Cardslinger
1881. He thought the game had died with his father four years earlier, but when Mythic shows up in a traveling salesman’s inventory, Jason “Shuffle” Jones is stunned. Mythic is a strategy card game Shuffle and his father made up. The artwork and rules are all exactly the same, causing him to believe his father must be alive. When bandits attack his home and leave behind a cryptic message, Shuffle knows he must take matters into his own hands to uncover the message and the mystery behind his father’s disappearance. With his faithful cat as a travel companion, 12-year-old Shuffle will journey across the country from Missouri to California to make his family whole again.
The book opens to a playful map of Shuffle’s travels, setting the tone for the book early on. During the highs and lows of the journey, humorous card player metaphors are dealt out with Shuffle describing moments like he’s reading characteristics off a card. Shuffle is a hopeful, caring, determined boy who quickly learns things are not as simple as he first believed. Assisted by Atalanta, a feisty cowgirl he meets along the way, Shuffle will cross paths with an assortment of people during his series of non-stop adventures. Casually sprinkled into the mix are tongue-in-cheek newspaper articles which thread a few chapters together. I don’t often read westerns, but this story had me hooked with its enticing characters, sassy prose, breakneck pace, and card playing panache. “Magic the Gathering” meets the Wild West in this rollicking middle-grade adventure. Game on!
