Review: The Tarot Trials

The Tarot Trials by Katee Robert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars.

Kestrel is an orphan living a precarious life as a thief in the Dregs - an overcrowded slum in the shadow of The Wall - the city's only defence against the creatures outside in the Wilds. Every twenty-two years the city has the Tarot Trials in which any citizen young or old, rich or poor, noble or thief can vie to become one of thirteen Champions of the Tarot. Those thirteen then compete in a vicious elimination battle to become the five remaining, the Cinque, who stand alongside the Guilds and the Minor Court in running the city, which itself is the epi-centre of commerce for the wider realms.

Twenty-two years ago Kestrel's mother fought and became one of the Cinque as Champion for the Moon, but then she was accused of treason and killed by one of her allies, the Champion of Death. Now Kestrel is determined to seek vengeance for her mother's murder and an explanation for why her allies turned on her so readily. If she can survive the fight.

If it sounds a bit like The Hunger Games, Katee Robert admits in her acknowledgments that the book inspired her to think about what death games could accomplish, as well as Kresley Coles' Arcana Chronicles which I have not read. In a world where the four minor houses Swords, Wands, Pentacles, and Cups have wealth, food, clean water, and fresh air the Dregs and those communities outside the Wall have very little and risk everything to stay alive. Can Kestrel trust anyone in the trials? Will alliances hold? Will she get the answers she is looking for?

I started reading this a while ago but got bogged down in the names and the history and the found family that Kestrel has gathered together in the Dregs and left it. But a few days into a holiday, with all my other TBR books either DNFd or read and reviewed I returned to this and devoured it. Absolutely brilliant. Dark, frightening, clever, twisty, with some romance chucked in too. I am sooooo glad this is the start of a series and I can't wait for the next one.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Available on Kindle+ and currently available for 99p at some ebook retailers.

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