Victorian Romantic

Magic Realist Press, the Prague team of Karen Mahony and Alex Ukolov, built their reputation on decks that look like recovered objects rather than new products. The Victorian Romantic applies that method to nineteenth-century romantic imagery and the period's flower symbolism, a coded language the Victorians took seriously enough to publish dictionaries for. That gives the deck a second symbolic layer running underneath the Rider-Waite-Smith structure, which is more than most themed decks attempt. The risk in the house style is that an antiqued finish can flatten everything into a uniform sepia mood, where every card is atmospheric and no card is distinct. When it works, the floral vocabulary sharpens the reading rather than decorating it. It suits readers drawn to Victoriana, anyone interested in flower language as a symbolic system, and collectors of Magic Realist Press. Readers who want visual variety card to card may find the sepia unrelenting.