RAVENS IN THE LIBRARY: Magic in the Bard's Name (A Review, Part III)
You guys remember Ravens in the Library, right? If you're not sure what I'm talking about, allow me to sum up: S.J. Tucker, traveling musician and fire-spinner extraordinaire, became terribly ill this past winter and had to undergo several very expensive medical procedures. Unfortunately, she did not have health insurance (which is the lamentable lot of many, many people in this country); what she did have, however, were amazing friends (writers, editors, and artists among them) and fans who created and bought a benefit anthology to assist her in paying off her medical debt.
Ravens in the Library is that anthology. It is a limited edition collection edited by SatyrPhil Brucato and Sandra Buskirk, available only until Tucker's medical expenses have been covered. This is my review: specifically, the third part. Click on the following links to read the prior sections of this review: [ Part I] [ Part II]
As important as the stories to Ravens in the Library is the artwork: visual artists were part of this community that came together and donated their pens and paints and finished art to the cause of rescuing S.J. Tucker from overwhelming medical debt. (Note: Although this anthology only evidenced the participation of editors, writers, and artists in the "Save our s00j !" campaign, you only have to visit the saveours00j community to discover how musicians, Tarot readers, knitters, balm-makers, etc. also bound together in support.)
James A. Owen (of Imaginarium Geographica and Starchild fame) turned out an awesome cover set for the anthology: his image of ravens cavorting in a library while books fly about captures the whimsy of the titular song beautifully. While his brother Jeremy colored the cover set in dark and appropriate hues accentuating James' penwork, even James' simple inked drawing is excellent in itself (as you can see paired with Tucker's song in the opening pages of the collection). Owen also provided an illustration for Valente's "The Ballad of the Sinister Mr. Mouth," perfectly capturing the menace and style of that macaw-headed pirate.
Bryan Syme, tattoo artist from Seattle, provided the playful yet macabre illustration "The Ominous Toaster" to accompany Neil Gaiman's story. A simple push-lever toaster lurks in the foreground, while a scene in stark black and white of dark and stormy night tropes (complete with murdered brother and raven-watching-a-writing-desk) blaze forth from the background. While Syme provides another three pieces for the anthology, this is the best and most evocative of the story it depicts.
He works with the editor, Brucato, to bring us his second illustration "Hind and Seek" accompanying the songs "Creature of the Wood" and "Daughter of the Glade." A satyr and a nymph play hide and seek around a tree in this very competent illustration full of movement and mischief. His next illustation, for Storm Constatine's "Built on Blood," is entirely too busy, especially when squeezed onto a 9x6 page next to the story. (Also, I'm unsure where the upside down blazing car with punk demonic protesters came from. I don't recall that scene in Constantine's story.) In some ways, his last illustration ("Best Friends") for Brucato's "Ravenous" attempts to convey the most emotion and yet comes across the flattest. The expression in the faery girl's eyes is almost vacant, while the lounging posture of the angsty hard-rocker belies the sincerity of her tears.
Heather Keith Freeman, on the other hand, captures an amazing amount of mystery with her near cut-out silhouette style of depiction. "Mercury's Daughter," with its crooning be-corseted guitar-strummer starkly picked out before a black star-eyed bird soaring in the background goes much farther in capturing the powerful and eccentric spirit of S.J. Tucker than Dobyns' story "Out of the Box" (which it's meant to illustrate). Even her "Lifted By The Wind" piece, done in the same sillhouette style, almost perfectly evokes the tone of its piece, which is remarkable considering "Lifted by the Wind" wasn't actually drawn for Carrie Vaughn's "1977." It may be more evocative of a ballet dancer than a disco lover, but the sense of a woman transported by dance and life is undeniable. She also donated "Violissima," which accompanies Alexandra Elizabeth Honigberg's haunting piece "In His Own Image." This is the weakest of her compositions, for while the swirls she patterns into the design evoke and reinforce the viola that is the focal point of the illustration, the naked woman caressing her instrument reflects more the relationship between player and instrument rather than the relationship between maker and instrument which is the focus of the tale it accompanies.
Julia Jeffrey's contributions to the collection are breathtaking, although only one of the three pieces was specifically drawn for Ravens in the Library. " Willow Wand" accompanies Berk's "Missing Limb," and its ethereal, slightly melancholy impression of a nude and fey woman grasping several slender tree limbs lends grace to that somewhat incoherent story. Her "Huntress" -- a feral, intense, almost primitive woman -- is nearly over-powering to Duncan's "Kinderkochen" but still entwines with the story well enough to evoke the power of that tale's ending. It's her illustration for Seanan McGuire's "Lost" that is the most powerful, however; the melancholy gaze of the old man accompanied by the wistful clouds and the silhouette of a ship both longed for and feared is nearly without peer in the set of illustrations specifically drawn for the collection's stories.
Stephanie Pui-Mun Law donated some brilliant work as well: her "Autumn Music" composition inspired by Charles De Lint's "Ten for the Devil" is gorgeous. Staley in overalls fiddles in the wood, a fall wind swirling from her instrument bringing falling leaves, tinkling in the bottle tree, rustling the garments on the old scarecrow. It's a powerful and engaging pen and ink drawing. Her depiction of the lust of Cupids in Laurell K. Hamilton's story of the same name is delightful, a confection of round-cheeked cherubs and fluffy clouds ominously hovering above a fearfully cautious woman. Unfortunately, the delicately rendered lines of Law's drawings are done a disservice in this anthology, having been printed in a sketchy quality that lightened the line work.
Theo Black's photographic artwork is an interesting infusion of difference in the anthology's assemblage of artistic styles; he uses silhouettes to powerful effect in each piece, choosing to represent the moment of crux in each story. For Ballingrud's "You Go Where It Takes You," a faceless man and forlorn girl stare down an empty road; in Block's "Ice," a cold figure crowned in bare branches stands over the crumpled heap of a human form; for his wife Holly's story, "Heartless," a female shape radiating power stands over a fallen soldier while carrion birds wheel in the background. He has a gift for choosing the most important moment in a story to portray, although the photographic melange doesn't quite pack a powerful enough emotional punch for me.
Echo Chernik contributed two pieces: "Mercury" for the story of the same name (by Elizabeth Jordan Leggett) and "Piper" for Erzebet Yellowboy's "A Tithe for the Piper." Knowing the amazing quality of her work, especially in composition, I was disappointed with the simple roughness of her line-drawing for "Mercury" -- of Cora-Ann in aviators sexily posing against the hood of a classic car. Her rendering of Piper with its more complicated composition is much better: the lush and sensual form of the fey woman whose wild-blown locks help define the Piper's face amid all the blown leaves, insects, and butterflies of the background is magically evocative. I would have loved to have seen it fully clothed, so to speak, treated to Echo's amazing color sense.
Jenny Anckorn is an artist looking to break into full-time illustration and she's definitely one to keep an eye on: her depiction of the Court of Crows in their human guises cleverly captures the cruelty and self-absorption of those feathered fiends through facial expression, sweeping blacks, and wild lines. The small white patches in the flying tresses of the daughter in Midori Snyder's "King of Crows" is a subtle touch. Her piece for Windling's "The Color of Angels" reflects the ascendancy of angels infused with stars, the wild joy of night and the dancing of does, all primarily in white with a night sky backdrop. Her best piece, however, is "Lady Loss" accompanying Lipkin's "Fortune" -- the Tarot card style, the stark lines, the promise and threat of those empty showgirl eyes piercing the viewer, and the well-placed drug paraphernalia are perfect.
Amy Brown's "Believe Faery II" adequately syncs up with McCoy's "Pipsqueak" and the delirious, whimsical pixies of that story. Her illustration of Red-Handed Jill and Green-Eyed Sue from Tucker's "The Wendy Trilogy" captures the mischievous adolescence of those two Neverland pirates, but loses something with its loss of color. In fact, Amy Brown's art in general does not reproduce in grey tones very well. Her "Cloak of Stars" serves as the background image in a two-page spread for the Dedications, but is a jarring inclusion. Apart from the illustrations directly facing each story, the anthology is raven-themed and the sudden faery there is a surprising departure from that motif.
Chelsea Wright contributes one illustration to the collection: her inaugural publication, as it turns out. She manages to imbue the slender girl in "Thin Line" with a mystery matching that of Jaymi Elford's story, and her shading technique and framing pattern for the image are excellent. Unfortunately, there's a vacuous expression on the girl's face that not even the ridiculously over-sized hat can disguise. I look forward to seeing more of Wright's work, though.
W. Lyon Martin's single illustration is the most disappointing piece of art in Ravens in the Library. I am familiar with and fond of Martin's art through the whimsical and playful illustrations she did for Tucker's Rabbit's Song. The piece she delivered on Nutick's "The Substance of Things Hoped For" suggests that she neither closely read the story nor lingered overlong on her drawing. Considering the depth of pathos and intricacy of the depicted world she had for material, it would have been nice to see a piece more evocative of the whole.
That's it for the artists! Before we leave the graphical arts behind, however, I'd like to take a moment and address the anthology's overall design:
Sadly, the design of this book left much to be desired. The reproduction of the artwork varied, with pieces like Stephanie Pui-Mun Law's delicate penwork looking rough. The pictures that fared the best were the ones that were stark blacks and whites, although Julia Jeffrey's charcoal-like drawings and Theo Black's photographs also reproduced pretty well. The worst design flaw regarding the illustrations, however, lay in the fact that the majority of the images took up the entire page rather than being scaled down and appropriately framed. This potentially results in people having to break the spines of their books to lay the picture flat in order to appreciate the whole piece.
I found the practice of having a full page for each story's title to be poor design, preferring the title of the story to head the page upon which said story begins. The use of a second font for Neil Gaiman's story was annoying, and thankfully something not perpetrated on the rest of the book. (Having Leggett's "Mercury" in alternate fonts, for example, would have made the tale more maddening than it already is.)
The faded crow-prints crossing various pages was a cute conceit in parts of the collection, but over-used (especially on the title page, rendering it entirely too busy). The faded close-up details of Owen's cover-work on some of the end-papers was an excellent choice, though, as were the little trios of flying ravens that served to denote story divisions throughout. The covers as well were brilliantly designed, with fantastic font use.
We are finally coming to the end of my surprisingly-thorough review of Ravens in the Library; I honestly had no idea it was going to be this long when I began composing the first part several days ago. There is only one section now that I wish to comment upon, and that is editor SatyrPhil Brucato's Introduction, "Voices, Magic, and Change."
This is a truly excellent introduction. It seeks to introduce you to S.J. Tucker, the brilliant musician and amazing person, and situate her in a generous and loving social context. It succeeds at this, but then goes beyond to address a truly heinous problem: the lack of affordable healthcare for so many across the United States, who don't necessarily have the same far-reaching and supportive community by which S.J. Tucker is blessed to be surrounded. Brucato illuminates this problem for us, then shouts forth a call to action: to be aware of each other, to be generous to each other, to take care of each other. Each other is all we have. I thank Brucato for his stirring words and I hope they warm the souls of those who read them... so that they, in turn, can spread that fire into the greater community, spreading love.
Other reviews of Ravens in the Library:
talkstowolves: Part I of my review. And Part II.
k_crow's review blurbs.
thewronghands' thoughts.
maverick_weirdo 's write-up.
jennifer_brozek's preliminary thoughts.
(Anyone know of any other reviews? Let me know and I'll add them here!)
Ravens in the Library is that anthology. It is a limited edition collection edited by SatyrPhil Brucato and Sandra Buskirk, available only until Tucker's medical expenses have been covered. This is my review: specifically, the third part. Click on the following links to read the prior sections of this review: [ Part I] [ Part II]
As important as the stories to Ravens in the Library is the artwork: visual artists were part of this community that came together and donated their pens and paints and finished art to the cause of rescuing S.J. Tucker from overwhelming medical debt. (Note: Although this anthology only evidenced the participation of editors, writers, and artists in the "Save our s00j !" campaign, you only have to visit the saveours00j community to discover how musicians, Tarot readers, knitters, balm-makers, etc. also bound together in support.)
James A. Owen (of Imaginarium Geographica and Starchild fame) turned out an awesome cover set for the anthology: his image of ravens cavorting in a library while books fly about captures the whimsy of the titular song beautifully. While his brother Jeremy colored the cover set in dark and appropriate hues accentuating James' penwork, even James' simple inked drawing is excellent in itself (as you can see paired with Tucker's song in the opening pages of the collection). Owen also provided an illustration for Valente's "The Ballad of the Sinister Mr. Mouth," perfectly capturing the menace and style of that macaw-headed pirate.
Bryan Syme, tattoo artist from Seattle, provided the playful yet macabre illustration "The Ominous Toaster" to accompany Neil Gaiman's story. A simple push-lever toaster lurks in the foreground, while a scene in stark black and white of dark and stormy night tropes (complete with murdered brother and raven-watching-a-writing-desk) blaze forth from the background. While Syme provides another three pieces for the anthology, this is the best and most evocative of the story it depicts.
He works with the editor, Brucato, to bring us his second illustration "Hind and Seek" accompanying the songs "Creature of the Wood" and "Daughter of the Glade." A satyr and a nymph play hide and seek around a tree in this very competent illustration full of movement and mischief. His next illustation, for Storm Constatine's "Built on Blood," is entirely too busy, especially when squeezed onto a 9x6 page next to the story. (Also, I'm unsure where the upside down blazing car with punk demonic protesters came from. I don't recall that scene in Constantine's story.) In some ways, his last illustration ("Best Friends") for Brucato's "Ravenous" attempts to convey the most emotion and yet comes across the flattest. The expression in the faery girl's eyes is almost vacant, while the lounging posture of the angsty hard-rocker belies the sincerity of her tears.
Heather Keith Freeman, on the other hand, captures an amazing amount of mystery with her near cut-out silhouette style of depiction. "Mercury's Daughter," with its crooning be-corseted guitar-strummer starkly picked out before a black star-eyed bird soaring in the background goes much farther in capturing the powerful and eccentric spirit of S.J. Tucker than Dobyns' story "Out of the Box" (which it's meant to illustrate). Even her "Lifted By The Wind" piece, done in the same sillhouette style, almost perfectly evokes the tone of its piece, which is remarkable considering "Lifted by the Wind" wasn't actually drawn for Carrie Vaughn's "1977." It may be more evocative of a ballet dancer than a disco lover, but the sense of a woman transported by dance and life is undeniable. She also donated "Violissima," which accompanies Alexandra Elizabeth Honigberg's haunting piece "In His Own Image." This is the weakest of her compositions, for while the swirls she patterns into the design evoke and reinforce the viola that is the focal point of the illustration, the naked woman caressing her instrument reflects more the relationship between player and instrument rather than the relationship between maker and instrument which is the focus of the tale it accompanies.
Julia Jeffrey's contributions to the collection are breathtaking, although only one of the three pieces was specifically drawn for Ravens in the Library. " Willow Wand" accompanies Berk's "Missing Limb," and its ethereal, slightly melancholy impression of a nude and fey woman grasping several slender tree limbs lends grace to that somewhat incoherent story. Her "Huntress" -- a feral, intense, almost primitive woman -- is nearly over-powering to Duncan's "Kinderkochen" but still entwines with the story well enough to evoke the power of that tale's ending. It's her illustration for Seanan McGuire's "Lost" that is the most powerful, however; the melancholy gaze of the old man accompanied by the wistful clouds and the silhouette of a ship both longed for and feared is nearly without peer in the set of illustrations specifically drawn for the collection's stories.
Stephanie Pui-Mun Law donated some brilliant work as well: her "Autumn Music" composition inspired by Charles De Lint's "Ten for the Devil" is gorgeous. Staley in overalls fiddles in the wood, a fall wind swirling from her instrument bringing falling leaves, tinkling in the bottle tree, rustling the garments on the old scarecrow. It's a powerful and engaging pen and ink drawing. Her depiction of the lust of Cupids in Laurell K. Hamilton's story of the same name is delightful, a confection of round-cheeked cherubs and fluffy clouds ominously hovering above a fearfully cautious woman. Unfortunately, the delicately rendered lines of Law's drawings are done a disservice in this anthology, having been printed in a sketchy quality that lightened the line work.
Theo Black's photographic artwork is an interesting infusion of difference in the anthology's assemblage of artistic styles; he uses silhouettes to powerful effect in each piece, choosing to represent the moment of crux in each story. For Ballingrud's "You Go Where It Takes You," a faceless man and forlorn girl stare down an empty road; in Block's "Ice," a cold figure crowned in bare branches stands over the crumpled heap of a human form; for his wife Holly's story, "Heartless," a female shape radiating power stands over a fallen soldier while carrion birds wheel in the background. He has a gift for choosing the most important moment in a story to portray, although the photographic melange doesn't quite pack a powerful enough emotional punch for me.
Echo Chernik contributed two pieces: "Mercury" for the story of the same name (by Elizabeth Jordan Leggett) and "Piper" for Erzebet Yellowboy's "A Tithe for the Piper." Knowing the amazing quality of her work, especially in composition, I was disappointed with the simple roughness of her line-drawing for "Mercury" -- of Cora-Ann in aviators sexily posing against the hood of a classic car. Her rendering of Piper with its more complicated composition is much better: the lush and sensual form of the fey woman whose wild-blown locks help define the Piper's face amid all the blown leaves, insects, and butterflies of the background is magically evocative. I would have loved to have seen it fully clothed, so to speak, treated to Echo's amazing color sense.
Jenny Anckorn is an artist looking to break into full-time illustration and she's definitely one to keep an eye on: her depiction of the Court of Crows in their human guises cleverly captures the cruelty and self-absorption of those feathered fiends through facial expression, sweeping blacks, and wild lines. The small white patches in the flying tresses of the daughter in Midori Snyder's "King of Crows" is a subtle touch. Her piece for Windling's "The Color of Angels" reflects the ascendancy of angels infused with stars, the wild joy of night and the dancing of does, all primarily in white with a night sky backdrop. Her best piece, however, is "Lady Loss" accompanying Lipkin's "Fortune" -- the Tarot card style, the stark lines, the promise and threat of those empty showgirl eyes piercing the viewer, and the well-placed drug paraphernalia are perfect.
Amy Brown's "Believe Faery II" adequately syncs up with McCoy's "Pipsqueak" and the delirious, whimsical pixies of that story. Her illustration of Red-Handed Jill and Green-Eyed Sue from Tucker's "The Wendy Trilogy" captures the mischievous adolescence of those two Neverland pirates, but loses something with its loss of color. In fact, Amy Brown's art in general does not reproduce in grey tones very well. Her "Cloak of Stars" serves as the background image in a two-page spread for the Dedications, but is a jarring inclusion. Apart from the illustrations directly facing each story, the anthology is raven-themed and the sudden faery there is a surprising departure from that motif.
Chelsea Wright contributes one illustration to the collection: her inaugural publication, as it turns out. She manages to imbue the slender girl in "Thin Line" with a mystery matching that of Jaymi Elford's story, and her shading technique and framing pattern for the image are excellent. Unfortunately, there's a vacuous expression on the girl's face that not even the ridiculously over-sized hat can disguise. I look forward to seeing more of Wright's work, though.
W. Lyon Martin's single illustration is the most disappointing piece of art in Ravens in the Library. I am familiar with and fond of Martin's art through the whimsical and playful illustrations she did for Tucker's Rabbit's Song. The piece she delivered on Nutick's "The Substance of Things Hoped For" suggests that she neither closely read the story nor lingered overlong on her drawing. Considering the depth of pathos and intricacy of the depicted world she had for material, it would have been nice to see a piece more evocative of the whole.
That's it for the artists! Before we leave the graphical arts behind, however, I'd like to take a moment and address the anthology's overall design:
Sadly, the design of this book left much to be desired. The reproduction of the artwork varied, with pieces like Stephanie Pui-Mun Law's delicate penwork looking rough. The pictures that fared the best were the ones that were stark blacks and whites, although Julia Jeffrey's charcoal-like drawings and Theo Black's photographs also reproduced pretty well. The worst design flaw regarding the illustrations, however, lay in the fact that the majority of the images took up the entire page rather than being scaled down and appropriately framed. This potentially results in people having to break the spines of their books to lay the picture flat in order to appreciate the whole piece.
I found the practice of having a full page for each story's title to be poor design, preferring the title of the story to head the page upon which said story begins. The use of a second font for Neil Gaiman's story was annoying, and thankfully something not perpetrated on the rest of the book. (Having Leggett's "Mercury" in alternate fonts, for example, would have made the tale more maddening than it already is.)
The faded crow-prints crossing various pages was a cute conceit in parts of the collection, but over-used (especially on the title page, rendering it entirely too busy). The faded close-up details of Owen's cover-work on some of the end-papers was an excellent choice, though, as were the little trios of flying ravens that served to denote story divisions throughout. The covers as well were brilliantly designed, with fantastic font use.
We are finally coming to the end of my surprisingly-thorough review of Ravens in the Library; I honestly had no idea it was going to be this long when I began composing the first part several days ago. There is only one section now that I wish to comment upon, and that is editor SatyrPhil Brucato's Introduction, "Voices, Magic, and Change."
This is a truly excellent introduction. It seeks to introduce you to S.J. Tucker, the brilliant musician and amazing person, and situate her in a generous and loving social context. It succeeds at this, but then goes beyond to address a truly heinous problem: the lack of affordable healthcare for so many across the United States, who don't necessarily have the same far-reaching and supportive community by which S.J. Tucker is blessed to be surrounded. Brucato illuminates this problem for us, then shouts forth a call to action: to be aware of each other, to be generous to each other, to take care of each other. Each other is all we have. I thank Brucato for his stirring words and I hope they warm the souls of those who read them... so that they, in turn, can spread that fire into the greater community, spreading love.
Other reviews of Ravens in the Library:
talkstowolves: Part I of my review. And Part II.
k_crow's review blurbs.
thewronghands' thoughts.
maverick_weirdo 's write-up.
jennifer_brozek's preliminary thoughts.
(Anyone know of any other reviews? Let me know and I'll add them here!)