In honor of Andromeda Klein and Madame Sosostris, I’m breaking out my Tarot deck this April. It’s a Rider/Waite deck, so Andromeda would certainly approve. Like Andromeda, I didn’t have time to do a full Celtic Cross this morning, so I just thought about the day ahead and counted out ten cards to see what the resolution or outcome would be. I wasn’t thrilled when I found out.

The Ten of Swords doesn’t look like the happiest card to find in that position. Let’s see what Arthur Edward Waite, designer of this deck and Adromdeda’s imaginary pal has to say about it:

Yeah, I probably should have just stayed in bed. As a bonus, the card in position eight was the Two of Swords, a card that figures prominently in Adromeda Klein (seen here in the Eight Bit Tarot version.)

Finally, for a capsule review of Andromeda Klein, I’ll say that it took a long time to get going and get out of Andromeda’s head for any length of time, though perhaps that kind of hermeticism is part of the point. The last hundred pages or so are more what I hoped for from the book as she tries to negotiate a complicated tangle of relationships with those present, departed, and mystical. Despite some mixed feelings, it’s obviously a book that has stuck with me after I finished it, and I expect the character of Andromeda to be a mental companion for years to come.

Finally-finally, the Andromeda Klein theme song! (That’s what you get when your creator, Frank Portman, sings for a punk band when he’s not writing YA books.)

Edit: Ha! I just realized that–according to the jacket of Andromeda Klein– the book that Andromeda’s friend, Daisy, used to hide her tarot deck is none other than Portman’s first novel, King Dork. There are fragments from pages on the back cover, and the page showing through just a bit on the front cover behind the cards is page 301 of King Dork. Neat.