The first thing I thought when I saw this deck and book set was that Linda Goodman was most famous for her astrology columns and horoscope books for the masses; I didn't know she had passed away (she died in 1995), and I didn't realize she hadn't been directly involved in this deck's creation.  The set comes in a well-made glossy-covered lidded box and includes a clothbound hardcover book and a set of 33 cards which are printed in wonderful color and embellished with gold inlay on the numbers, titles and borders around each image.

Because this is an astrology and numerology set rather than a tarot set, there is no Major or Minor Arcana, no suits or court cards.  Instead, the cards are an intriguing blend of traditional astrology in the form of planets and heavenly bodies, combined with tarot concepts (just a few, used sparingly) and metaphors/archetypes.  Numerology features heavily in the way these cards are used, but Linda Goodman favored Chaldean systems so bear in mind, it may not work the way you are accustomed to.  One thing they all bear in common: every single one of these cards is breathtakingly beautiful.  It also seems so easy to use that I wonder if I am not missing something.  Can it really be this simple?  Yes, the author claims, it is that simple, and straightforward.
 
The book which comes with the deck recommends several different ways of working with the deck; a variety of spreads are given, but you can also just draw a card for insight and meaning.  As you look through the book under each card, the glossy pages reveal not only a description of the card's significance, but its divinatory meaning, and a reflection on the meaning and how it applies in general.  This is more meditative in focus.  Depending on which spread you use, and how you are using the cards, you read one or more of these sections.
 
The cards themselves are beautiful.  Standard sized, but since there are fewer of them, extremely easy to shuffle and handle.  They are printed on this really excellent thin flexible stock that is just wonderful to work with.  The gold letters, numbers and borders also score a plus.  They are coated with a thin but glossy protective coating.  The back design shows an outer space kind of scene with planets.  One of the byproducts of the gold foil border is that you can see the imprint of the border from the other side.  However, you can't see the image itself.  The back design is not reversible.  Since this comes with a book, there is no little white booklet.  In fact, the book contains my only disappointment with the entire set, and it's really a silly one.  The publishers go to such great lengths to produce a gorgeous set here, the book is cloth-covered hardbound with glossy pages, but they use flat-looking black and white renditions of the card images to illustrate it.  At this point, having gone all the rest of the way there, I would have used full color images in the book.  But perhaps this is because of the artwork itself; some images might not have suffered by being used in black and white.  The artwork is rendered in full warm color and so it doesn't translate to black and white well.

I can very heartily recommend this deck and book set for anyone who is looking to work with astrology in the form of portable, easy-to-use cards.  Obviously a deck of cards, no matter how well designed, is never going to be a real substitute for learning how to do all the charts and everything from scratch, but this is rather like the arguments for and against bread machines.  Obviously a bread machine is no real substitute for baking bread from scratch, but not everyone's needs are best suited to baking from scratch.  Likewise, these cards, or other astrology cards like them, may be what is just right for your astrological needs.  Definitely worth trying out, and for the collector of beautiful cards, a must have.  They are packaged well enough to make a lovely gift, as well.
 
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Review Copyright 2001 by Gina M. Pace
 
Linda Goodman's Star Cards by Crystal Bush and Frank Riccio, 2000
published by Hampton Roads Publishing Co, Inc.
ISBN 1-57174-185-2