Review: Notes From the Shadowed City by Jeffrey Alan Love

(Jeffrey Alan Love 's artwork gripped me the instant I saw it. If you've liked any of my newer pieces of artwork know that I'm using techniques learned from watching Love work online and reading interviews with him where he breaks down how he makes his textures. I found out about his art simply by looking up artists who use Pilot Parallel Pens, these are the pens I've been using lately and I'm quite taken by them and love to see who else uses them and to what purpose. Anyways, on to the book!)

This is a tremendous book. Lyrical, phantastic, whimsical, and surprisingly affecting for a book about the cataloging of magic swords. The artwork here looks like scratched dreams engraved on tarnished medieval walls. But it's the story that really makes the book work. Shadowed City nails the isolation of being an outsider in an unknown city, something anyone who's moved to one can relate to. The city in this book just happens to be one full of masked swordsmen, winged sentries, other living floating cities replete with writhing tentacles, kings, wizards, and everyone, everyone wearing horns.

This book feels like an invitation into a mythic fully realized other realm.

With Notes from the Shadowed City Jeffrey Alan Love has announced his intentions as a storyteller and visionary. So in other words, take note.

You purchase the book direct from the publisher here.

Or  through Amazon.com here.