I am a huge fan of Dave McKean's art, so when I saw this book was being published, I kept my eye on when it would be available. McKean's art is bizarre, beautiful, provocative, and I could see that his creations could inspire all kinds of stories. This anthology does something that I think many anthologies don't quite pull off: there's a story here for many kinds of readers. Each story is inspired by an individual painting, so it's a collaborative effort where words and pictures illuminate each other. I found I would frequently be in the middle of a story, only to flip back to the image at the beginning and consider how the art and the story connected to each other.
While I didn't love all of the stories, I really enjoyed some of them. The first one, "Belladonna Nights" by Alastair Reynolds, is a haunting science fiction story. Another one I really liked was by Joe Hill titled, "All I Care About is You." Overall, I found most of the stories were interesting and stayed in my mind, which isn't something I can say about many anthologies (where I might like 2 stories out of 10). There are two stories here by Neil Gaiman, a frequent creative collaborator with McKean, so that was an extra treat.
The one thing I wish I could change about this book would be to make the illustrations in full color. They are printed in two colors, which is a nice sepia tone and is fine . . . but some of these images would be absolutely fantastic if they were full color. See below for what I mean:
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| image from this book |
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| One of McKean's other works |
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