Customer Reviews

Rock 'n Roll Fantasy

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm not into rock music, but the "Alice in Wonderland" comparison from another reviewer peeked my interest. I completely loved this book - I was laughing so hard I cried. Rock N Roll Fantasy made me feel good and it was a nice break from the heavy stuff I usually choose to read. If you want to have a little fun and entertainment (with some substance, too), then I can't recommend this book enough.

Selfish and vain, the narrator considers a life of wealth and privileges her due until a book on the Tarot transforms her life. Her clairvoyant aunt left the hand-written and richly illustrated tarot guide, but the narrator considers it useless in its musty, dustiness. After all, nothing that is not new, ultra modern, and expensive has value. Indeed, this superficial rich kid freaks when a nail breaks or her hair isn't perfectly coifed.

While waiting for her date to pick her up, the narrator dozes off under a tree with the book on tarot in her hands. Condescending and skeptical of the tarot, she doesn't know she's about to receive a first hand lesson. The narrator awakens to a stranger's nudge. Feeling a bit like Rip Van Winkle, she accepts the card the man offers: The Fool. When she looks around, the surreal landscape reveals no indication of civilization. Indeed, the land lacks telephone polls, McDonald's or cars. So begins an extraordinary odyssey of discovery where each stage of the journey is marked by a lesson from the tarot.

Fairytales, mythology, rock 'n roll, and the tarot blend in this fantastically eclectic montage shimmering with wisdom and humor. Rat-tail stew, underground monsters, and vicious Amazon women all come to play in a surreal and fantastic journey revealing an amazing imagination on the part of the author. A rock star represents each player in the major Arcana, and the dialogue includes lighthearted references to hundreds of lyrics. For those of us that are somewhat illiterate of rock 'n roll, however, the dialogue and characterizations are no less enchanting. Playful and dynamic, ROCK 'N ROLL FANTASY comes very highly recommended.

Rock & Roll Fantasy is pure tongue-in-cheek fun from from start to finish. It's like a puzzle within a novel, as you lose count of all the snippets of lyrics and songs the author weaves into the text. I really enjoyed it! As a collector of tarot cards, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the book is illustrated at the beginning of every chapter with a different card. This book rocks!

Trite? Boring? Not so!

Set against one woman's journey along the Major Arcana, readers are witness to the powerful influences in action. Somehow, it becomes not so much her journey to self-realization, but ours as well. Shall I take the Stairway to Heaven or the Highway to Hell? And will I survive the consequences of that decision?

ROCK & ROLL FANTASY is an unforgettable book. It is a "must read" for all children of the Baby-boomer Generation, especially those who have ever listened to Janice Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, or the Rolling Stones. But don't let that whimsy fool you. This book has depths I've only begun to explore.

this book is real fun and entertaining especially if you're into the whole tarot cards and mysticism angle. i loved the tarot card illustrations, too. there were a lot of decks i have never seen before. as for someone mentioning a problem with layout, i did not see any. maybe they thought some of the puns were misspellings. anyway, i have never seen a book quite like this. its fun to see which rock star the author aligns to each tarot card. i'd say its worth a look for sure. (i have read this author before, but she's known for horror; i like that she did here with this experiemental fiction)

I loved this book! It's very light, silly, punny fun. (If you like Piers Anthony, you'll be into this.) All my favorite rock stars were there...... Jim Morrison, Ted Nugent, Axl Rose, and more. (However, as one review here says, the editing and printing job is not that good...... but...... the tarot card illustrations inside are way cool......) It's not gonna win the Pulitzer, but Rock & Roll Fantasy is a fun book and actually I've never seen another book like it. I reccommend it to fans of light and comedic fantasy, or fans of classic rock.

This book is pretty neat, esp. if you are a fan of rockers like Ozzy Osbourne, Axl Rose, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Jim Morrison, Eric Clapton, Stevie Nicks, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. It's really unusual to find these characters in fiction, so that's why I found this book unique. In fact, I've never read anything quite like it. Rock on, babes!

Being a fan of both classic rock 'n roll and of fantasy literature, the title, concept, and artist reviews instantly drew me to this book and I had high hopes for a greatly entertaining adventure.

Instead, it left me bored and hoping for a quick ending.
The "Alice in Wonderland" vignette style indeed left me wondering chapter by chapter where this was all heading and whether there were any true connections between characters and adventures aside from a lone interactor, the narrator.

The rock 'n roll references, for me, were of two types: 1) blatantly obvious, yet I was hit over the head again and again within a chapter with references to the real-world performer/album/lyric (to the point that I inwardly screamed "I get it! Enough already!") - all the subtlety of a sledgehammer; or 2) completely over my head because the analog must have been a performer/band that I don't like. Type 1 rapidly went from "Ah-ha!" to "Stop it while I look for the plot!," while Type 2 just led to a boring chapter with a lot of head scratching. Too many descriptive references seemed to be thrown in for their own unnecessary sake, just because they were cool lyric lines.
It was all pulled together in the end in too-obvious fashion - lesson learned, thanks, story over.


Regarding the disasterous editing - perhaps it was a specific edition or printing, but there were at least a dozen cases spread throughout the book where a sentence was truncated - it would start, and then either words would be skipped in the middle, or the end would be chopped off before the next sentence. These numerous derailments made reading disjointed and difficult. There were also word spacing errors, but few if any other proofreading issues.