Book Review: Arcane

Book Review: 'Arcane' by Carl Sherrell

3 / 5 Stars

'Arcane' (320 pp) was published by Jove Books in August 1978. The cover art is by Boris Vallejo.

Carl Sherrell (1929 -1990) published several novels in the horror, fantasy, and sci-fi genres in the 70s and 80s.

In his Preface, the author states that he used the Tarot deck as the inspiration for this novel; each of its 22 chapters is inspired by a card randomly drawn from the deck. Accordingly, the book's opening chapter is titled The Fool, with succeeding chapters titled The High Priestess, The Magicians, The Tower, The Moon, etc. 

'Arcane' takes place in a bucolic, if generic, fantasy landscape where a tribe of people live simple, but rewarding, lives under their cantankerous leader, an elderly man named Niko. When Niko encounters a young man - the Fool of the chapter's title - coming down the trail from the mysterious heights of the Mountains, initially he is dismissive of this seeming simpleton.

However, the young man, whose name is Abeth, soon shows himself to be no simpleton, but a man gifted with a strong intellect, a man armed with powerful magic, including the ability to read minds and communicate telepathically. As Niko looks on in dismay, he is gradually ousted as the leader of Arcane, as Abeth's activities transform the land and its people into the residents of a powerful empire, one that uses new technologies and new ways of thinking to expand its territories at the expense of the neighboring tribes of wild men.

Even as Abeth's rule brings prosperity and power to Arcane, a disgruntled Niko schemes for ways to subvert Abeth's rule. The stage is set for a contest of wills to determine the future of the land and its people...........

I finished 'Arcane' with mixed emotions. The idea of having a random draw of the Tarot deck dictate the content of each chapter certainly is a novel one, and the lack of an overarching storyline means that the narrative is avoids being overly predictable.

At the same time, the author uses a prose style that is more in keeping with a hard-boiled detective novel than a fantasy novel. Sherrell keeps his prose spare and concise, and eschews completely the trappings of the 'standard' fantasy novel: there are no italicized words representing an Elvish Vocabulary, no glossary, no polysyllabic names for places, people, and things, no dwarves, no Dark Lords, no Towers of Doom, no goblins, orcs, or demons. (A dragon does make a brief appearance.)

However, the lack of an overarching plot means that at its midpoint the novel starts to lose momentum; the vagaries of each new chapter made it hard to feel all that invested in the setting and its characters. The book also suffers from closing chapters that seem unconvincing in terms of disclosing any Big Revelations about Abeth and his designs for Arcane.

The verdict ? 'Arcane' deserves some merit for author Sherrell's decision to let the Tarot govern his narrative. However, that decision also prevents the novel from being more than a straightforward tale of the rise and fall of a civilization. If you are someone with a strong yearning to read all of the fantasy novels of the late 70s then picking up 'Arcane' is justified, but all others likely can pass on this novel.