I had very high expectations of this deck from the beginning, because I have seen previous work by Donaldson and Pracownik, the designers of the Dragon Tarot.  However, while the artwork on this deck is technically good, due to the fact that the card is made for role-playing card gaming, the picture area is small and a lot of the details are probably lost to the scale.  There are borders around the pictures, with symbols related to the gaming aspect, as well as small explanations of the card's relation to the Tolkien characters in the story.

This deck not only includes the Lord of the Rings, but also the Hobbit and the Silmarillion, so I think they would have been better to call it the Tolkien Tarot.  However, it seems to me that the design of this deck was done by people who didn't read and/or understand Tolkien's work very well.  While it looks nice, there are a large number of glaring technical flaws in the artistic design which show that among other things, they didn't understand Tolkien's anatomical concepts of the figures involved in the books.

For example, all of the hobbits shown in the cards (and a lot are shown) are wearing either shoes and stockings, boots, or going barefoot.  And their feet look like bare little boys' feet.  Now, everyone who is a Tolkien fan (I am one) knows that hobbits never wore anything on their feet, because their soles were thick and leathery and the tops of their feet were covered with a thick, brown furry pelt which kept them warm and which they took great pains to keep well-groomed.

Additionally, scenes which feature elves, dwarves and humans make it near to impossible to distinguish one of these from another.  As if Dwarves looked anything like Elves!  I just felt like a lot of the time Tolkien took to describe these beings in his many books was wasted.

I won't go into any further details on these technical flaws, because I could probably go on for hours about it.  However, the deck's presentation is very nice, if you haven't read Tolkien, so that does say something.

The cards all bear the traditional titles, suits and court cards are the standard ones.  The deck itself is of standard size and shuffleability.  The booklet that comes with the deck is a little thicker than most but since half of it is dedicated to the game, not the tarot, there isn't anything special about it.  There is a book that goes with the set which is very thick and comprehensive and probably goes into a lot more depth and explains the characters being chosen etc.

Someone less anal retentive about details might enjoy this deck.  I can't get my head around the technical flaws enough to enjoy it.  I would recommend getting the deck and book set before the deck alone though.

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also by Terry Donaldson and Peter Pracownik:
The Dragon Tarot

Review Copyright 1998 by Gina M. Pace