It's a kind of magic... When two college freshmen decide to spend Spring Break using their magic to fleece the gambling tables of Las Vegas, little do they imagine that Vegas harbors some magical secrets of its own... And of course what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas - alive or dead.
File Under: [The Mob & Magic | Ancient Secrets | Zombie Wizardry | Bet Your Life]
Vegas Knights (Angry Robot)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Vegas Knights is a smart, slick, noir fantasy. If Elmore Leonard had written Harry Potter for grown-ups, it would read something like this." - William King
"Matt Forbeck's work is unfailingly well-plotted, tightly paced, and imaginatively realized. He juggles humor and pathos with a deftness that defies literary gravity. I'm a huge fan." - John Kovalic
Praise for Amortals:
"Amortals (to paraphrase another sci-fi writer who, in my opinion, has nothing on Matt Forbeck) blew down the walls of my imagination. It then stepped over the smoking rubble, seized me by the throat and kicked my ass. Was this your first novel, you bastard? Holy crap!"- Billy Campbell, star of The 4400
"It kicks like a mule & whispers sweet nothings in your ear like Mike Tyson in a boxing match." - Ben Templesmith
"an action-packed thrill-ride with the occasional sucker punch to the brain you won't see coming." - Monte Cook
"Vegas Knights had me racing through it's pages, something a book hasn't done to me in quite awhile." - www.livingsocial.com
"...my expectations were not only met, but also exceeded." - The Eloquent Page
"Vegas Knights is quickly paced, and well-written in quite a breezy style with a very natural flow to Forbeck’s prose that pulls the reader along." - Civilian Reader
"You’ll find that you can get through this book pretty quickly, mainly because you simply won’t be able to put it down, there are a lot of fantastic scenes in this, and did I mention that there’s also zombies? " - The Founding Fields
"The action sequences in Vegas Knights put to shame even the highest-budgeted action movies. Where directors need millions of dollars in special effects and stunts, Forbeck uses language to much greater effect. " - The Ranting Dragon
"Overall this is a fresh and suspenseful Urban Fantasy novel. It is great entertainment, and if you have a taste for fantasy in a contemporary setting this is definitely worth checking out." - Wierdmage's Reviews
"It's fantastic entertainment and I loved every minute of it, Viva Las Vegas (Knights)!"
- SF Book Reviews
"Vegas Knights is one of the best Urban Fantasy books I've read in a long time; it's cleverly written, fast paced and wonderfully fresh."
-www.betwixtbookreviews.blogspot.com
"I started this book and realized right away that I was in for a great (and fast) ride."
-www.fluidityoftime.blogspot.com
"Matt Forbeck's work is unfailingly well-plotted, tightly paced, and imaginatively realized. He juggles humor and pathos with a deftness that defies literary gravity. I'm a huge fan." - John Kovalic
Praise for Amortals:
"Amortals (to paraphrase another sci-fi writer who, in my opinion, has nothing on Matt Forbeck) blew down the walls of my imagination. It then stepped over the smoking rubble, seized me by the throat and kicked my ass. Was this your first novel, you bastard? Holy crap!"- Billy Campbell, star of The 4400
"It kicks like a mule & whispers sweet nothings in your ear like Mike Tyson in a boxing match." - Ben Templesmith
"an action-packed thrill-ride with the occasional sucker punch to the brain you won't see coming." - Monte Cook
"Vegas Knights had me racing through it's pages, something a book hasn't done to me in quite awhile." - www.livingsocial.com
"...my expectations were not only met, but also exceeded." - The Eloquent Page
"Vegas Knights is quickly paced, and well-written in quite a breezy style with a very natural flow to Forbeck’s prose that pulls the reader along." - Civilian Reader
"You’ll find that you can get through this book pretty quickly, mainly because you simply won’t be able to put it down, there are a lot of fantastic scenes in this, and did I mention that there’s also zombies? " - The Founding Fields
"The action sequences in Vegas Knights put to shame even the highest-budgeted action movies. Where directors need millions of dollars in special effects and stunts, Forbeck uses language to much greater effect. " - The Ranting Dragon
"Overall this is a fresh and suspenseful Urban Fantasy novel. It is great entertainment, and if you have a taste for fantasy in a contemporary setting this is definitely worth checking out." - Wierdmage's Reviews
"It's fantastic entertainment and I loved every minute of it, Viva Las Vegas (Knights)!"
- SF Book Reviews
"Vegas Knights is one of the best Urban Fantasy books I've read in a long time; it's cleverly written, fast paced and wonderfully fresh."
-www.betwixtbookreviews.blogspot.com
"I started this book and realized right away that I was in for a great (and fast) ride."
-www.fluidityoftime.blogspot.com
About the Author
Matt Forbeck has worked full-time on fiction and games since 1989.
He is a popular and prolific writer of fiction books, short stories, non-fiction (including the acclained Marvel Comics Encyclopedia), magazine articles and computer game scripts. He has designed roleplaying games, miniatures and board games. He's currently working on a film script and a novelisation of the online game Guild Wars.
His work has been published in at least a dozen different languages.
He is a popular and prolific writer of fiction books, short stories, non-fiction (including the acclained Marvel Comics Encyclopedia), magazine articles and computer game scripts. He has designed roleplaying games, miniatures and board games. He's currently working on a film script and a novelisation of the online game Guild Wars.
His work has been published in at least a dozen different languages.
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More About the Author
Matt Forbeck has been a full-time creator of award-winning games and fiction since 1989. He has designed games and toys and written stories of all sorts. He has sixteen novels published to date, including the award-nominated Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon and the critically acclaimed Amortals and Vegas Knights. His latest work includes the Magic: The Gathering comic book and the historical horror novel Carpathia. He is currently in the middle of his 12 for '12 project, in which he's writing a novel every month this year. For more about him and his work, visit Forbeck.com.Â
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The following is an exclusive interview with Matt Forbeck and thumbnail review of VEGAS KNIGHTS that appeared in International Thriller Writers' March 2011 issue of "The Big Thrill".
With 14 previous titles, Matt Forbeck now delivers an intriguing tale of a magic "show" on the Vegas Strip, only college freshmen Jackson Wisdom and Bill Chancey try using what they learned in Magic 101 to snooker the Big Boys. This is no mousy Rat Pack!
Think OCEAN'S ELEVEN, using magic as an instrument for the heist. What happens in Vegas is that these two young men should never stay in Vegas, which harbors a dark, magical secret all its own. The whole place is run by magic--it's founded on magic--and Jackson and Bill won't believe who's in charge. Forbeck added: "The young protagonists believe they've figured out a way to beat the system, just to find that their edge lasts only for so long."
William King, the author of TROLLSLAYER, said, "VEGAS KNIGHTS is a smart, slick, noir fantasy," as though Elmore Leonard had written the Harry Potter series. Alan Cranis at Bookgasm said Forbeck's "portrayal of the glitz and excess of Vegas is equally strong." VEGAS KNIGHTS is a cutting-edge paranormal thriller made real in the city of secrets.
Forbeck added, "Breath-taking chase scenes involve innovative use of magic to escape from gun-toting thugs and even zombies. Mojo Poker is the type practiced by real-life magicians, and that figures prominently in the novel. Many of the characters are historical. Harry Houdini, for instance, plays a large role in the book, though more about the way the heroes decide they're going to outfox the all-powerful villains."
Regarding writing VEGAS KNIGHTS, Forbeck said, "What inspired me to write it actually started out as a background for a collectible card game I'd designed. The publisher decided to scrap the backstory I'd come up with, but they gave me back the rights to it."
As for the mechanics of writing, Forbeck said, "Not much is rewriting, actually. I like to get through the first draft as fast as I can, but I spent many years as an editor before I started writing novels. My first drafts come out pretty clean. I always write straight through. If you stop to polish a chapter to a fine sheen, you're wasting your time. You'll probably come up with something later. That means you'll have to go back and alter that text again, anyhow. Leave it until later, and respect your forward momentum."
He continued: "My stories always change as I go along. I write a loose outline before I start any book, but I often find I've gone perpendicular to it at one point or another. I just re-outline the book from there and go back at it again. I can sometimes manage this several times in the course of a book."
Many writers fear reviews. Forbeck has little to fear. "My latest favorite came from a review by Eric Brown in The Guardian, where he wrote, `AMORTALS is Chandler by way of BLADE RUNNER, with the pace of an express train.'"
Forbeck added: "My latest novel, AMORTALS, just hit US shelves in January, so the ink's practically still wet on that. After VEGAS KNIGHTS, I have a novella in GI JOE: TALES FROM THE COBRA WARS, which is edited by Max Brooks and Jeff Conner. Then, I have a non-fiction book called STAR WARS VS. STAR TREK. For later in the year, I'm working on a trilogy of novels based upon Dust, an alternate-history WWII boardgame that pits walking tanks against each other in 1947." Forbeck clarified that "walking tanks are armored vehicles that move on hydraulic legs rather than treads like traditional tanks, similar to the vehicles in Star Wars."
---Interview/review feature by L. Dean Murphy
With 14 previous titles, Matt Forbeck now delivers an intriguing tale of a magic "show" on the Vegas Strip, only college freshmen Jackson Wisdom and Bill Chancey try using what they learned in Magic 101 to snooker the Big Boys. This is no mousy Rat Pack!
Think OCEAN'S ELEVEN, using magic as an instrument for the heist. What happens in Vegas is that these two young men should never stay in Vegas, which harbors a dark, magical secret all its own. The whole place is run by magic--it's founded on magic--and Jackson and Bill won't believe who's in charge. Forbeck added: "The young protagonists believe they've figured out a way to beat the system, just to find that their edge lasts only for so long."
William King, the author of TROLLSLAYER, said, "VEGAS KNIGHTS is a smart, slick, noir fantasy," as though Elmore Leonard had written the Harry Potter series. Alan Cranis at Bookgasm said Forbeck's "portrayal of the glitz and excess of Vegas is equally strong." VEGAS KNIGHTS is a cutting-edge paranormal thriller made real in the city of secrets.
Forbeck added, "Breath-taking chase scenes involve innovative use of magic to escape from gun-toting thugs and even zombies. Mojo Poker is the type practiced by real-life magicians, and that figures prominently in the novel. Many of the characters are historical. Harry Houdini, for instance, plays a large role in the book, though more about the way the heroes decide they're going to outfox the all-powerful villains."
Regarding writing VEGAS KNIGHTS, Forbeck said, "What inspired me to write it actually started out as a background for a collectible card game I'd designed. The publisher decided to scrap the backstory I'd come up with, but they gave me back the rights to it."
As for the mechanics of writing, Forbeck said, "Not much is rewriting, actually. I like to get through the first draft as fast as I can, but I spent many years as an editor before I started writing novels. My first drafts come out pretty clean. I always write straight through. If you stop to polish a chapter to a fine sheen, you're wasting your time. You'll probably come up with something later. That means you'll have to go back and alter that text again, anyhow. Leave it until later, and respect your forward momentum."
He continued: "My stories always change as I go along. I write a loose outline before I start any book, but I often find I've gone perpendicular to it at one point or another. I just re-outline the book from there and go back at it again. I can sometimes manage this several times in the course of a book."
Many writers fear reviews. Forbeck has little to fear. "My latest favorite came from a review by Eric Brown in The Guardian, where he wrote, `AMORTALS is Chandler by way of BLADE RUNNER, with the pace of an express train.'"
Forbeck added: "My latest novel, AMORTALS, just hit US shelves in January, so the ink's practically still wet on that. After VEGAS KNIGHTS, I have a novella in GI JOE: TALES FROM THE COBRA WARS, which is edited by Max Brooks and Jeff Conner. Then, I have a non-fiction book called STAR WARS VS. STAR TREK. For later in the year, I'm working on a trilogy of novels based upon Dust, an alternate-history WWII boardgame that pits walking tanks against each other in 1947." Forbeck clarified that "walking tanks are armored vehicles that move on hydraulic legs rather than treads like traditional tanks, similar to the vehicles in Star Wars."
---Interview/review feature by L. Dean Murphy
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The cover of Matt Forbeck's Vegas Knights describes the novel as "Harry Potter meets Ocean's Eleven," but it may be slightly more accurate (if not quite as effective, marketing-wise) to replace Harry Potter with Lev Grossman's The Magicians. Vegas Knights' main characters, Bill and Jackson, are two college students on Spring Break in Las Vegas. Sounds fairly normal -- except the topic of their studies is magic, and they're not just in Vegas to party. Instead, they're planning to use their magic skills to become rich by cheating at the gambling tables. However, they quickly find out that this is easier said than done, because Vegas is very different from what they expected...
Vegas Knights is a fun, entertaining urban fantasy novel that starts off with a bang and rarely slows down. Matt Forbeck gives the reader a great feel for what it's like to gamble and party in Vegas, and combines this with an exciting and action-packed plot. As someone who's spent a good amount of time in the "City of Lost Wages," I felt that Matt Forbeck recreated the atmosphere of the place very effectively, even while adding a few fictional casinos (and of course, well, magic) on the Strip.
A large part of the first half of Vegas Knights is one long and excellent action scene that's genuinely exciting and impossible to put down. Starting from Bill and Jackson's second gambling adventure and running through their first meeting with the primary antagonist (whose identity is one of the best surprises of the novel), the story rarely slows down and is jam-packed with action and excitement. The pacing is so hectic that it occasionally feels as if this could have been turned into a much longer novel, but on the plus side, this also means there's not a dull moment to be found. (And how rare is it nowadays to find a fantasy novel that could have used more padding?)
Unfortunately things take a turn for the worse in the second half of Vegas Knights. The novel starts out as a fun, somewhat shallow but very entertaining magic-in-Vegas caper, but it turns just a bit too silly and frankly verging on the ridiculous towards the end. Saying exactly where and how this happens would spoil the story, but there's one specific moment where I just couldn't take the novel seriously anymore. Early on, it's easy to ignore the flat characters and occasionally clunky dialogue because the plot moves so quickly and offers lots of action and several surprising twists along the way, but after the turning point the book unfortunately strays into pure cartoon territory.
Still, if you don't take it too seriously, you'll have a blast with this novel. Vegas Knights is far from perfect, especially towards the end, but it's hard to imagine a more appropriate book to bring along and read by the pool if you're planning a Vegas trip.
Vegas Knights is a fun, entertaining urban fantasy novel that starts off with a bang and rarely slows down. Matt Forbeck gives the reader a great feel for what it's like to gamble and party in Vegas, and combines this with an exciting and action-packed plot. As someone who's spent a good amount of time in the "City of Lost Wages," I felt that Matt Forbeck recreated the atmosphere of the place very effectively, even while adding a few fictional casinos (and of course, well, magic) on the Strip.
A large part of the first half of Vegas Knights is one long and excellent action scene that's genuinely exciting and impossible to put down. Starting from Bill and Jackson's second gambling adventure and running through their first meeting with the primary antagonist (whose identity is one of the best surprises of the novel), the story rarely slows down and is jam-packed with action and excitement. The pacing is so hectic that it occasionally feels as if this could have been turned into a much longer novel, but on the plus side, this also means there's not a dull moment to be found. (And how rare is it nowadays to find a fantasy novel that could have used more padding?)
Unfortunately things take a turn for the worse in the second half of Vegas Knights. The novel starts out as a fun, somewhat shallow but very entertaining magic-in-Vegas caper, but it turns just a bit too silly and frankly verging on the ridiculous towards the end. Saying exactly where and how this happens would spoil the story, but there's one specific moment where I just couldn't take the novel seriously anymore. Early on, it's easy to ignore the flat characters and occasionally clunky dialogue because the plot moves so quickly and offers lots of action and several surprising twists along the way, but after the turning point the book unfortunately strays into pure cartoon territory.
Still, if you don't take it too seriously, you'll have a blast with this novel. Vegas Knights is far from perfect, especially towards the end, but it's hard to imagine a more appropriate book to bring along and read by the pool if you're planning a Vegas trip.
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
As with all of Mr. Forbeck's books, Vegas Knights is tightly plotted with plenty of plot twists and surprises. And as always, he's created a complete new world that's believable and entertaining. The characters are well developed and engaging and you come to care about what happens to them - there are quite a few situations where something is going wrong and you find yourself toting for the characters and thinking of ways for them to get out the situation! The setting and background of the world is provided within the narrative (not as separate explication) so it helps to move the story along. This book is great fun and highly recommended: if you like action, poker, and magic, don't miss this one!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vegas Knights does not disappoint
Vegas Knights is a fast-paced, smartly written fantasy novel set in Las Vegas. Although I normally don't read this genre of fiction, I was not disappointed with the way in which... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Harvey D Newcomb
5.0 out of 5 stars
Urban fantasy, tired? Not a chance.
If any of you think that the urban fantasy genre's outlived its time, I'm here to tell you to think again.
Forbeck's done it again with this novel. Read more
Forbeck's done it again with this novel. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Starglade
2.0 out of 5 stars
Felt like an attempted comic book
I found myself not caring much about the two main characters, especially Bill, and virtually not at all about the secondaries. Read more
Published 22 months ago by John Howard
3.0 out of 5 stars
A mixed hand
Matt Forbeck's Vegas Knights (2011), Jackson and Bill don't actually consider their visit to Las Vegas "gambling". Gambling is based on luck. As wizards, there's no luck involved. Read more
Published on May 9, 2011 by J. Shurin
5.0 out of 5 stars
Neon, Gambling...and Magic!
In Matt Forbeck's Vegas Knights, Luke and his best friend Bill come to Las Vegas with a plan. They're going to take the casinos to the cleaners, using their fledgling ability to... Read more
Published on April 19, 2011 by A. Bittner
3.0 out of 5 stars
Magic in Vegas is real!
Two college boys think they can beat the tables in Vegas with magic. What they don't know is that the Sin City is full of real magicians hiding behind stage magic. Read more
Published on March 29, 2011 by C. Raso
2.0 out of 5 stars
Meh - cliche.
This is so NOT "Ocean's 11 Meets Harry Potter!" as a blurb on the front proclaims. It's more like... Read more
Published on March 13, 2011 by J. Parent
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Vegas Caper
The house always wins. That's like a law of nature in Vegas - but what if the laws of nature don't always apply to you? Read more
Published on March 1, 2011 by Magpie Diarist
