers is all about, how he weaves myth and history and fantasy elements together to create an immersive urban fantasy world rooted in reality. So here we have Las Vegas, Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam, nuclear test sites, the old (and new) Flamingo Hotel and Casino, poker, Tarot decks, Bugsy Siegel, the Fisher King, hungry ghosts, chaos theory—and that most Powers of all Powers motifs, the hero who hasn’t got a clue what’s happening.

Let’s start with the Fisher King, which is a literary motif that Powers returns to again and again. The first of his great run of fantasy novels was The Drawing of the Dark, which is set in 1529 in Venice and Vienna. A down-and-out mercenary finds himself drawn in to an adventure involving supernatural beings, beer, the Fisher King, and the fate of the West. All this against the backdrop of the historical siege of Vienna and events surrounding.

The Fisher King, in the Arthurian legends, was an old, wounded King whose land was as sick as him. The King’s wound never heals. Both could be restored by giving the King a drink from the Grail—or in some versions of the myth, by asking a particular question. In other versions, there is a younger as well as an older King, and the wound (the Dolorous Stroke) might be in the thigh, the groin, or the side. As well as the Grail, the Spear of Destiny might appear (this is the spear that supposedly wounded Christ in the side on the cross). In fact, there are three symbols: a sword, a lance (or spear), and a cup.

Now, without going too far down the Fisher King rabbit hole, it’s worth pointing out that three of the suits in the original tarot deck are Swords, Wands (or Lances/Spears), and Cups. So you’ve got the Spear of Destiny, the Holy Grail, and the mythical sword (e.g. Excalibur) right there in the tarot deck. What’s missing? Disks. Or coins.

Which brings us to poker, and poker chips (or disks) and the setting of Last Call, which is Las Vegas.

One-eyed Scott Crane was abandoned as a child in the back of a boat (important detail klaxon). He was found by a professional poker player called Ozzie Crane, aka Ozzie Smith, who raises Scott as his foster son, and teaches him to play. Ozzie has a number of eccentricities, superstitions, and rules to live by, one of which is Never Play Poker on Water.

When he too is a pro poker player and still a young man, Scott – short on funds – is invited to play a special game of poker on a houseboat on Lake Mead. Ozzie begs him not to go, but Scott doesn’t share Ozzie’s superstitions, and he needs money to get him through their “off” season. So he goes.

Meanwhile, Ozzie scarpers, taking with him Scott’s younger foster sister Diane, also found as an abandoned baby.

The game on Lake Mead is Assumption, a poker variant played with a tarot deck. Players are dealt four cards, two face-up. They then both bet and bid on each others’ hands. You buy another four-card hand, and complete your own. The next round of betting is based on the 8-card hands, with the “mate” of a sold hand getting 10% of the pot, if it wins. There follows an optional final round, the Assumption, where the “mate” challenges the winner to a single cut of the cards. If the mate loses this cut, they must match the pot so the winner gets double.

Scott “wins” but then, much later, having not seen Ozzie or his foster sister for twenty years, he starts to realise that he didn’t win after all, that the stakes weren’t money.

Scott seems to have forfeited his life, and appears to be as doomed as his friend Arky Mavranos, who is looking for a cancer cure among the chaos/order of the Las Vegas casinos.

Who was running the game on Lake Mead? Who paid Scott a handsome sum for his poker hand? Who is the King of the Las Vegas wasteland? Who is the one-eyed Jack? And who might be the Queen?

Tell you what, maybe the answers might be found in a tarot reading. But you’ve got to know the right question to ask.

#Books #Fantasy #FaultLines #fiction #LastCall #tarot #TimPowers #writing

#books #fantasy #faultlines #fiction #lastcall #tarot