#ryuugi

(...)Simply put, Taylor believes that friendship is an amazing, priceless thing. She believes that extending a hand of friendship, in the right place and the right time, can save someone and change their life and that it's valuable beyond words, and that the bonds of that friendship can be unbreakable, that they can hold someone up even when all else seems lost, and survive when nothing else does. She believes in love and devotion and holding on. What she doesn't believe is that people will put aside their differences and work together if the world started ending, or that it would necessarily matter even if they did. Sort of like how Taylor loved her father and believed he loved her and believed in the value of that love--but didn't believe that going to her father would, say, resolve any of the problems that she was having with her bullies, which, to be fair, it didn't. She believes in love and while she doubted her feelings for Brian, she wished she could have loved him and that that love would have be enough--but deep down, she knew it wasn't. She believes in friendship and holds onto it forever, but couldn't rely on that in the end, either. Because deep down she knows--or, at least, 'knows'--that the way to effectuate change in the world is to dominate and destroy everything in her path, because that's the only thing that ever did. TL;DR: Taylor was born to be a 90s Magical Girl, but was taught to be a 90s Supervillain.”

Look, I’m not your typical reviewer of the Night-Bird’s Feather. I want to get this out of the way: I am not going to rave review about the deeper meaning of this story, in part because I’m just not intelligent enough, I think. But as a fond connoisseur of fairy-tales, even sometimes dark ones, and being marginally familiar with Dr Moran’s previous work, mostly from Ryuugi’s fanfic and Glitch, I bought the Night-Bird’s Feather.

I bought it on Kindle thanks to Prokopetz’ recommendation, having bought Glitch Version 0 beforehand (also on Prokopetz’ recommendation). I give the Night-Bird’s Feather 10/10 stars. 100/10. 2500 mechanical spiders/10. I will read it again at some point in the future on my Kindle, probably when there’s no data coverage, on the Tube, again, and spend half the trip reading and half the trip trying to figure out what the characters are saying when they’re not being incredibly blunt. I recommend that you buy it. I recommend that you read it. I don’t recommend that you comprehend it. Comprehension is not necessary for this anthology of connected fairy tales. In fact, arguably, it’s better if you don’t, and let the rhythm of the words wash over you and turn your brain off. Certainly the incredible over-stimulation and twisty layers made me feel like a child again, poking at a mother who is probably stuck in a heron’s egg, and definitely not capable of explaining what the bloody fuck is going on beyond the absolute surface layer.

This is not going to be a spoiler free review. I love it too much and comprehend it too little to dance around plot points. I have no criticism to give, because almost the whole thing went over my head, beyond the usual things where Dr Moran is absolutely brilliant at worldbuilding and scene-setting, having tied it in some part to the Bleak Academy, and the characters are, while mostly setpieces in the way that fairy-tale characters are, are also vocal mouthpieces talking in complex tongues, registers, and reasoning, regardless of physical or developmental age. Yes, it’s unrealistic and heavy-handed on the philosophical moralizing, but as I mentioned, I understood none of the philosophy, so I can’t and won’t criticize it. Since it also doesn’t seem at all out of place. The massive monologues are a part of the style and weave easily into the narrative. In any case, realism is not what you read Dr Moran or fairy-tales for.

The Night-Bird’s Feather is at once a combination of fairy/folk-tale anthology, in the way that linked fairy-tales are, and at the same time an examination of one central character’s life through time (literally through time in some ways), a legendary figure and/or matriarch of an inestimable family, where the matriarchy mostly happens off-screen. The reader is introduced to this matriarch in her founding, origin story, via a child of the family, and the rest of the cast of characters star in various, repeating roles as they move toward the child of the family’s personal present (for a given definition of present, given the nature of the bleak academy), a nest of stories, like scheherazade; but honestly the central linking conceit of the story reminded me the most of The Time Traveler’s Wife, had the perspective been centered on the time traveler rather than the wife.

The anthology has an incredible exploration into a very small number of characters: all of the relevant characters are introduced in the first story, and all of them are explored in great detail and are all very relevant. No additional mice, except for those family members locked in the initial egg, are introduced, which scurry off into the ether - the story ends when the central character has moved on to other things, and feels simultaneously finished in a nice neat bow and unfinished in a Wattersonian way.

The book, as a whole, is darkly beautiful, and very Slavic. I hadn’t read much Slavic fairy tales beforehand, so I can’t attest as to the stylization’s accuracy - the only one I know is Koschei, and that was a Britishized version for ages 6 and under, anyway. The prose is stunning - glittering and evocative, imaginative and lush, ornamented yet clear. It is a book which drips poetry out of every line, which I adore, and is simultaneously a clearly-understandable fairy-tale for children (if dark and mature - along the lines of Grimm - though in no part edgy - I think - nor with a focus on gore for the sake of gore), and a deeply meaty chunk of philosophizing for adults. It’s worth buying for the descriptive prose alone.

The book is also, on occasion, incredibly funny. Because it relies on subverting expectations of fairy tales, and the focus character is something of a guile hero given the stakes she puts herself up against, sometimes the characters make razor-sharp observations against expectations that absolutely shattered my sides. 

You can - I certainly did - push the heavy cerebral stuff to the side, and just focus on the fairy-tale. There is a lot of it, and all of it is good. I think the heavy cerebral stuff actually adds something - in that in its exclusion, everything else is starkly, darkly emotional, kind of. But the tone is unrelentingly miserable, a drudging, if beautiful, tragedy by Westernized and flanderized fairy-tales’ standpoint - from what I have seen of Slavic mythology and fairytales, that tone is pretty much on point. With the clear cerebral philosophy + comedy, though, and all the time and dream travel, that makes it bearable, even addictive.  

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