Rite

So, Amazon did get its copies of Tad Williams' Rite, by Subterranean Press, and shortly later, it gave one to me. Since the book is a short story collection, I had intended to read it in pieces. Instead, it turned out, I rather gulped it down it big chunks - and how delicious it was!

It is really a beautiful book. Nice, cloth-bound hardcover (although I like the image of the protective cover quite a lot) and an illustration that goes with every short story. The illustrations are beautiful, too, black-and-white drawings (ink, I suppose) of which I like the compositions best. Anatomy and everything else it top-notch, too, but it's really the composition and the little details that made me look at every illustration twice (or thrice, or ...). The stories themselves are a pleasure to read, as well. Probably more down-to-earth than Tad Williams' novels (read: more bordering on the SF and F genre than delving straight into the middle of it), and also more humorous. I like it. It is rare that I find a short story collection that I like throughout, but with this book, this is the case. There's something I can get out of every story. It was comforting to find out that there are other people in the world who are somewhat uncomfortable using planes and revisiting Otherland was a joy, as well.
There are a few printing errors (e.g. italicized v's are barely visible), but I didn't mind them that much. The v's were actually intriguing, and at first I wasn't even sure if it was intentional or not. I can imagine a book having a letter that's not used very often in its title (in some special rendition, like the v's) and have that letter, when it crops up in the stories, look like the cover-letter. It could look nice and give the book a special touch, I think.

All in all, Rite is a book well worth reading. The fact that SP already ran out of copies should prove this, too.

***

Come Hither

Little butterfly,
won't you come and sit with me for a while?
I will tell you about loneliness,
and you will show me how to make it go away.


Of course, little butterfly is not coming. He is flying away, because that is what pretty butterflies do when they have had enough of your garden. And she does not even have a garden, so there is nothing for him to find here.

It's a bit of a style experiment, this one. Trying to learn to do lineart. Every ten months I get a bit crazy and do a manga picture, so this is it for a while then. I have no idea how you're supposed to colorize it properly; didn't know how to paint a mouth like that (so I, err, just didn't, as you can see). I prefer semi-realism, that seems a bit easier.

So have a little preview of a proper illustration I'm working on right now: