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Last Call  By  cover art

Last Call

By: Tim Powers
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
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Publisher's summary

Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player 20 years ago and hasn’t returned to Las Vegas, or held a hand of cards, in 10 years. But troubling nightmares about a strange poker game he once attended on a houseboat on Lake Mead are drawing him back to the magical city. For the mythic game he believed he won did not end that night in 1969—and the price of his winnings was his soul. Now, a pot far more strange and perilous than he ever could imagine depends on the turning of a card.

Enchantingly dark and compellingly real, this World Fantasy Award–winning novel is a masterpiece of magic realism set in the gritty, dazzling underworld known as Las Vegas.

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©1992 Tim Powers (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“A dizzying, stimulating magnum opus.” ( USA Today)
“Brilliant! Compelling and satisfying! Tim Powers is one of our best writers, and Last Call is his best book yet.” (Raymond E. Feist)
“Distinctive and commanding…a strikingly inventive novel.” ( Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Last Call

Average customer ratings
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    5 out of 5 stars

Powers is Under-represented on Audible

One of the most ineteresting and lieterate fantasy writers of the last 30 years. This is an excellent listen.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fans of American Gods will like this one

This is an excellent story. The world is rich and dark. It reminds me a great deal of Gaiman's American Gods and that is a good thing. The characters are well developed and I like how they involve the supernatural with real world people and events.

Bronson Pinchot does the narration and he is one of the best. This is something different from the standard urban fantasy fair and you well definitely enjoy it.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Deal me in

What a great book. if you like "American God's" (neil gaiman) or "Dark Tower" (stephen king) this book is in the same neighborhood. Excellent narration, captivating story, worth the credit or the cash.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A good book!

I have been debating writing this because I wasn't sure I could add anything worth knowing about the book in my review! But I will try in the spirit of "sometimes anything is better than nothing at all". Here it goes:
It was a good book but not near as good to me as one of my all time favorite books by any writer "On stranger tides". It is interesting with lots of good characters but a little too much bad language for my taste. The reader did a great job and I even think he fit this book better than "On stranger tides". The story seems to be well thought out and you will need a pretty good memory to remember who is who through out the book. You have no need to like gambling (I dont) to like the book but gambling is a huge part of the story but it is not gambling quiet like any of us has ever tried or ever will! I wont say anymore about that so as to not give away too much. I consider Powers to be a very talented and smart writer and I think the reader may need plenty of the latter to enjoy his books to there fullest.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Powers Rocks

Tim Powers is neither sci-fi nor fantasy (at least no in any conventional sense), he writes very interesting stories where impossible things happen. In Last Call, he's mixing cold war spy stories with old school middle eastern mythology, and pulls it off brilliantly. Pinchot would not be my first choice for this book but he does a very good job.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

5 STAR BOOK MEETS 3 TO 4 STAR READER

I love this book. I have read and reread it many times. Wonderful characters in a very original situation. It can be hard to follow but it is completely worth your patience. Bronson Pinchot does a decent job narrating.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Great Listen

A great book with excellent narration. Glad Tim Powers has made it to Audible and hope to find more in the near future, esp. Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather (the sequels to Last Call).

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

not for the faint of heart

Any additional comments?

tim powers is awesome but dark and deep especially in audio. have a light on and someone there to hold your hand in the spooky bits... and make sure you have enough time. you wont want to put this book down!

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Don’t Let Anyone Make Any Assumptions

When your mother warned you not to play poker with Tarot cards, this is exactly what she was afraid of. Typical Tim Powers weirdness accompanies this extraordinary novel populated with ordinary people in the most strangely supernatural circumstances. This novel has a lot of common elements with Powers’ later novel THREE DAYS TO NEVER: set in an earlier decade of Americana, where cigarettes are smoked in every public gathering, characters changing bodies to prolong their weary existence, alcohol used to alter the connection to the spirit realm, but here in LAST CALL it all has an unforced harmony that is lacking in the later book. As in most Powers novels the story gets very complicated as we get to know the characters and then begins to come together as it approaches the climax, feeling somehow like an inevitable force of nature.

Bronson Pinchot has very good voices for all the quirky people and sometimes goes over the top as is required by the story. He helps make this a very entertaining audiobook.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Suspending your disbelief isn't enough

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Nothing could lift this to that level.

What was most disappointing about Tim Powers’s story?

The lack of any association with credibility. Characters that are supposed to be crazy strive to be so crazy that they aren't believable in any sense. This feels more like an plot outline strung together by stream of consciousness verbiage than a cohesive story. It seeks to be be intellectually entertaining but just keeps being weird, outlandish and unbelievable. He never develops the story, the history or the "magic" enough for you to buy into the things that he has happen to the protagonists. Feels like a bunch of dungeons and dragons guys sat around saying "what if next everything is ....." and tried to weave it into a plot.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

The main character seemed accessible and engenders empathy.

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2 people found this helpful