Star Spinner

Trung Le Nguyen is a comic artist and the Star Spinner reads like one: fairytales, myths and picture-book imagery drawn with the clarity comics demand, where a panel has to communicate before the reader consciously decodes it. The archive calls it attractive, almost pretty, which is accurate and slightly undersells the craft. Sweetness is a real design decision in tarot and an unfashionable one. A deck this warm loses some of the tradition's harder edges, and readers who want the Ten of Swords to look like the Ten of Swords may find it soft. What it gains is approachability, plus a visual vocabulary drawn from stories most readers already carry, which does a great deal of interpretive work for a beginner. It suits new readers, people who came to tarot through comics and illustration, and anyone who wants a gentle deck without a vague one. Readers who need the darker cards to look dark should test it first.