mlle ghoul's fairy tales from the shadows

I try really hard not to read reviews of my books because I believe reviews are for readers, not authors, and what people have to say about my books is kinda none of my business! But! Curiosity overcame me, and I just had to check and see if there was even a single early review for The Art of the Unknown out there in the world...and there is! And it's pretty great! I have the reviewer's permission to share it, so I put my janky Canva skills to work and tried to make it pretty, heheheh. I have copied it below as well and many thanks to @lalaisreading over on Instagram for the thoughtful review.

✦•┈๑⋅⋯ 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙰𝚛𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚄𝚗𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠𝚗 by 𝚂. 𝙴𝚕𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚑 ⋯⋅๑┈•✦

➝ • 3.5/5 ☆ •

☆꧁✬◦°˚°◦..◦°˚°◦✬꧂☆

This was such an absorbing little dive into the strange. It feels like wandering through someone’s personal collection of oddities and hidden corners, and the way each piece of art is paired with a short reflection works really well. The artwork is honestly my favorite part. There’s so much variety, and a lot of it was completely new to me, which made the whole thing even more fun to move through.

A few sections were less interesting for me, but honestly the unevenness weirdly works here. It’s a book you drift through, picking up bits of history, weird facts, and unexpected connections along the way. I enjoyed learning new things while also just soaking in the visuals.

I wanted a little more depth in a few places, but overall it’s a beautifully curated look at the uncanny and the offbeat, and I really enjoyed it.

☆꧁✬◦°˚°◦..◦°˚°◦✬꧂☆

If you like:

If you’ve been thinking, “Buy your new book? In THIS economy?” well, I have some excellent and exciting news!

My upcoming book, The Art of the Unknown, is available for a 25% pre-order discount at Barnes and Noble if you’re a Rewards Member! Sign up to become a Rewards Member (it’s free!) and pre-order my book online between June 23 and June 26 with the promo code PREORDER25 to get the discount. Premium Members get an additional 10% off!

The world we navigate daily is only the palest precipice at the edge of, well…everything.

Beneath, beyond, between it all lie chasms upon corridors upon catacombs of spatial marginalia we have failed to notice or chosen not to see: the vast, unmeasured wilderness beneath our feet, the vaporous spirit world peering from beyond, the humming, thrumming space between dreams, the distance between newborn and dying stars.

I assembled a companion playlist to my new book, The Art of the Unknown, and it sounds like this: a shimmering sidereal lullaby, jazz noir bleeding into a pulsating wound of ominous dread, the Stendhal syndrome scored for strings, the ritualistic choir of the body in extremis, the echoing reverb of palindromic mirror worlds, the incantatory clocklessness of Afrofuturist jazz. It contains a ballroom that survives the dissolving shipwreck of memory, electronic music built from pure sine waves for a universe in its first three minutes, before matter and light separated, the moment before anything became anything, and twenty-one minutes of slow electronic drift that pools like November fog in an abandoned stairwell. A trombone played in an underground cistern by seeping stone seraphim. A coastal field recording that captures moonlight shadows creeping slow.

A sonic curation for entire worlds — worlds beneath the skin on our bones and the lightless bottom of the ocean, beyond the final named star and the glittering edge of heaven, between the infinite and the unbearably intimate shadow and the soul.

I recently wrote about building my own personal curriculum to better understand 1) the ideas and concepts around the term “hauntology,” and 2) wrap my head around Julia Kristeva’s writings. But it occurred to me that I’d be terribly remiss if I didn’t mention my own books in terms of creating some courses for self-learning!

I put together a (hopefully very shareable) slideshow of graphics about how each book might assist in studies of the arcane & esoteric, the darker side of life, and the fantastical, and how you shouldn’t skip the visual component when you’re deepening your understanding of this, that, or the other thing. (Coming from a rather lazy student, I mean obviously more pictures and less words is the way to go hehehe.)

If you’ve been online lately, you’ve probably seen people talking about “personal curriculums,” essentially, self-directed courses of study built around whatever you’re genuinely curious about. Instead of following someone else’s syllabus, you’re creating your own path through a subject, pulling together books, films, essays, art, music, whatever feeds your particular obsession.

It’s a beautiful way to learn, and it’s having a moment because people are hungry for depth, for expertise that comes from genuine interest rather than algorithmic recommendation. You get to be both student and curator of your own education.

I love this concept because it’s exactly how I’ve always learned: following threads of interest across mediums and disciplines, building connections between visual art and literature and history and folklore. It’s also, not coincidentally, how I approach curating my books. (It’s also a good reason to buy new notebooks!)

Which brings me to this: if you’re building a personal curriculum, here’s where my Art in the Margins series fits.

Studying the occult, symbolism, or esoteric art history?

The Art of the Occult belongs in your visual studies. From theosophy and kabbalah to the zodiac and alchemy, from spiritualism and ceremonial magic to the elements and sacred geometry—this book brings together artists who have been drawn to these unknown spheres and created curious artworks that transcend time and place. Whether you’re learning tarot, diving into the history of magical practice, or exploring Hermetic traditions, you need the visual language that goes with it. These works stem from a soul-deep desire for truth and awareness, revealing the hidden rules of nature and our world through imagery that has haunted and inspired across centuries.

Exploring Gothic aesthetics, melancholy, or the beauty of darkness?

The Art of Darkness is your visual companion. This book celebrates artists who have been obsessed with darkness throughout history—creating works that haunt and horrify, mesmerize and delight, and play on our innermost fears. From dreams and nightmares to matters of mortality, from depravity and destruction to gods and monsters, these artworks indulge our greatest fears while asking: what comfort can be found in facing our demons? Why are we tempted by fear and the grotesque? If you’re studying Victorian mourning culture, exploring Gothic traditions, or simply trying to understand why certain aesthetics speak to something deep within you, this is your sourcebook. Denial of our darkness leads us to fear it….better to create a connection with our shadows and revel in all the inspiration and wonder we may find there!

Deep-diving into fantasy worldbuilding, mythology, or the fantastic?

The Art of Fantasy gives you the visual language. Artists have explored imaginary worlds and fantastical creatures for centuries, expressing the unreal and impossible, the mystical and mythical through paint and illustration. This book presents a compendium of artworks inspired by myth, fantasy, and the unreal—from beasts and beings to forgotten realms and wonderlands, from dreams and magic to faith and philosophy. If you’re studying folklore, reading epic fantasy, learning about mythological traditions across cultures, or working on your own creative worldbuilding, these visual flights of fancy and imagination show you how artists have conveyed the vast swathe of hopes and dreams in our collected hearts. Fantasy is not simply an escape from reality…it is the irresistible impulse that reveals hope and wonder in us all.

Whatever you’re studying, visual art deepens your understanding in ways that text alone cannot. It shows you how ideas manifest aesthetically, how concepts become tangible, how symbolism operates visually. The artists in these books are thinking deeply about their subjects, creating work that’s in conversation with history, mythology, spirituality, and culture across centuries.

If you’re building your own curriculum for any of these subjects, please don’t skip the visual component! These books are resources, and they’re meant to be referenced, returned to, absorbed alongside whatever else you’re studying.

A smattering of artful tidbits from the chapters of my forthcoming book, The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny and Unexplained, due into this world on September 1 and available for preorder now.

A smattering of artful tidbits from the chapters of my forthcoming book, The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny and Unexplained, due into this world on September 1 and available for preorder now.

 A smattering of artful tidbits from the chapters of my forthcoming book, The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny and Unexplained, due into this world on September 1 and available for preorder now.

A smattering of artful tidbits from the chapters of my forthcoming book, The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny and Unexplained, due into this world on September 1 and available for preorder now.