Emperor & Hierophant
Book Three: Arcana Oracle Series
A historical novel with a spiritualist twist, Emperor and Hierophant follows a quest to save a renowned tarot card designer from captivity.
Set in 1900 in England, Ireland, and Egypt, Susan Wands’s historical novel Emperor and Hierophant overflows with action, intrigue, and magic.
Pamela Colman Smith, a tarot card designer with magical powers, joins the Lyceum Theatre group for its tour across England as a poster designer and occasional extra. Bram Stoker works for the theater company in multiple capacities; he recommended that the Golden Dawn, a cult, commission Pamela to create a tarot deck. At the novel’s start, her first four cards (the Magician, Fool, High Priestess, and Empress) have been created, and two new ones, Emperor and Hierophant, are still to be completed.
Meanwhile, Ahmed Kamal, an Egyptologist, searches for Egyptian antiquities that were stolen and smuggled to England, and Aleister Crowley functions as Pamela’s nemesis who is determined to keep her from using her magical powers. Crowley kidnaps her, hoping to harness her abilities for his own tarot cards. Pamela finds solace during her captivity via an afrit, a spirit who visits her and helps her devise a means of escape.
The frequent shifts between locations are helped along by keen descriptions, both of the English countryside and of city settings. Stoker, for example, comments on the chaotic “piles of Gothic, Norman, and Georgian buildings,” while Ahmed, blinded by the Cairo sun, remarks on “violet and pink hues” that infuse “the sand, stone, and limestone buildings along the shore.” Also vivifying the historical settings and situations are conversations tinged with humor: In response to a query about the location of a castle, Stoker deadpans, “This wonderful array of historical buildings is our castle.”
Despite the plot’s clear direction, the book’s progression is jolting. It moves between scenes at a rapid pace. Further, as its magical cast members slip in and out of realms, the goal of saving Pamela and enabling her to complete her two tarot cards is obscured. Also complicating the storytelling is the fact that Pamela’s mind wanders while she’s imprisoned, as when attention is pulled from her immediate concerns to descriptions of Jamaican monsters, muddying the tension: She crouches in the dark, feels pain, is engulfed in a “sweet scent,” and wonders about the whereabouts of her compatriots, with the scene becoming unwieldy and distracting in the process. Thus, although the goal to save Pamela and defeat Crowley remains clear, the path toward this resolution is not always as clear.
In the thrilling historical novel Emperor and Hierophant, forces of good and evil clash when it comes to the proper use of magical powers.
Reviewed by
Caroline Goldberg Igra
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
