Genre: nonfiction (mostly)
Subgenre: Tarot, cartomancy, history, time travel fiction
Format: e-galley
Source: NetGalley
Bottom line: the authors' time travel gimmick simply does not work. It goes from cute to seriously annoying in a hurry. It is extremely distracting, and it often deters from and interrupts any reading flow you may be building up as you try to read along. Very often as I read on one of the diverse topics the authors present, as I was really getting into the topic, their time travel gimmick kicked in, "hey, read more on this later, now we go to who knows where, not connected to this topic right away but it will be later." Except that "later" might or not come because with all the jumping around you are just not sure where you are or where you are supposed to be. This made for a terrible reading experience.
The catch is this did not have to be such a poor reading experience. The content is solid, substantial, often with potential to be comprehensive. Heck, even the footnotes can be interesting. The authors clearly know their stuff. A good solid history of Tarot and cartomancy sounds great, and the book's content can provide that, if only they had put some thought in organizing it well instead of trying to play academic pop scifi with their time travel gimmick. If this was an attempt to blend fiction (the time travel frame) with nonfiction (the actual content), it fails in that regard.
Having said all of the above, if you are willing and able to just skip the time travel stuff, follow just the table of contents and browse what you may need or are most interested in first, this can be a useful book. You get comparative material on Tarot cards and reading methods. That alone makes the book decent. But the authors offer history and footnotes that at times are more interesting that some texts, but not distracting, more the kind of footnote to look up later. For me, anything that encourages readers to want to learn more and read more is always good.
So why in the name of the deity of choice did they adopt that time travel annoying gimmick of constantly teasing and interrupting the reader? I am not even annoyed at the concept of the gimmick, but the execution was awful. Only reason I do not rate this book lower is because of the good things I have mentioned.
In the end, this is not a book for beginners. If you are a beginner, find some basic Tarot books, especially if you are starting new to learn Tarot. There are various good basic Tarot books Ask around. Tarotistas are often happy to share titles with beginners, you can always ask your local friendly librarian, including me. The book may be better for more advanced learners, keeping in mind it is not exactly linear.
This leads me to those interested in history. Let me be blunt here. If the jumping around the authors do does not bother you, this book may be for you. However, if you prefer reading history chronologically ordered as many histories do (not saying you have to, just saying if you have that preference), then I suggest you skip to this book's bibliography, review it, pick out titles on specific topics, say Marseilles Tarot, and read those instead. You'll benefit from reading primary sources and/or secondary sources more directly relevant to your topic of interest, plus you'll likely get more depth. This brings up the issue of depth, which is not always consistent in this book. Since the authors try to pack as much as possible, and organization is not well executed, the result is that depth of content varies. So if you want a broad overview, again browse this book selectively. Want depth? Get a specific book on a specific topic. Ordinarily I would not make such a comment but since the authors themselves made this ambitious claim in their book:
"In that way, Tarot Time Traveller can serve as a framework for a full history and discovery of the mysteries of tarot."
Then it is very fair game to examine the claim, which this reviewer found wanting to put it mildly. And that quote is just one of various similar claims the book makes and may or not deliver. I'll just say I took notes as I read on my e-reader, and I did a lot of highlighting and notes, good and not so good including counting the interruptions in the reading flow by the authors. In the interest of brevity, I will skip presenting that count to my four readers.
For libraries, this book is completely optional. Public libraries seeking Tarot and cartomancy books for casual readers or light learners may want to pick up something easier to read and overall lighter. For academic libraries, optional as well. If you are considering this as a first addition for a small collection on this topic or say a small collection on paganism in general (this is where Dewey classification will likely put this book under), skip it. While this book has good content, this is one undergraduates may find frustrating, and I am not sure grad students will like it better.
So for advance Tarotistas, especially those very familiar with these authors, this book may be a good addition to their Tarot and esoterica collections.
As for me, despite wanting to like it more, it ended up just being OK.
2 out of 5 stars.
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