It did not go unnoticed that when we handed the pairings over to you all to create your Booster pack, you were often drawn to myth as your literary works. This not only created incredible, diverse card pairings, but it opened us all up to a core element of great storytelling: where we pull our inspiration from…

For example, when we look at the long list of amazing books we love, it’s easy to see that so many of them were influenced by myths and fairytales. From Neil Gaiman’s mythology-soaked American Gods to Rebecca Roanhorse’s retelling of Navajo folktales in Trail of Lightning, so many amazing novels owe their origin story to our authors’ fascination with ancient lore. Hell, Sarah J. Maas’s bestselling Thorn and Roses series was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein retells Prometheus, and Daisy Johnson’s Booker-Nominated gem, Everything Under, is a retelling of Oedipus Rex!

Since Brink is all about diverse perspectives, we’d do exactly what we did with the Classic Editions and bring together a diverse group of 78 authors to pair each card, but we’d also push to get myths from across the globe, leaning into all the fun of learning about other cultures as well as creating a unique way to view each card!

Wasn’t it great to see all those classics? But don’t you want some books that were written in the last 100 years? Hey, us too! This deck would follow the same model as the Literary Tarot: Classics Edition, but would include books written after 1924 (like Lord of the Rings, The Handmaiden’s Tale, Beloved, etc.)

This project will take longer than the other pitches (as it will be a legal rights landmine), and very well might be completely impossible (getting hold of rights for author estates is…dubious), but we have an amazing team of pro-bono attorneys that could chip away at this baby (or rage quit when we suggest this to them).

But think of the radness. The terrible eye of Sauron could be our Tower! Yossarian could be our Fool! Janie Crawford could be our Empress! The unnamed narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man could be the Hierophant! The possibilities are ENDLESS.

Yeah, you read that right. Seems crazy, but bear with us. There are a lot of rad animals in literature. Some of them we saw in the classics edition (like Moby Dick and Poe’s black cat), but think of Aslan the Lion from Narnia and those eagles from LOTR. Each animal (anthropomorphized or not) plays a critical role in so many great pieces of literature.

Each of our 78 authors would be assigned a tarot card, and then given free rein to find a literary animal that represents those themes. Puss in Boots as the Wheel of Fortune? Cheshire Cat as the Moon? And for the Lover’s card maybe…actually, that one’s really hard. Charlotte and Wilbur? Mrs. Frisby and her late mouse husband? I’m sure our authors can come up with something better than our caffeine-riddled brains can!