#nightbirdsfeather

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (125/365)

“Did you eat very many children before you stopped?”

“Time is a river,” the creature said.

- from Chapter Two: Evdeniya and the Thing That Should Not Be

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740

[serrated-absence]

APROSINYA: Why are you unrighteous?

MRS. SENKO: Who says I am unrighteous?

APROSINYA: You are unrighteous.

[autumn-oceanopromises]

Review for the Night-Bird’s Feather

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.  

I read all of it in a single sitting. I understood almost none of it. I’d read my partner, if I had one, this story, before bed. We would likely dream lush, vibrant, beautiful dreams, like watching rain pour down from inside a cozy house, like we were kids again and ignoring all the really thorny problems of the world that only adults could see and comprehend. There’s a beauty in just being able to push it aside and admit that it’s just way too much for us. If asked, I’d be able to explain none of this book. I recommend it to everyone.

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (107/365)

“It is Shirokova’s theorem,” he said, and his eyes were brighter as he said it. “All angles tend towards the right angle until otherwise resolved.”

- from Chapter Six: Mrs. Senko and Her Monster

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (142/365)

“[Y]ou’d best get moving on those seeds. They’re not going to count themselves.”

“They may,” Svetlana said.

Valentina considered that. “That’s true,” she conceded. “I don’t know everything about the secret life of seeds.”

- from Chapter Five: Svetlana and the Seal’s Skin

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (137/365)

A yellow circle that hung in the sky became convoluted. It burned brighter—became a brass-caged sun—before it dwindled as she comprehended it into the lantern dangling from the roof.

- from Chapter Four: Valentina and the Vampire

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (154/365)

“Tatiana,” Svetlana said. “Please stop altering our perceptions. We both know that you are incapable of physically doing this to the world.”

“Hush,” Tatiana said. “Let me enjoy my giant battle-house.”

- from Chapter Five: Svetlana and the Seal’s Skin

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (131/365)

“Dad says,” Evdeniya said, “that when you’re sad, it’s because you’re talking to yourself too much and not listening to yourself enough.”

After another while, Valentina said, “Your Dad’s a freak.”

- from Chapter Three: Evdeniya and the Thing That Should Not Be

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (147/365)

“Science does not truck with the walking dead. I believe I have been reputably described by it as a form of mass hysteria.”

- from Chapter Four: Valentina and the Vampire

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8MVDHNQ

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (122/365)

“I was dreaming,” she said, “that I was not Valentina, but rather dead and empty bones, on which someone had piled meat and skin and hair. Then I woke up and I realized that this was so; within a certain margin of precision.”

- from Chapter Two: Valentina and the Headmaster

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8MVDHNQ

[jennamoran]

if I had a nickel for every reviewer who suggested that the Night-Bird’s Feather extracted their brain from their skull I’d now have ten cents, which I think is seriously highlighting a future career path as a brain extraction surgeon for me today.

One thing the reviews have really brought into focus for me is that either the description or the cover or something primed NetGalley readers to expect the book to be short and a quick read and that the culture there makes people really want to churn through books; even the NetGalley reviews that really liked it seem vaguely upset about it being a long book that’s more towards the rich than the quick side. *^_^*;;

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (157/365)

Some things may be, and some things may not—

… but it’s up to you what you will think of them.

- from Chapter Eight: Mrs. Senko, the Heron-Witch, and the Magic Dog

https://jenna-moran.itch.io/the-night-birds-feather

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (121/365)

And once upon a time, you see, Miruna Sosunova learned to see through the back of her eyes like the front of them. She raised up the curtains of the self and she went out beyond them, into the territory of nothingness and death, and there she found the secret that was like the rain, that was like a cloud passing over nothingness; and she, who was a fire of looking-upon, but also the thing that that fire was looking upon, lit up the void like a candle in the darkness, and she understood in that moment that she was beautiful. … because she could. Because that was an option. All she had to do was choose.

- from Chapter Eight: Mrs. Senko, the Heron-Witch, and the Magic Dog

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1159440

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (101/365)

“Legends will be told of Svetlana Witherspoon,” she said, “who left her house, two nights in a row.”

- from Chapter Three: Evdeniya and the Thing That Should Not Be

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (136/365)

“You have come to Fortitude,” Valentina said, “thinking to trespass on a place of rustic victims. But this is not a place of rustic victims, strigoaică. This is a place of monsters.”

- from Chapter Five: Svetlana and the Seal’s Skin

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8MVDHNQ

[jennamoran]

The Night-Bird’s Feather: Quote of the Day (99/365)

“I still think about killing you sometimes,” Valentina said.

“Do you?”

She shrugged. She looked around. She kicked a pebble. She plucked a bit of grass and let it flutter away. “It seems over-dramatic.”

- from Chapter Seven: Valentina and the Bleak Academy

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-night-birds-feather-jenna-katerin-moran/1141980740