15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Avoid "The Dark Lord" - throw the book in the Nile as instructed!!, October 19, 2005
This review is from: The Dark Lord (Forbidden Tarot) (Mass Market Paperback)
(Sigh). I have always been interested in Tarot cards - their history, mystique, design. So when I read that Patricia Simpson had come out with a novel containing a mix of intrigue, romance, adventure, magic and an ancient deck of Tarot cards with a curse attached to their finder/owner, I thought, terrific - an assured good read!! I also saw many reviews lauding the book. OK. I was convinced. "The Dark Lord" would be a winner! So, without a second thought I went out and bought it. What a waste of time and money - and I am not usually this mean, really. The thing is, the concept of the storyline is so unusual and fantastic, (as in wonderful), how could the author go wrong? I expected her to spin a great tale, filled with myth and mysticism. And I am sorry to write this, but Ms. Simpson just threw it all away. In fact, this is an absolutely amateurish effort. I was not entertained.
The writing is poor. The narrative rambles. The characters are all one dimensional, like the figures on a deck of cards, but with little of the occult and absolutely nothing of the inscrutable. To make matters worse, I couldn't find one single personage I liked. There is almost no communication between characters. Enablers abound. Rather than follow through with the Tarot narrative and the dire events which occur, and are predicted to occur as a consequence of their discovery, we are taken off on various boring tangents which have little to do with the cards or their history.
Our heroine, Dr. Fay Rae Lambers, is a math professor at UC Berkeley. This lady has some serious problems, and they began when she was born. The Ob/Gyn dropped her on her head. No kidding! Things went downhill from that moment. She suffers from arthritis and various other ailments which cause her to be in almost constant physical pain. She is also extremely neurotic with low self esteem, so she lives a relatively restricted life. In other words she has Victimitis and no sense of humor. How did she get her Ph.D.? (In calculus, no less!). Dr. Lambers is a loner who believes she is a loser, and with the exception of her sister Angie - a self-centered flirt with a drinking problem - Fay has basically isolated herself from most social contact. She does have one friend, a longtime mentor with whom she has had a relationship since she was a girl, Dr. Thomas Gregory. Other than him, there are no girlfriends, no boyfriends (never), nada...and she is twenty-eight years-old!
Moving right along, Angie and Fay Rae travel to Luxor, Egypt for a much needed vacation. Fay wants her sister to disengage from her abusive boyfriend and stop drinking. The tour group they are with gets caught in a sandstorm while sightseeing. As the women wend their way back to the bus, Fay stumbles upon an ancient metal box, which she, of course, picks up and takes with her. She is told, later that evening, by an Egyptian shopkeeper and expert in antiquities, that the box and its contents present a grave danger and should be thrown in the Nile. The man reads some Aramaic words written on the container. He is able to makes out, "Soul. Dark Lord. Otherworld."..and "Typhon the Devil." These are the cursed "Forbidden Tarot." The box should never be opened. Guess what? Sounds like a wonderful plot so far, doesn't it? Well, there's not too much more in the story about these cards, or the lethal powers they unleash. Actually the lethal powers are more comedic, at times, than deadly! Instead we get a bizarre soap opera about the dysfunctional Lamber family, and the even more emotionally disabled Gregory family. These personal and emotional dramas supercede the paranormal.
Anyway, Dr. Gregory, who dies mysteriously before Fay gets home, is the father of Michael, a handsome guy with an attitude problem. He used to be Fay's school chum. Or at least they were friends until they had a "misunderstanding" when they were adolescents. Obviously, he will emerge as a love interest despite mutual bitter feelings. Meanwhile, on the plane trip back to the states Fay meets a fellow passenger, the fabulously wealthy, debonair Simeon Avare, who takes an immediate interest in her, a really serious immediate interest. She goes directly from famine to feast! Unfortunately, over a hundred pages must be dedicated to the bickering, misunderstandings and squabbles between Michael, Fay and Simeon. By the way, terrible dialogue. Things seem to pick up a bit when Dr. Fay Rae meets a psychic who knows about the Forbidden Tarot and predicts an unsettling future for mankind, to say the least, etc.. But then it's back to the love triangle between the white knight, the dark villain, and the chronic complainer...plus Angie's problems, of which there are a multitude.
There is little of the mythical or mystical here. Yes there is a plot which supposedly revolves around the paranormal, but it meanders so much it loses its way, and mine too. The ending has got to be one of the worst I have read in years. Everything is swept under the rug and left neat and tidy...supposedly. Too many threads dangling for my taste.
I know I will probably take flack for this review, but I have to vote my conscience. 1 Star!
JANA
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Predictable Gothic, April 28, 2005
This review is from: The Dark Lord (Forbidden Tarot) (Mass Market Paperback)
*The Dark Lord* contains all the classic tropes of Gothic literature--a damsel in distress, a big scary house, and two men, one of whom may be evil.
In this case, the damsel is Fay Rae Lambers, a woman with a bright mind but a disabled body and a bitter heart. She and her beautiful, ditzy sister find a creepy-looking tarot deck on a vacation to Egypt, and not long afterward, weird things start happening. Rae inherits her mentor's mansion, meets an enigmatic foreign man, and runs into her high school flame once again.
The exposition is where it all starts to fall apart. For starters, one of the essential elements of the Gothic novel is that the heroine--and the reader--can't tell which man is the bad guy till the climax of the story. Here, I figured it out right away, and Rae wasn't fooled for very long either. I stayed tuned, expecting a twist, but no twist ever came.
I also hated the treatment of Rae's sister. It seemed to me that the character suffered unfairly. Was the character being punished for her beauty and charm? The punishment seemed like too much--especially after the sister's past was revealed and it turned out that she had known as much pain as Rae.
Overall, a diverting read, but forgettable and not without problems.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible, Awful, Boring Book, May 31, 2005
This review is from: The Dark Lord (Forbidden Tarot) (Mass Market Paperback)
This book was horrible. It was slow and Boring and not terribly imaginative. What kind of a name is Fae Rae. Anywho, whenever the Author had a chance to infuse some steamy romance she came up short. Michael started off sounding like the typical goodlooking, tortured and sexy hero but ended up boring and a sucker. Fae Rae was an anorexic-never-learned-when-to-enjoy- yourself bore. I could not believe she fell for the Dark Lord. Who, by the way sounded unappealing and too darned thin to be a sexy hero. Also, he had absolutely NO REAL powers. I was never scared or thrilled. I have this hardcover for sell on Amazon. This book had no real action and you will literally hate Fae's sister Angie. What a sniveling coward.
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