Review: The Tarot Nova

Statistics.

What: The Tarot Nova.

Who: Dennis Fairchild and Julie Paschkis

Price: Retails between $5 and $20.

Size: Deck is a smallish, but standard, square-ish size.

Where: I purchased my deck at Barnes and Noble as a kit, here is an Amazon.com link.

Rating: ●●●●○

Upsides: The deck is a smaller, but standard, size. It's incredibly easy to handle and read. The quality is very high and the artwork, while simplistic, is not completely beyond comprehension.

Downsides: The complete Fortune Telling Kit is not without it's shortcomings, due to it's "novelty gift" nature.

Style: This is a standard "tarot deck" in the Waite/Smith Style. The entire deck is done in a marker-art technique of brightly colored, simplistic, scenes and characters on a black background. The back image is a similarly styled floral and celestial motif.The cards are titled outside of the image and there is a generous border all the way around.

The suits, and the Majors, all have colored corners Majors (Purple) are Cups (Blue), Swords (Yellow), Pentacles (Green) and Wands (Red). All cards are pipped with small, complimentary, scenes

Tricks and Treats: It's a pretty standard deck, but one that's appropriate even for children - either to learn to read on, or to be read for with. It is more inclined to respond like a friend would - "He's greedy" rather than "This gentleman may not, perhaps, be the best to get in bed with financially. Winkwinknudgenudge."

Verdict: This is a little, handy, simplistic, non-scary deck that reads very well.

Rating: ●●●●○

Review: The Dee/Baker Tarot

Statistics.

What: The Jonathan Dee Tarot Pack

Who: Jonathan Dee and Shirley Barker.

Price: Retails between $0.01 and $20.

Size: Deck is a standard size, cards are thin and matte finished.

Where: I purchased my deck at Barnes and Noble as a kit, here is an Amazon.com link and one for the Book.

Rating: ●●○○○

Upsides: The deck is a standard size, the cards are fairly sturdy resilient. They are packaged with a thin, hardcovered, book with various meanings and spreads. The layout is clean and simple, easily readable.

Downsides: Tuck boxes are not meant for the long-haul and this one practically disintegrated. The thinness of the cards means they bend very easily - though I think a well-worn deck is a sign of practice. The book is fairly pointless, and at one time it was wrapped in black paper and used as a shelf (on top of candle holders) on my altar. ;)

Style: This is a standard "tarot deck" in the Waite/Smith Style. The entire style of the deck appears to be a pallette knife-work painting. The back image is er... swords, or reeds or stalks on a block-printed-looking background. Faces are the same pallette knife styled art on a flat background of a bright color, depending upon the suit. The cards are titled outside of the image and there is a generous border all the way around.

The suits are Cups (White/Yellow/Blue), Swords (Red/Yellow/Purple), Pentacles (Orange/Green/Yellow) and Wands (White/Red/Orange). Minors are pipped on the number cards, with additions ranging from tiny portraits to pictoral scenes alongside them.

Tricks and Treats: It's a pretty standard deck.

Verdict: This deck has never read for me worth a damn, so I can't really deliver much of a verdict there. It's very, very, very inexpensive. The art style also annoys me.

Rating: ●●○○○