Arcana The Lost Heirs

Brighton based freelance author-illustrator, singer and café owner Sam Prentice Jones spent his youth writing and drawing his own versions of his favourite books and comics but he always dreamed of creating his own graphic novel. His vision has now come to life with Arcana: The Lost Heirs, a fusion of joyful queer culture and community with the art of Tarot card reading. Set within the storyscape of a secretive society of witches, it plays with an ambitious structure.

Divided into 13 sections introducing a cosy cast of characters, inspired by real people, and prefaced with a different image, the narrative ties the themes of each tarot card to a plot with the covert Arcana organisation as its centre. Readers meet the Fool, representing New Beginnings, who discovers the Magician, James in a kismet moment, who introduces them to the Empress Koko, the High Priestess Daphne and the Emperor Sonny. This instant found family then becomes quickly embroiled in the fallout from the secrets and lies of the past. At the heart of it is a mysterious farmhouse on a hill reached through symbolic arched branches.

Skilled in digital, graphic and character-based work, Prentice-Jones portrays the mundane routines of the protagonists rear window style in wordless sepia, grey scale and coffee brown panels before introducing dialogue and emotive icy blue panels contrasting them with the bright shades of magic. Blends of frosty blue and black with full page bleeds of darkness represent raw emotion while warm colours convey happiness as we learn of the psychological states of the key players. This is punctuated with stalking dark spirits and fiery red flashbacks in slashes to the origins of a deadly curse.

Significantly, the traditional Tarot deck has 78 cards and this is the first book in the series, featuring foundational cards from the Major Arcana. Arcana: The Cursed Fate will follow in June, so different cards could appear. Consequently, the majority of The Lost Heirs is focused on character building, setting up back stories and hinting at skeletons in the cupboard involving the original magical rulers, the Founders, and their successors, the Majors.

Featuring a love of libraries, reading, coffee making, drag costumes and a character who cooks their emotions into food, this will appeal to fans of Gerlach’s The Restaurant at the Edge of the World, Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes, Oseman’s Heartstopper, esoteric fortune telling aficionados and teens looking for LGBTQ+ representation within fantastical worlds.