Well-Suited: 10 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Inspired by the Tarot

The Last Sun, by K.D. Edwards
Edwards blows the tarot deck up into an entire world, imagining a post-apocalyptic Earth where a society of magicians called New Atlantis has risen on Nantucket Island. Life on New Atlantis is organized along the Tarot, with various courts named after the trumps. As the story begins, the Sun Court has fallen, and the final survivor of the disaster, Rune Saint John, survives by risking his life carrying out the whims of Lord Tower, even if it means attacking other Courts, like the Lovers Court or the Justice Court. Edwards makes the subtext of the tarot into text, and the result is a vibrant fantasy world in which the Major and Minor arcana are used as an overall structuring tool for a setting that embraces a wide range of other magical creatures and concepts.

The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
Zelazny’s epic story of shadow universes and the squabbling, all-powerful family that creates, destroys, and wars over them from the “real” universe (called Amber), uses the tarot as its spine, with the Trumps representing members of the ruling family of Amber. Each sibling has a deck of tarot cards representing the others, and they can use the cards to communicate across distances or travel to other shadow universes (our own Earth being one such shadow among many). Psychedelic and complex, The Chronicles of Amber makes the twisty suggestion that our own tarot cards are based on these magical versions—shadows on shadows.

Last Call, by Tim Powers
Chance and statistics are part of the bubbling atmosphere of this book’s universe, which lies the tarot, the fable of the Fisher King, and a host of other legends alongside the deeply magical mathematics of poker. That games of chance aren’t games of chance so much as games of complex math shouldn’t surprise anyone, but in this intricate story, begins with Bugsy Siegel building the Flamingo Hotel as part of a ploy to become the literal Fisher King and eventually sits the reader at a poker game played with tarot cards where every aspect of the environment alters the odds—and raises the stakes. Tarot is woven throughout the plot and the universe, and the protagonist even goes to tarot readers a few times to try and gain some insight into what’s happening; one attempt ends with the fortune-teller giving up three cards in and declaring that he will no longer read the tarot—because the tarot will now be reading him.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Part 3—Stardust Crusaders, by Hirohiko Araki
The third, breakthrough story arc of the long-running JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure manga tells the story of Jotaro Kujo, a young man who turns himself in to the police after beating up several men. Jotaro believes he’s possessed by an evil spirit, but his grandfather arrives and explains that this is a manifestation of Jotaro’s fighting spirit, known as a Stand. The return of the family’s old nemesis, the vampire Dio Brando, has triggered Jotaro’s Stand—and in return, the vampire quickly sends brainwashed Stands against Jotaro and his family. Where the tarot comes into all this: many of the Stands are named after and take their abilities from the tarot (though there are exceptions, including a few that are obvious op culture puns—like a character named Kenny G, whose Stand is called Tenore Sax). As Jotaro learns to control his own Stand, which he names Star Platinum, he and his family must fight Dio’s forces in order to survive, and save the world from his machinations.

Nova, by Samuel R. Delany
One of Delany’s early and less experimental novels (which isn’t to say that it is in any way mundane), Nova is set in the 32nd century, a time when mankind has expanded into space and two powerful political entities vie for dominance. One key to power is the element illyrion, and a man named Lorq Von Ray has a scheme to mine an exploding Nova directly for the material, shifting the balance of power—and risking the fact that the forces in play when a star explodes can warp reality itself. In this future, Delany imagines society accepts the predictive powers of the tarot as not simply accurate, but scientifically proven; just about every character in this space opera takes readings very, very seriously. It’s even implied that the act of sabotaging an early reading in the story has an impact on reality itself.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies, by Italo Calvino
It’s Calvino, so you know you’re not getting just a book incorporating the tarot. A man joins a group of travelers at an old house on the outskirts of a forest; all the guests soon discover they can no longer speak. Using two different tarot decks, the guests tell their stories by placing the cards on the table in specific order as the narrator does his best to interpret the imagery—a tarot reading writ large. Calvino includes illustrations of the tarot cards in one column with the narrator’s words on the other, but the question always lingers—is the narrator getting it right? The conflict between a limited visual vocabulary and the filter through which the stories must pass is fascinating, and the commentary on the power of the tarot and similar open-ended methods of communication leads to questions about how precise written or spoken language is—or isn’t—in contrast.

The Holy, by Daniel Quinn
A detective is hired to discover whether Baal, Ashtoroth, and Moloch, the false gods named in the Old Testament of the Bible, actually exist or not. What he discovers, in a journey predicted and guided by a tarot reading, is that the tarot connects the characters and events in the story in ways obvious and subtle. Quinn dives deep into Tarot and occult lore, but it’s a situation where those who know something about the tarot will get the references and see a bit more while those who don’t. Any reader will be compelled by the story, as the detective discovers that trickster creatures—not human, and not strictly evil but a sort of chaotic neutral—have co-existed with us since our beginnings, and seek to “wake” us from a terrible blind slumber.

The Greater Trumps, by Charles Williams
You may not have heard of Charles Williams, but he deserves rediscovery—he was a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, a member of the Inklings, and a really great writer. The Greater Trumps is certainly one of the best tarot-based novels ever written. It’s centered on an ancient tarot deck that turns out to be the only “true” tarot deck in the world, capable of actually summoning the forces of the universe. Aaron Lee has in his possession a mysterious table on which figurines dance and pose continuously, representing the “great dance” of existence. If he can also take control of the tarot, he can use it in conjunction with these figures to not simply observe the Dance, but to affect it, altering reality itself. Williams’ weaves a tale that incorporates the tarot into the characters (who each subtly represent a Trump) and the plot, which is tense and compelling even as Williams, like his contemporary Lewis, incorporates themes of Christian morality throughout.

The Game of Triumphs, by Laura Powell
This fantastic YA novel makes hay with a killer premise—imagine the game of tarot was much more than simply a card game, but that the cards drawn had a real, magical impact on your life. Draw the right cards and all things could be yours—wealth, beauty, fame. Draw the wrong cards and you meet a horrifying death—or worse. While most of the world is blissfully ignorant of the power of The Game, the players (identified as knights, knaves, game masters, or fools) risk everything on a routine basis—as 15-year old Cat discovers when she stumbles into the role of the “chancer,” or Fool, a randomly selected player in The Game of Triumphs. Powell’s concept is surprisingly complicated and deeply-imagined—not to mention rather chilling.

The Tarot of Perfection, by Rachel Pollack
Pollack, winner of the World Fantasy Award, assembles eight short stories that are modern variations on fairy tales, each beginning with some play on the phrase “once upon a time” and each tied explicitly to the tarot and fortune-telling. While you don’t necessarily need to know the Major Arcana from the Minor to appreciate these great stories, it certainly helps; Pollack infuses these connected stories (though some of the connections aren’t clear until the final story—and reading each new story is like revealing another card in a reading) with the symbolism and legend of the tarot.