As someone who has deep ethical issues with the way neural net organizations, nonprofit and for profit corporations, have without any model for consent or remuneration scraped at this point likely hundreds of thousands of living artists (and many more of dead artists whose estates are still in effect) portfolios to create the datasets that form the bedrock of their neural net algorithms, I am extremely pleased to see you support human artistry in this way even as I still abstain from purchasing any of the products you've made since getting on this neural net illustration kick. I want to put my money where my big mouth is on this issue and ENTHUSIASTICALLY support one of my favourite creators in the OSR space when I get a chance to do so in a way I feel is ethical, especially when it's a product of as high a level of quality as this one (and I eagerly await book 2 and beyond based on the quality herein)! I appreciate that you at least give the option to support human artists and I, for one, don't mind paying a higher price point for works of yours with commissioned art compared to the lower effort and lower cost (and frankly aesthetically unappealing to me, though that's separate from the ethical concern entirely) neural net illustration. So many creators who have switched to neural net prompt engineering do so entirely, which always saddens me as I don't feel I can support them any longer even when the quality is otherwise good. Your quality is very often quite excellent, so I was beyond thrilled to see this option. Please do more like it! And again, on the quality of the text, just amazing. This is exactly the level of quality I have come to expect from you, really can't emphasize enough how much I look forward to further entries in this series!

I have seen so many different iterations of Pamela Colman Smith's artwork cleaned up or made to be higher fidelity redraws in various ways for various releases from US Games Systems and Etsy sellers and others, and this is hands down my all-time favourite take on her original artwork of any deck.

The deep respect for the history of this very first printing and all its imperfections gives it so much charm and realness, I cannot gush enough about it. I have one of of the US Games Systems decks (the one in the boxed set with the tiny Pictorial Key by Waite and the Celtic Cross diagram insert) and it just pales in comparison to this one. I hope to see more pre-1909 tarot and tarrochi decks by C in London, absolutely fabulous work with incredible attention to detail and VERY affordable, the price point might be the most astonishing thing about their decks thus far and I applaud them big time for making things accessible to people who don't have massive tarot budgets.

I was hoping for some longer adventures, but for what it is (i.e. "encounters" moreso than adventures) it's actually quite good. The three-parter is barely one adventure though, and it would've been better I think to see two or three adventures of that length for each tier rather than a series of super brief encounters, but again for what the product is claiming to be the encounters are good hooks to sprinkle in...but even still it'd be nice if there was a lot more of them if they're going to do a book of encounters? So it's hard to give this a 4/5 even tho the quality is probably around there just because either this needed several more encounters to feel worth the price or, what would have been better IMHO, should've been a book focused more on adventures than encounters to pair with the Wayfarer's Guide. Hopefully there's one like that on the way!

I was going to write a review now that I've read the entire thing (and revisited a few sections more than once) but reading Nausicaä H. and Dave D.'s reviews I realize they pretty much said everything I would've wanted to say and more!