Book Review – Circus Tarot

My oh my it appears I have another book review for you already – and this time it’s

“Circus Tarot” by Charles W Jones
You can get a copy here

Blurb: 4 Stars “This is not your typical walk in the park horror either! It is a creative twist with one of the most original settings I have seen in a long time!” – Kriss Morton

Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Stephen King’s IT, and cult movie classic Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Charles W. Jones brings the first instalment of the Circus Tarot Trilogy. In the strange land of World Circus, Mary and Darrin discover they aren’t in their safe, dull life any longer, but have taken the identity of one of the cards from the Circus Tarot. After a terrorizing encounter, resulting in death, they learn the bizarre rules of the land, and discover that the denizens of the sinister World Circus want more than to entertain them.

Rating: 5/5

My thoughts: This begins as a familiar concept – Mr and Mrs Ordinary Folk get pulled into an alternate reality – but that by no way suggests that this is a familiar or uninteresting tale. On the contrary.

When Mary buys an old packet of tarot cards and does a reading for her husband Darrin neither of them have any idea what the consequences will be as they find themselves inside the colourful world the cards portray. Each card in the tarot deck is one circus character or other, Queens and Kings, Knights and Pages, all of the tarot deck are represented – and there is even the clever inclusion of “flipped” cards.

The first challenge the couple have is finding each other, then it’s finding their way out – but even escape wont end their story as there are frightening and binding rules with this deck and World Circus.

This is a really gripping story – it was certainly a “just one more chapter” type of book for me. There are some horror type scenes but these are well written and not over the top, although depending on your tastes they may well make you wince once or twice.

The story develops well and held my interest from the first to last page… I was pleased to see there are more books in this series and I will certainly be reading them… I need to know what happens next!

A great read and thoroughly recommended.