Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.
He's a ruthless, battle-scarred warrior with a dark past, and she's stuck pretending to be his wife to save a fantasy kingdom.
From New York Times bestselling author Kristin Cast comes a new tarot-inspired fantasy series. Scarlett St. Clair meets Outlander in the seductive and spellbinding world of Towerfall, starting with The Empress, a high-heat, fake marriage romantasy with a swoon-worthy, morally-gray love interest.
Tarot has captivated storytellers, mystics, and everyday people for centuries, with the earliest known tarot decks dating back to 15th-century Italy. They were originally used to play a card game called tarocchi and had nothing to do with fortune telling or fate, but that changed in the 18th century. In 1789, French occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette applied for a patent to publish a French edition of Livre de Thot, a guide to the theory and practice of ancient Egyptian magic through tarot. This publication elevated tarot and made it available to the masses, leading to the practice of using the Tarot deck for divination and fortune-telling.
Many still look to the Major and Minor Arcana for guidance, inspiration, and a way to interpret the events of their lives (and sometimes just for fun). Tarot makes a fascinating device in fiction, where it can be used not only for narrative structure but as the foundation for complex worldbuilding. In the science fiction and fantasy novels below, tarot is a tool for both divination and self-discovery. The cards are used to shape magic systems and plot characters’ journeys, to reveal their destinies, and to make sense of the chaos and uncertainty they encounter along the way.
Before we dive in, a few notes. This is an SF/F list that leans heavy on the F—there is some science fiction here, but most of the reads I found with tarot in them were works of fantasy. I also found diversity lacking when researching sci-fi and fantasy reads involving tarot, with most of the books I came across being by white authors. The good news is that I did find two YA fiction reads by authors of color to recommend to you today. Both of these books are forthcoming, so mark your calendars now. In March, look for Camila Nuñez’s Year of Disasters by Miriam Zoila Perez, where Cuban American teen Camila’s latest tarot reading seems to predict a year of doom. In May, look for Death in the Cards by Mia Manansala, the YA debut from the award-winning author of Arsenic and Adobo about a high school tarot reader whose latest client has gone missing.
Now, let’s get to these cards.
Adult Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels Involving Tarot
The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
This is the latest entry in Harkness’ All Souls series that began with A Discovery of Witches. Diana is an Oxford scholar and reluctant witch who finds a missing alchemical manuscript and then falls in love with a vampire, thrusting her into an age-old inter-species power struggle. She and her vampire go on the run to trace the manuscript’s origins and figure out why so many would kill to possess its missing pages, sending the couple on an adventure through time and places like Oxford, the French countryside, the Northeastern US, and Elizabethan England.
If you haven’t read the first three books in that series, you’ll want to do that before diving into The Black Bird Oracle (spoilers ahead). When the Congregation demands the twins be brought in for examination, Diana visits her great-aunt to understand her own power better. In hopes of protecting the children from whatever lies ahead, she embarks on a dark path of magic that her mother once pursued with a magical oracle deck to guide her.
Magician and Fool by Susan Wands (Arcana Oracle #1)
This historical series fictionalizes the life of Pamela Colman Smith, a 20th-century British-American artist, writer, and occultist who created the Rider-Waite tarot deck. Pamela has newly arrived in Victorian London and finds work illustrating tarot cards for a recently formed occult group. A controversial magician named Aleister Crowley demands she share the cards’ power with him, threatening to harm her muses if she refuses. This blend of history and fantasy introduces readers to a magical version of real historical figures as Pamela sets out to find a way to defeat Aleister.
The Mask of Mirrors by M. A. Carrick
Ren is a con artist who fled the slums of Nadezra to save her sister. She’s returned now with a plan for sweet, sweet vengeance: she’ll pose as a long-lost relative to trick her way into a noble house to secure the fortune and status she needs to protect her sister. But Ren gets caught up in a web of magic, politics, and corruption that will bring her face to face with a crime lord, a vigilante, and other nefarious figures. The magic system in this book includes the use of pattern cards, a system of divination a lot like tarot.
The Labyrinth Gate by Kate Elliott
Newlyweds Chryse and Sanjay accidentally drop one of their wedding presents, a special deck of tarot cards, in an elevator. The lights go out as the cards hit the floor, and the couple is suddenly transported to a parallel world a lot like Victorian England, if you swapped the patriarchy for a matriarchy and added in some sorcery. To get back home, Chryse and Sanjay must find a treasure in the labyrinth city of Pariam—if the evil Princess Blessa doesn’t stop them first. The tarot cards, referred to as The Gates, are used to navigate Pariam, and as a bonus: the book contains an appendix that goes deep into the significance of each card.
Nova by Samuel R. Delany
Time magazine described Nova as reading “like Moby-Dick at a strobe-light show” and I don’t know if I can do any better! But since I must try, this space opera follows Captain Lorq Von Ray in his obsessive quest to harvest a “fabulously valuable” power source called Illyrion from the heart of an imploding star, all while locked in a deadly rivalry with a Prince Red of Draco, a rival political unit. Tarot is a major part of this galactic society, with readings being used to plot courses through space, and each major character is also associated with a specific card.
YA Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels Involving Tarot
All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’Donoghue
I have been listening to the Sentimental Garbage podcast for almost a year and only just figured out that one of its hosts wrote this book. Welp, time to read it! Maeve is cleaning out a closet while serving an in-school suspension at St. Bernadette’s Catholic School when she finds a pack of tarot cards. Now everyone at the school wants a piece of Maeve’s divination prowess, which is how she winds up pulling cards for her ex-best friend, Lily. When Lily draws a card Maeve has never seen before, the two get into a heated squabble that ends with Maeve saying she wishes Lily would disappear—and then she does. Shunned by her classmates and frustrated by the police investigation, Maeve uses the cards to suss out clues no one else can find.
Improbable Magic for Cynical Witches by Kate Scelsa
If you present me with a witchy sapphic contemporary romance set in Salem, I simply must read it. This one is about Eleanor, a seventeen-year-old who still believes in witchcraft and who lost her best friend and first love about a year ago. One day a mysterious package arrives at the witchy souvenir shop where she works, a handwritten guide to tarot seemingly meant for her. She wants to brush it off, but then an actual witch (and cutie) named Pix strolls into her life and all bets are off. She uses the cards to guide her as she tries to let Pix and her coven into her sad, sad heart, but first, she’ll have to reckon with the ghosts of her past.
Evocation by S.T. Gibson
As a teen, David Aristarkhov was a psychic prodigy under the thumb of his occultist father. Now he’s a high-powered Boston attorney, and The Devil has come to collect on an age-old curse. David would very much like to stay alive, so he reaches out to one of the only people he trusts: Rhys, his ex-boyfriend and current rival at a secret society. But it takes more than one person to break a curse, which means enlisting the help of Rhy’s wife Moira, too. The trio race to figure out how to lift the curse while coming to terms with how they all feel for one another. That could get interesting…As you may have guessed from the cover, tarot and divination are recurring motifs. Moira is a witch who uses tarot in her practice.
Bonus Pick
Lotería by Cynthia Pelayo
This pick is not about actual tarot cards but go with me. The cards at the heart of the stories in this wonderfully creepy collection are lotería cards, cards in a Mexican game a lot like bingo. That game is family-friendly and harmless (if you don’t count the scar on my left hand from an incident with my abuela—she don’t like to lose); but in Cynthia Pelayo’s hands, each card is the inspiration for a different story based on Latin American myth, folklore, urban legend, or superstition. It’s horror, it’s paranormal, it’s speculative, it’s weird and scary and great. It’s not tarot, but it is a really creative exploration of the meaning we attach to a little old deck of cards.
For more tarot-delated reading, check out this piece on the use of tarot in fiction, including Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies. We’ve also imagined authors as tarot cards and prepared a reader’s tarot spread.
English (US) · 