Magic and Gambling — A TERRIBLE Mix! “Vegas Knights” by Matt Forbeck
Greetings and hallucinations, ladies and gentle-geeks, and welcome back.
We’ve all seen those kinds of movies: someone always has a system to beat the house, to clean out the casinos, and get out alive. But what if that system was backed up with magic; not slight-of-hand or illusions, but real magic? And so begins Vegas Knights.
Bill Chancey has talked his best friend Jackson Wisdom into taking their freshman Spring Break in Las Vegas. While Bill has visions of living the high life independent of his family, Jackson is looking for extra money to defray his college costs and taking some of the pressure from his grandmother. (He lost his mother during Hurricane Katrina, his father taking off soon after.) They are determined to use their knowlege of magic, thanks to a professor at their college, to win as much money as possible before returning to the cold of Ann Arbor.
Of course, when two amateurs come up against the house and professional players alike, someone always gets caught. In this case, when both are also using magic, things become even more dangerous.
Add a potential romance, family drama, necromancy, a rival magic casino, and figures out of history, and the reader is in for one heck of a ride.
The tag (“Ocean’s Eleven meets Harry Potter…”) intrigued me last year when I bought the book. I tried to imagine The Boy Who Lived as a 19-year-old man trying to use magic in a Muggle casino. (Hint: it was not at all like I expected.) Told from Jackson’s point of view, he learns what it means to be part of a magical mob. Unlike A Criminal Magic, magic and magicians hide in plain sight as stage illusionists, making the rest of the world believe that real magic doesn’t exist. In that sense, Las Vegas became the de facto capital of magic, if only so all the magicians could keep tabs on each other.
In the space of less than 300 pages, the character development is surprisingly fast, and the pace follows suit. You wind up learning more about the history of crime and criminals in Vegas than you ever expected in an urban fantasy. You also encounter unexpected figures from the history of magic itself.
Forbeck also included the origins of the book — as a card game similar to Magic: The Gathering. After the main story, you can continue to read the origins, and thank goodness that changes were made between the game concept and the book it became.
Thank you for reading my ramblings, my dears, and I hope to hear from you. If you’d like to recommend a book for me to read and review, or even need me as an editor for your own work, please leave a comment or contact me.
In the meantime, keep reading, keep writing, and never give up making your own magic. Be well.