This tarot deck, which was a new offering for 2000, appealed to me strongly right from the first moment I saw pictures in the catalog.  I *knew* I had to have a copy of it.  It took me a long time to get a copy, however, because the US Games catalog came out last summer but the deck was not available for a couple of months after the catalog came out.  Still, when I got it, I eagerly opened it up to get right on it.
 
I found that, like many decks, there were a lot of cards I liked, and many cards I completely disliked.  The deck's artwork is consistent in its overall look, but there is a vast disparity between the various cards in the deck.  Some have a lot more to look at, and others look like they barely put half an hour's time into creating the deck.  I'm sure I'm not going to make any friends over this review, but I have to be honest and say what I felt when I looked at the deck.  I know from my work in creating this website that you can make a template from which you simply edit and save each successive work; with most of the cards in this deck, that's the feeling I get; the card's design was saved as a template, and each successive card was simply edited and re-saved.
 
The gradient background on each card is a different color, and whatever item or icon is the central focus of the card, is centered in the image and is given a very attractive effect which makes it look like light is shining out from behind it.  But just the first three cards in the deck are a perfect example of why I don't like this deck, before you even go deeper into the deck.  All three have the same gradient background and light-effect look; the Magician has this background color in purple, and the *only* thing on the card is a yin-yang done in red and black, centered against this purple.  Very uninspired-looking.  The High Priestess, one of my favorite cards in the deck, has the gradient background in a teal-blue type color, but there is a woman silhouetted against it and the light effect is outstanding as it shines out from behind her.  She has the seven chakra points highlighted against her in the traditional manner and colors, and it's just a wonderful card.  (This is one of the cards you see in the catalog, incidentally.)  Third, the Empress card, which has the gradient color in an orange-tone and features a pyramid centered on the card with a hot sun blazing overhead and two palm trees peeking out from behind it.  Looks nice - except they are computer clip-art generated and I really, really hate clip-art.
 
Don't think I'm justified yet in being critical?  Go on to the fourth card, the Emperor, which is identical to the third one except no trees and it's red, and has that yin-yang from the Magician superimposed on the pyramid.  If I was working with a graphic arts program, I could have just done all four of those cards in little longer than it took me to write this review so far.
 
Now, don't misunderstand me.  The quality of the work in this deck is excellent.  It's very professional looking, and many people do ascribe to a "less is more" philosophy and will find this deck a wonderful addition to their collection, either working decks or just for the art.  However, I think the best work in this deck is on the backs of the cards.
 
The cards in the Major Arcana pretty much follow standard Golden Dawn titling and ordering.  Each card is pretty much all taken up with the image area.  A narrow white border goes around them.  The title for the card is floated in white letters right against the image area towards the bottom.  Don't worry, there's never any artistic detail obscured by this.  In the upper left corner the Arabic numeral for the card is featured, along with the astrological symbol for the card.  There are a few departures from tradtion in the titles, but not far off the mark so nobody will be confused by the Hanging Man (instead of the Hanged Man) or the High Priest instead of the Hierophant.  Death has been renamed Rebirth, and the Devil is now Deliverance.  (I will refrain from any movie jokes here.)  Justice is 8, and Strength 11.  The Fool is numbered 0 and is placed, in this deck, at the end of the Major Arcana instead of the beginning, though with a number 0 you can pretty much stick him wherever you want.
 
The Minor Arcana is especially nice in this deck.  Each suit features a different background which incorporates color use and imagery to demonstrate the various elemental connections for the suit.  For example, the suit of Swords, which is AIR, has a lovely blue sky and white fluffy clouds effect.  Personally I associate yellow with air more than blue, but hey, blue skies and clouds certainly fit.  However, this leaves the following colors for the other suits: Green for Water/Cups, Red for Fire/Batons, and Orange for Earth/Coins.  The designs of the numbered cards themselves does not feature scenes but simply an arrangement of the "icon" which the designers have chosen for that suit.  Air/Swords has a clear bubble-looking thing, Fire/Batons has a yellow flowery thing, Water/Cups has a really pretty rainbow colored starfish, and Earth/Coins has a green maple leaf.  On each successive pip card, then, the same icons are rearranged to create new graphic and geometrical arrangements, but there is a similarity in each number across the four suits.  For example, all of the Twos feature a yin-yang arrangement of whatever icon it is.
 
The court cards are equally disappointing.  They feature gradient backgrounds simply matching the color of whichever suit they are for, and show, for the Prince and Princess cards, a raying circle of light, with a face within it.  The faces are the same for all the suits.  The Princess looks like a small girl and the Prince a small boy.  Just the features of the face are visible.  The Queen and King are more distractingly done, showing a face of a woman and a man successively, but they have been digitally altered to reproduce the face three times together so you get a face with six eyes, three noses and three pairs of lips.  Still featured within a raying circle of light, I find it very weird to look at, and not one bit intuitive to the meaning of the card for a reading.  Not everyone may feel that this is the case, but I felt it quite strongly.
 
The cards themselves are shorter and squarer than standard tarot card size, and are printed on the usual good US Games card stock.  I've really never had a single problem with the print quality of US Games decks that I can recall.  The glossy coating is never enough to make the cards sticky, and, while they are slightly slippery, that will become less of a problem the more broken in they are.  The edges are smooth and the corners rounded nicely.  This deck would be fairly easy to shuffle and handle, the more so as it breaks in.  The back design is really gorgeous and looks like a celestial zodiac kind of thing.  The little white booklet is printed on glossy paper and is actually very nicely laid out and looks good.  It explains the divinatory meanings but does not really explain how or why the image is supposed to mean what the booklet says it means.  The meanings were kind of sketchy and I can't imagine having to do an entire reading having only them to rely on.  No spreads are given.
 
I recommend this deck more for an advanced student of tarot rather than a beginner, due to the lack of information given for the meanings.  Someone who is new to tarot will not have any assistance from the images themselves as to what the meanings are; needing to rely on the book, they will find an equal dearth of information there.  The overall presentation of the deck is nice and for a collector might be just the thing.  A person accustomed to working with a Marseilles style deck may find this deck just the thing for them, and a Golden Dawn student might like the flexibility that the spare images offer.  Overall, this is not a deck I'd recommend without cautions, and it's not my style at all.
 
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Review Copyright 2001 by Gina M. Pace

One World Tarot Deck by Crystal Love and Michael Hobbs, 1999
published by U.S. Games Systems, Inc.
ISBN 1-57281-250-8