Over at Pornokitsch, Jared read Vegas Knights and mostly enjoyed it. Unlike other reviewers, he didn’t care much for the chase scenes, but he really dug the mix of magic and gambling, especially the game Mojo Poker, which plays a huge role in the book:
Mr. Forbeck’s invention of “Mojo Poker” may be the best magical contest since Assumption. Above and beyond the pure fun of wizards duelling over the card table, Mr. Forbeck also uses the card game as a vehicle to demonstrate both cunning and sorcery.
He then sums up:
Vegas Knights has a core handful of intriguing scenes surrounded by a lot of self-consciously blockbuster icing. The latter, as crowd-pleasing as it is, is a shame. The book has the potential to be tense, low-key and subtle, but instead opts for brash flamboyance. Not unlike the city itself (which seems to be doing pretty well out of it).
Some of the other reviews have said the exact opposite of this. Those readers loved the chase scenes and the splashy stuff, but they found the card games tedious. To me, this means two things.
First, you can’t please everyone. Second, Vegas Knights is a book with a mix of sharp flavors in it, and not everyone is going to love them all. Hopefully, though, they’ll find enough to their liking that they enjoy the book as a whole.
