I read this years ago when I was eleven or so and reading all the Anthony I could get my hands on. Most of the trilogy is really a series of different Histories Of Tarot, playing with the different narratives of it. Anthony did a reasonably broad bit of research, and couldn't resist info-dumping it on the reader. (Compare and contrast this with his book Steppe: in the foreword to a later reprint, he admitted that his overt intent in this SFnal retelling of the life of Genghis Khan was, well, to slip a bit of world history under his reader's barriers. The giant Tarot history infodump may have been just as deliberate.)
It was mostly just another mildly clever bit of science fantasy from Antony, before he hit upon just the right chord in Xanth. It did, however, leave a few nuggets of basic information that made it a bit easier to pick up more detail later in life. I cannot for the life of me remember how the story ended but the game of 'clothespin' still lingers.