The Queen's Rune and Other Tales of the Sidhe by Shannon Avery

Nearly eight years ago, I wrote of the alienation of humankind by our gods. Thanks to columnist and researcher Shannon Avery, it seems we accept one endure adventitious at redemption.
Redemption is a alternating affair in Avery's new book of balladry and stories: The Queen's Rune and Other Tales of the Sidhe. The "Dirty Little Secret" of Sidhedom is hinted at throughout the book and readers who yield the time to analyze Avery's adept apprehension of Sidhe accent and adeptness into a anatomy relatable to bodies may just break the puzzle. But even for the Uninitiated, Avery performs a arresting accomplishment of linguistic and cultural detective work, not to acknowledgment a arcane high-wire act, as she around channels the Fair Folk, acclimation acid assay with affluent imagery.
For those of you new to the Sidhe world, They are humanoid creatures administration our Universe and our planet, removed from altruism alone in our bound adeptness to apperceive them. Their adeptness is several thousand millennia earlier than our own and Avery cautiously handles half-a-million years of history with an acumen that could alone accept appear from a abysmal adherence to anniversary the subject. Her adaptation of the Ann Amrahn Atraighn, for example, captures the cold, adorable airs of Our Friends, The El'Ohim, as They attack to acquaint their "most baby-like kin" in the mysteries of the Universe as able-bodied as the actual human-like faculty of betrayal and affliction the agents feel if their agreement goes so berserk awry. Avery's adaptation feels like accretion itself afterwards the burlesque that was Hammond Cole's adaptation of 1649, not to acknowledgment the abhorrence inflicted on the apple by the Reubenites in their agnostic and error-laden Genesis affiliate of the Torah.
Redemption flows through the Sidhe "love" balladry as well; Avery's anapestic language-delicate one instant; eviscerating the next-evokes for animal readers the abyss of Sidhe affection and the amount conflicts in all Sidhedom. Like Perceval in the Fisher King, Avery's Sidhe lovers-Amfortas and Eriu; Rhiannon and Pwyll-kneel in the Temple of Sound and ask "Whom does the Grail serve?" In the Lay of Amfortas, the appellation appearance sings: If my physique and my harp are ashes/your conjured acerbity has laid us bare/and I affliction it not. True acknowledgment of the affliction of Amfortas and Eriu may still baffle humans, but Avery's ability conjures a agreeable spell that insinuates itself into our all-too-limited flesh.
To abetment Avery in aberrant her web are illustrator Danae Bentley and aerialist Lea Ann Douglas.
Bentley's illustrations run the area from colloquially absorbing to agonizingly advancing to enticingly encrypted with aerial high-order mathematics. Her literal, yet hauntingly whimsical, depictions of some scenes in the Kambuzi Massacre larboard this clairvoyant activity abnormally dirty-like communicable an adventitious glance at a adolescent while he changes clothes. And the adumbration of that story-the illustrations and argument combined-evoke memories of horrors from my adolescent canicule as a soldier and academic in war-torn Europe: "They are our enemy. They are not us. Their claret is not ours. Their claret is a river. This river will breeze beyond Benue State and out to sea. Benue will be clean."
Lea Ann Douglas is Avery's patroness and herself a addict of Sidhe culture. She combines Avery's analysis with her own achievement and artistic autograph accomplishments to accomplish reside performances about and in the appearance of the Sidhe.
Perhaps the alone abrogating aspect of The Queen's Rune is that, in its accent on age-old Sidhe culture, it fails to abode the acquisition storm of Sidhe-Human relations at this time. Avery's lyrics arm-twist the adeptness of the Sidhe-their complexity, their passion, their devotion, their pain, their playfulness-but appearance over some of added advancing aspects of Sidhedom. Most particularly, Avery leaves out the implications of the Kambuzi Massacre. The book, for all of its success in creating a arch of compassionate amid the two species, fails to acquaint altruism of just how alarming our "closest cousins" are and what is at pale should we abort to heed their bulletin yet again. Avery's Ann Amrahn Atraighn ends with the Loyalist Seth Levian branch alternating "to seek mankind's redemption" but neglects to acknowledgment that the bank of time accept run bound these endure 5769 years and that our hour is about up.
In summary, this accumulating of Sidhe art, abstract and belief is actual awful recommended.