Dark Forces #9 Eyes of the Tarot and #10 Beat the Devil

In Dark Forces #9, Eyes of the Tarot, Bonnie is told by her grandmother to put the deck of old tarot cards back in the trunk.  Bonnie disobeys and takes the cards home.  She learns to use them and finds that she is an expert.  Bonnie has dreams in which the characters shown on the cards interact with her.  Soon, Bonnie realizes that she is in grave danger and that an evil magician is using Bonnie and the cards to return to power.

I enjoyed this book.

In Dark Forces #10, Beat the Devil, Doug loves video games.  One night, Doug wanders into a new video store in a deserted part of town.  The owner has only one game to sell, Beat the Devil. In the game, the player must beat the devil or have his soul consumed by the devil.  Doug quickly becomes obsessed with the game as the devil begins to take control of his soul.  Doug's only chance is to finally win the game—to beat the devil.

The cover of this book is fun.  It shows an old 1984 computer.  The game icons are displayed above the computer and are so delightfully accurate as to how lame game icons looked in 1984.

This story plays off of the belief many people have that video games are bad for children and teenagers.  In this book, a video game is actually bad, so bad that it is evil.  I love it!

Doug describes the colors in the game as brilliant and much more impressive than what he has ever seen in a video game.  I was thinking about how games looked in 1984, and somehow, I don't think it would take much to impress someone from 1984.  That is, I don't think a game from 1984 with "brilliant" colors would come close to what we have now.

This is an excellent book.  I always enjoy the ones that feature dated computers and applications.

I have created a Facebook group for enthusiasts of vintage teen books such as the ones reviewed in this post.  Please follow this link to join.