Great book offers up fine card game

This review is a bit different.

To begin with it arises out of the novel Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding – the first book in Tales of the Ketty Jay.

I happened upon Retribution Falls when I read somewhere online it was somewhat in the vein of novels based on a favourite TV series of mine: Firefly.

The suggestion is bang on in terms of flavour, a crew of misfits with a spunky captain and delivered with a hearty dollop of humour – I am most definitely buying book #2 (The Black Lung Captain) on my next order.

The book is definitely in the steampunk vein, and while one catches only glimpses of the world – the book focuses on the efforts of the crew – the opportunity for the three other books in the series to be good seems high.

But you are wondering how this fits into a game review?

Well on several occasions Wooding references a card game called Rake in his writing. In story the details of the game are rather scant – other than it is a card game played for money – so poker of a kind.

Its mention in-book would be easily forgotten except for there being actual rules for Rake in the back of the book.

So there are 52 cards – 13 of each of four suits; Wings, Fangs, Crosses and Skulls.

The face cards are priest, lady and duke.

Yep its familiar – but you have to expect some book flavour too.

The Ace of Skulls is the key card. If you have it in hand as part of a combo you basically win the hand. If not used you lose no matter what else you have.

Players – two-to-eight but six is supposed to be optimum – each ante up a predetermined amount and are then dealt three cards each, and bet on those based on basic poker hands.

Then cards are played to the table two per player – one face up, the other face down.

Starting with the player to the dealer’s left players select a card – then when all have their fourth card then another betting round.

Then players in the same order pick a fifth card – there will be extra cards likely as players fold.

Then another round of betting – until no one wants to add more to the pot.

Sure it sounds a lot like Texas Hold’em but it is worth a try.

Of course this is not the first game to emerge from a book.

Jetan, also known as Martian chess, is a chess variant first published in 1922. It was created by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a game played on Barsoom, his fictional version of Mars. The game was introduced in The Chessmen of Mars, the fifth book in the Barsoom series, noted Wikipedia.

And, again from Wikipedia there is the modern classic Tak a two-player abstract strategy game that first existed fictionally within Patrick Rothfuss's fantasy trilogy, The Kingkiller Chronicle, before being brought to life by James Ernest in collaboration with Rothfuss, and published by Cheapass Games in 2016.

Rake isn’t at the level of either Jetan, or Tak, but as an avid reader and board game player it is a neat find to try.