At first glance you’d be reminded of the Old Book Of Lore from the 2016 core set.

But due to several small differences (limited uses, free trigger, and mandatory draw of weaknesses) this is actually Mr Rook in book format. And when you get some use out of it you’ll remember the upside (free draws but you only pay 1 action up front!) as well as the downside (seeing weaknesses).

And you’ll also see the upside to the downside. You’ll tend to get the weaknesses in your deck resolved early and on your terms rather than in middle of a crisis. And those are free bonus draws rather than dead draws. Highly recommend for any deck that can take it.

Just judging this card on a Core Set 2026 run, I don't like it.

It's very expensive to get rid off, 2xp stings if your group can't reliably get all the relevant victory points, and while Joe can draw like crazy, his resource generation is lacking, and a lot of the good cards, right now, are expensive.

You also don't have the always-on money maker that is Dr. Milan, and instead you have the pre-nerfed Dorothy Simmons, whose money generating powers are much narrower.

It's definitely a play around weakness - you can probably keep 5 Resources open towards the end of the game - but it's still very feelsbad in my eyes.

Also, again, in the Core Set 2026 context, I'll say that one of the best cards Joe has access to, Unbridled Knowledge, is essentially dead in your hand until you found this weakness, because you absolutely aren't gonna play a 5xp card on the high chance it'll fizzle because of the "cancel the effects of the search" text.

9.5/10 because Lita Chantler is on the card! I want to play Isabelle Barnes just so I can shuffle this back into my deck and see the heroic Zealot once more. (Also, Guts is pretty good on Isabelle due to Mystic access)

Great ally for a mystic Lola. Any time you are a mystic, you can do a quick check on the top card of your deck to make sure you don't have your weakness coming. If it is, you don't even need to tuck it - you can just change to a role that has no assets on the table and eat it.

I have played this card to a 7 damage action and a few 5 damage actions. It took some set up though. First I played with Jim Culver and took Katarina Sojka as one of my spirit cards. Then with Nkosi Mabati and a sigil of I could reliably fish for the skull once per round by looking for any symbol and given an didn’t show up via Katarina Sojka I could succeed with my as a 0 and then deal 3 damage. This is scalable by using Eldritch Inspiration up to 5 and 7 depending on how many you have in hand. It’s worth noting that this is possible with standard Jim but I played with parallel back and standard front. All in all it’s a good card (especially with 5 charges) but only if you’re planning on having it do most of your fighting and you’re willing to spend some time getting it ready. At 2 resource cost it may not be the worst idea to brand it with Eldritch Brand to make this combo a bit more reliable to play. That being said I would only take this card as a support fighter and not as a main method of dealing damage.