Teller: a novel

Cue the conspiracy theory and the danger as mysterious shadowy figures try to get their hands on the manuscript and deck of tarot cards that go along with it. It's an exciting game of cat and mouse that travels through several interesting locales and gets pretty darn stressful near the end! I honestly don't know which part of the book I enjoyed more, the modern story or the historic one told through the manuscript translation. Both were equally compelling and I never wanted one to end so I could get back to the other story line. The story has an incredible scope from the Library in Alexandria through to Stalin and into the present day, always following the female descendants of the original seer who was the author of the mysterious manuscript.

It incorporates a ton of actual history without every feeling too bogged down with it. I personally love history so I was quite fascinated and I even learned of a few events that I didn't know about, like Caesar possibly being responsible for the burning of the great Library at Alexandria! I also was unaware of the city of Gundeshapur which was a huge intellectual center at it's height. All of this history is woven into the story of generations of strong, brave women, and a few weak and silly ones, and their psychic talents.

I really enjoyed my time with this book and I highly recommend it! I received this book for free through a Goodreads Firstreads giveaway but this has not influenced my review in any way. Aug 01, Lauralee rated it it was ok Shelves: One day, while helping her client, Theo, with an auction, she discovers an ancient manuscript that appears to be written during the time of Cleopatra.

Semele is excited about her latest find. However, when she reads the manuscript, she notices how unusual it is. The manuscript chronicles the events two thousand years after Cleopatra and seems to be writing this directly to Semele. As Semele ponders over this manuscript Actually, 2. Semele was a hard character for me to like. She did not have a backbone in her body. She never really took control of the situation. Her actions were very cowardly. She ran away from every problem that is facing her. She pushed her adopted mother aside and avoided her boyfriend because she was afraid to tell him quits.

She should have been honest that she didn't like him but Theo. Semele was also judgmental, selfish, and jealous. Thus, Semele was a frustrating character, and I didn't think she deserved a happy ending because she was mean to others. Ionna was interesting, but she was not given any depth. It never really explained how she could see beyond the future. Therefore, I could not buy that Ionna was narrating the events that happened in the future.

Overall, this book has romance, mystery, and action. However with all these elements, it was a bit underwhelming. The plot itself of the tarot cards was also never explained.

Book Review: The Fortune Teller by Gwendolyn Womack – benebell wen

It just pops up halfway and never really states how they were created or why they were important. The ending felt anti-climactic and the villain seemed very cartoonish rather than complex. The Fortune Teller has the makings of a great story. However, it never felt complete. Instead, it was very rushed. The ideas were never really explored. While the story is very fast-paced, it never fully gripped me. There needed to be complex characters, more explanation about origin of the tarot cards and how Ionna got her gifts as a fortune teller, and a more developed romance.

This was really a disappointment for me. However, The Fortune Teller did not meet my expectations. However, for those who wants to see Mrs. Jul 19, Debra Slonek rated it it was amazing Shelves: The author breathed life into her characters, which caused me to keep thinking about the storyline, even when I wasn't actually reading the book. I loved the many complicated and satisfying relationships; children and parents, best friends, co-workers, romantic pairings and enemies.

Semele Cavnow unearthed connections to her ancestors, both recent and ancient. She also developed and depended upon her natural gifts and talents as a seer. An ancient manuscript and set of taro Excellent storytelling! An ancient manuscript and set of tarot cards were such integral parts of the story, almost becoming main characters themselves.

The manuscript provided links to the past, present and future. It provided wisdom, warnings, answers, insight and hope. It also helped to prepare the intended reader for difficult situations and heartbreaking losses. This book is rich in history and filled with connections between characters spanning several generations and even centuries. I love when characters are voracious readers, hang out in libraries and are very imaginative. A deeply satisfying read, filled with well developed characters and imaginative adventures. Jun 16, Alyssa rated it it was amazing. Gwendolyn Womack's first novel, The Memory Painter, is one of my all-time favorite books, and The Fortune Teller, her second, did not disappoint and cemented for me her status as one of my favorite authors.

Extremely well researched and absolutely fascinating, this is a novel that it is easy to tear through. All the information about the tarot was of particular interest to me. Part thriller, part supernatural mystery, and part romance, this novel has everything I like in a book! Apr 13, Jaymie rated it liked it Shelves: This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.

To view it, click here. I gave this 3 stars for being fun and interesting. I love history so that was a fun aspect. However the history was too much of the book. I also spotted many holes in the story that maybe the author could see the reasons for certain things but forgot to share them with the reader. Also the love story was severely lacking. Why were Semele and Theo meant to be? A little passion but too short lived to be a big romance. Also Semele is kind of an idiot. Why on earth would she just hand over the tarot cards to Cabe..

She kept doing things that I thought were not smart. Why the pretend auction? Waste of time and money. I could go on but at the same time I ignored a lot of the problems in the story and that way I enjoyed it more. It was a fun and easy read. Sep 06, Marie rated it really liked it Shelves: Ancient and historical libraries throughout millennia!

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Prophecies, seers, and magical realism, oh my! It's an unlikely blend, but it made for one page-turning adventure. In many ways this reads like a Dan Brown novel, only with a female protagonist, and spanning from ancient Alexandria to present day.

Which is to say, it's not literary fiction, and there are a few frothy moments, but it makes for a fun and fast-paced read. I especially liked visiting all Ancient and historical libraries throughout millennia! I especially liked visiting all those famous libraries in my mind throughout the great empires of history.

As with many dual timeline novels, the historical sections are where this book really shines. But in this case, the present day scenes really helped with the pacing, and kept the story clipping along.

I really enjoyed this book--it's a great vacation read! In addition to collecting tarot deck If you are fascinated by the thought of the Great Library of Alexandria AND the Tarot AND historical fiction, then this book will fulfill--or at least satisfy--some of those interests. In addition to collecting tarot decks, I have always drawn my own as taught to me by my grandmother when very young , so the story that unfolds is quite authentic. The characters past and present ones woven together are believable; the plot is exciting and never boring; and the information on manuscript collecting is a bonus.

This is a 5-star read! May 05, Margaryta rated it it was ok Shelves: Rose in the way that young men in 18th-century Europe sought to form connections with influential figures, drawing on a respected and admirable lineage. The novel promises its reader suspense, romance, and secrecy, with a possible glimmer of genre intersectionality, all of which I found incredibly appealing and which drew me to it. The backbone of the novel is its protagonist Semele Cavnow, who quickly becomes underwhelming and problematic within the first few chapters.

She is presented by Womack as having a carefully crafted persona, the expert manuscript appraiser, only thirty-two, remarkably young for her achievements. She dressed in high-fashion vintage, wore only mascara and lipstick, and sported a sleek Ziegfeld bob that looked straight from the twenties. This was the main issue in the novel: The Fortune Teller makes history the victim of the same kind of privileged tone that characterized the present plotline.

There are not many such passages, but those few that are there stick out to a reader who is familiar with history and is likely to see the patchwork quality of the prose, like in this case: The Book of Optics demonstrated how to create two-dimensional pictorial representations of three-dimensional space. It was at these moments that my hope would rise.

Instead, it was caught up in impressing the reader with the familiar, and rather melodramatic, story that leans toward overreaction and carefully placed descriptions of luxury and comfort. Even the use of the tarot card names for the chapter titles felt flimsy. Predictable and familiar in all the places where it could have been emotional and impactful, it delivers a selective and dramatized version of history that feels scripted. The past and present are segregated in a way they should not be, the former used to support the latter in a way that differs from the organic tone in the novels of Dan Brown and M.

Right now INTERACT can only accomplish this slowly and with a limited vocabulary, but this AI project will probably go a long way toward making the world even smaller in the very near future. Researchers in computer vision at CMU have developed a camera that actually records 3-D information. That is, at 30 frames a second, it can record not only what the scene looks like, but how far each "pixel" is from the center of the lens.

This kind of camera has fabulous uses not only in entertainment, but also for robotics, industrial virtual reality, and a host of other fields. History teaches that people in general and scientists in particular are horrible at predicting the future. There are two very different kinds of difficult problems in science. The first kind of scientific goal is difficult to achieve because achieving it would contradict a law of physics.

Making a room temperature perpetual motion machine is a good example of that; such a machine violates the second law of thermodynamics.

Teller: A Novel

Artificial Intelligence is in the second category, not the first. There are plenty of people who say that AI falls in the first category, that AI has set itself an obviously impossible goal. They are entitled to their opinion, but my opinion is that a failure of the imagination does not constitute a proof. How soon can we expect to meet him in real life? The realistic answer is that it could be tomorrow and it might be never.

Neither of those extremes is particularly likely, though. The answer to your question depends very much on what you mean by "Edgar. These predictions are behavioral predictions, mind you. My work as a scientist in the field of artificial intelligence obviously had a tremendous impact on the course and details of Exegesis. In particular, the issue of the ways in which a software entity might really be close to human is a serious scientific question that I did not ignore.

The Fortune Teller

That being said, the novel is not meant to be scientifically or socially prophetic. If Exegesis has a prophecy hidden in it, that prophecy is about how we will cope with new science, not what that new science will be. In the novel I purposefully avoided answering that question because as a scientist I know better than to try to predict the future of science. Evolution is clearly one way to produce human level intelligence.

There is now a serious branch of AI that uses a form of artificial evolution in the computer to evolve complex computer behaviors. What does the recent victory of Deep Blue over Garry Kasparov mean for the future conflicts between people and machines? We still remember some of the great moments in flight: Wilbur and his brother at Kitty Hawk, Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic, Yeager going faster than sound, Apollo 11 on the moon, etc.

Deep Blue has not officially earned the title of "best chess player in the world," but it probably will soon. Around , the machine earned our respect for its strength. John Henry won the spike driving contest but, dying at the climax, clearly demonstrated the future of physical prowess was with the machine. There is a good chance that the majority of people on this planet will live to see a generation of computers whose actions demand that we afford them not just the intellectual rights Deep Blue recently won for them, but the moral and personal rights our society is much less inclined to give away.

The first time was the Copernican revolution. Over time, most of society has come to accept that being human can be valuable without our planet being in the center of the astronomical universe. The second time was the Darwinian revolution. The uncomfortable truth that most of us now living will need to deal with before we die is: About Exegesis —————————————————————— Date: Inspired by Your Browsing History.

Under the Feet of Jesus. By and large, the present day characters fell flat. Had Womack framed the story arc around Ionna, with present day Semele as the secondary character, the book would have been stronger. The Fortune Teller is a luscious and enchanting read.

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