Doomsday Deck

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Buffy book reviews)

DOOMSDAY DECK

By Diana G. Gallagher (2000)

RATING: 3/5 Stakes

SETTING: Third Season

CAST APPEARANCES: Buffy, Angel, Willow, Xander, Giles, Cordelia, Joyce, Anya

MAJOR ORIGINAL CHARACTERS: Justine Camille (tarot reader & artist); Rob Chambers (photo journalist)

BACK-OF-THE-BOOK SUMMARY: “It’s that time of the year for the Sunnydale Sidewalk Art Festival, and Buffy and the gang have been enlisted to help Joyce prepare for the big event. In fact, Xander’s especially eager to pitch in, due to the arrival of a major hottie--a young artist named Justine. She specializes in Tarot paintings, and tells Xander that she senses much energy surrounding his aura. Xander naturally assumes his latent psychic powers have been awakened. But Buffy’s not quite ready to call the psychic hot line. She has a nagging suspicion that something about Justine is not five by five--especially after she reaches for Justine’s prized Tarot deck, which causes the artist to fly off the handle in a big way. Then there’s the fact that vampires appear uncomfortable in Justine’s presence. One by one, each of Buffy’s closest friends seem to be surrendering their free will to an unknown, unseen force. . . .”

REVIEW

If nothing else, Doomsday Deck contains a great insight into how Xander perceives his relationship with Buffy: he’s like an extra stake in her back pocket, “handy to have around, but not irreplaceable.” Xander’s sense of himself as a relatively extraneous, snack-gathering appendage to the Scooby Gang was a major aspect of his characterization until the end of Season Six, and author Diana Gallagher portrays this insecurity well in the first half of her novel.

The plot of the book is developed better than in many other Buffy novels. Doomsday Deck acknowledges that the reader will inevitably point to any major new character as the villain of the piece, and instead develops an air of mystery around exactly what her malevolent plans are and how they will unfold. In short, artist and tarot-card reader Justine Camille plans to trap one human soul in each of her 22 tarot paintings to fulfill an ancient book’s prophecy that doing so will give her heart’s desire (in this case, becoming a famous artist in New York). There’s also a rather trite and undeveloped use of Kali (Goddess of Chaos) thrown into the mix somewhere, but the book focuses on Justine’s visit to Sunnydale and her inevitable conflict with Buffy and Co.

Along the way, of course, several of Buffy’s friends get their souls trapped in the cards and Buffy has to race against time to free them before their bodies die.

The end of the novel suffers from an over-long climax, and the backstory as to how Justine found the book and decided to use the cards should have been fleshed out more (a failing common to many Buffy episodes, where the supernatural villain or device appears out of practically nowhere and is never seen again after the story is over). The dialogue is passable but lacks the witty one-liners of a good episode. On the other hand, the use of tarot cards is integrated well into the story, and many of the readings that Justine performs for the Scoobies are intriguing. Fans of Buffy’s mom (a.k.a. Joyce) will also be pleased to see the more active role the character takes in helping her daughter.

All in all, Doomsday Deck is one of the better middle-tier Buffy books, and a good example of how to successfully use something in a story (tarot) that could easily have come off as gimmicky and stupid.