Number 55 - The Big Blind - Lavie Tidhar

 A poker playing novice nun enters a high stakes poker tournament to win enough money to save her convent...

That's the basic plot of this novella. 

I learned a lot about the ins and outs of competitive poker but it's fairly lucky that I knew the rules as there is no explanation of any of the terminology. Maybe it would have benefitted from an early scene in the convent where she explains the mechanics of the game to one of her fellow nuns. There is a scene early on where she plays cards against them for matches which would have been an ideal opportunity.

It's a very fast read and entertaining enough.  the back  cover says that this book is a meditation on faith, but other than Sister Claire thinking about her call to the convent for two or three pages, I'm not there's really much of that. 

It feels quite cliched to be honest and very formulaic, right down to the almost miracle on the final hand of the book. however it's an entertaining enough cliché and written well enough that I didn't really care.  There are a lot worse books than this where their clichés seem uninspired and tedious. 

Your enjoyment of this will probably depend on how many hands of cards you can read described before you glaze over.  For me, he gets the balance right.  Just at the point where I wanted him to move it along and talk about the people and not the cards, he did. 

The characters are probably what make this book. Claire's relationship with her two mothers, actual and superior, are very well drawn. There's a wry humour to be gleaned from the Mother Superior's change in attitude when she sees Claire on TV about to win huge amounts of money. the other poker players are mostly drawn in very broad strokes but are distinct characters in their own right.

So this is a well paced, pleasant little read, if a little bit generic. My biggest confusion is why PS published it as there isn't even the faintest hint of the slightest whiff of fantasy or science fiction about it.

My second book by Tidhar and the second time I've promised myself I must read more of his work.