Chrysalis

Holly Sierra's illustration and Toney Brooks's writing made the Chrysalis one of U.S. Games's notable 2014 releases: a seventy-eight card deck organized around transformation, the chrysalis of the title as the standing metaphor for every reading's real subject. The archive review dwells on production, reversible backs, generous card size, quality stock, and that attention is apt for a deck whose publisher's craft standard is much of the buying case. Reversible backs are a small design ethics: they keep a drawn card's orientation unknowable, which matters to readers who use reversals and signals the deck was designed by people who actually read. Sierra's style runs warm and folkloric, transformation rendered as invitation rather than ordeal. It suits readers who organize their practice around growth and change, admirers of painterly mainstream decks, and reversal-using readers who notice the backs. Those who want transformation with more shadow in it, the Metamorphosis or the darker shelves oblige.