A New Tarot-Inspired Fantasy World
The Tarot Trials
The Tarot Trials
Epic Fantasy, Action & Adventure Fantasy, Fantasy Action & Adventure
Tor Books
October 20, 2026
Ebook, Audiobook, Hardcover
400
The deck has always been stacked against her.
Kestrel has trained her whole life to compete in the Tarot Trials. Her mother won once, earning a place among the five ruling Cinque—then paid for it with her life, executed for alleged treason against the Minor Court.
But fortune favors the bold.
Now it falls to Kestrel to take up her mother’s mantle as Champion of the Moon, enter the Trials, and face her fate. If she can master her new powers of shadow and illusion, navigate the poisonous game of alliances and lies, and corner the fellow Champion who dealt the killing blow to her mother years ago, she may uncover the truth she’s seeking without losing her head… or her heart. But in the Trials, betrayal is a question of when, not if. And winning the game isn’t about what she must do to win, but who she needs to survive.
Deadly magic from the old gods
Katee Robert creates a unique fantasy world in their latest release, The Tarot Trials. Blending tarot-inspired magic with The Hunger Games, this novel delivers a deadly competition, fascinating magical abilities, and a fantasy world unlike any I’ve encountered. Despite a few pacing issues, I’d recommend giving this new series a try.
I admit I struggled a bit to get invested in the story at first. Robert builds a complex city-state with multiple layers of power, including old gods, royal courts, guilds, and councils. The story opens with the Trials, an event held once every twenty-two years to determine the top five champions among the twenty-two gods. Each champion must first fight for a place as their god’s avatar before battling the other champions in nightly, deadly contests to survive. That alone gave me plenty to follow.
But the champions must also navigate alliances with several royal courts—Cups, Pentacles, Swords, and Wands—as well as guilds named after precious gems. There may be an inherent order to this world rooted in tarot symbolism that I would better understand if I knew more about tarot readings. I’m a novice when it comes to tarot, so it took me much longer than anticipated to wrap my mind around all the players and their roles in the larger game.
Once the Trials began, however, the plot picked up speed and became action-packed. Each champion receives a unique set of magical abilities from their god, and this was probably my favorite part of the book. The Chariot draws power from his momentum, brutally running down his enemies. The Fool can transform into a clawed monster, while the Star poisons her opponents with nothing more than the lightest touch of a gloved hand. How cool is that?
I especially enjoyed watching Kestrel discover more about her own magic each night while navigating shifting alliances and battling other champions to survive until dawn. She is a solid FMC with grit and heart.
The fast pace continued until the final battle, but the extra chapter at the end took some of the punch out of the conclusion. Robert used it to answer lingering questions about Kestrel and her family, but I felt those explanations dampened the energy of an otherwise thrilling ending.
Despite a few uneven moments in the pacing, The Tarot Trials was an enjoyable read.
Celeste is a woman who is unwavering about certain things in life; three of those being books, cats, and cold brew coffee. If she can enjoy all three at the same time, it’s going to be a good day. Her favorite genres are fantasy or sci-fi romance, historical romance, and historical fiction but every few books she likes to mix it up with contemporary fiction, a good psychological thriller, or an inspiring memoir. She has a busy schedule working full-time for an online university but she makes sure to unwind each day with stories, either by reading to her elementary school-aged daughter or tucking herself in bed with her Kindle or the latest book she picked up at a local book store.
