The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths Vol. 1 by Brian Froud (and others)

The full blog title should be The Dark Crytal: Creation Myths Vol. 1 by Brian Froud, Brian Holguin, Alex Sheikman, and Lizzy John. But that was a lot of people to list in the title, so here it is.



My parents bought me this one for my birthday. They've been slowly building my Brian Froud collection over the years because I've enjoyed every book he's been involved with. It's pretty complete by now, which really surprised me because I hadn't heard of the Dark Crystal Creation Myths.



This one's a graphic novel. I saw graphic novel mostly because this thing is a hardcover book, but it's not a lengthy volume. It's about as thick as a Sandman volume, but the panels are much larger for the scope of the world of the Dark Crystal. There's a lot of full-page/most-page panels with some really beautiful illustrations. The stories are mainly focused on Ogra and the people around her, which is a delight. If you like The Dark Crystal and want to learn more about the time before the crystal shattered, you should definitely have a look at this book.

Heart of Faerie Oracle Card Pouch

I like to keep my Faerie Oracle cards in knit pouches. This one is knit from left over yarn from my Black Alpaca Cable scarf and the Heart of Fire handspun that I knit into a shawl for a friend of mine.

It's soft. I keep my oracle cards next to my alarm clock next to my bed and sometimes I just reach over and touch the yarn instead of turning off the annoying alarm. It's a better way to wake up, I find.


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Faeries: Deluxe Collector's Edition

Faeries: Deluxe Collector's Edition

Over thirty-three years after its initial publication, and with well over a million copies in print worldwide, Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries has defined the world of Faerie for generations. Now, Froud and Lee return to their most enduring and beloved work with this deluxe collector’s edition. The ultimate must-have for any Faeries fan, the edition includes eight frameable prints, as well as a large, foldout poster of the iconic cover image. Previously unpublished art by both Froud and Lee is featured alongside the classic pencil drawings and watercolors of the mythical creatures – faeries, sprites, goblins, pixies, bogies, leprechauns, trolls, and dwarves – that inspired a global faerie renaissance.

More than just a reissue, this revised and updated edition also contains new essays from both Froud and Lee on the continuing influence of Faeries, and a foreword by bestselling author Jane Yolen. This remarkable package is sure to delight the millions of fans of the original Faeries, as well as readers discovering the book for the first time.

I have to admit that I haven’t read the first Faeries book. I know that seems absurd with how many Froud books I’ve talked about in these reviews, but I haven’t. So, I don’t know how much content has been added to the book for this edition.

But the amount of information and art in this one book is astounding.

Let’s talk about the art first. You all know how I feel about Froud. His sketches and paintings are my favourite pieces and I’m constantly on the look out for new work from him. If there is such thing as a collective human consciousness that we are all privy to subconsciously, his art encapsulates lost history in that consciousness. It’s amazing.

Add to that Alan Lee. Alan Lee, for those of you who don’t know, is a fantastic fantasy artist famous for his vistas and landscapes and incredibly detailed creature sketches. He’s one of the defining illustrators for Tolkien’s books. I’m amazed by what he can create with a simple set of pencils.

The imagery in this book is astonishing.

But the book isn’t all images like some of the Froud reviews I’ve done before. I will use this book for years to come as a reference book because it includes loads of information, description, and anecdotes about the residents of Faerie. It even includes abridged versions of some of the Welsh faerie tales I’ve been reading.

I loved it. It was everything I could possibly hope for in a Froud and Lee book. If you only ever buy one Froud or Lee book - which is entirely justified because they can be very expensive – this is the book that you should buy. It’s amazing.

The Heart of Faerie Oracle

The Heart of Faerie Oracle



This isn’t really a review. I won’t be filming a video about this book. I think we all know my general impressions. Of course, I’m going to say that it’s good.

The thing that impressed me enough to write a blog post about it is that the book for this oracle card set is written as a true sequel. It doesn’t repeat the first faerie oracle set. There is an assumption that if you are reading this book, then you have read the one that came before it. While I don’t mind sequels that summarize the previous books, it is refreshing to see a book that doesn’t. It seems right that it doesn’t. This set has a specific focus that the other set doesn’t. It doesn’t need to cover everything that the first one did.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading through the book and I really liked that Wendy Froud was the one writing the guide to the deck this time. You could tell that she has a very close relationship to the deck and her relationship with Brian bleeds through into her writing. It was just nice to see the two of them working together on a project again.

This book is wonderfully exploratory and the cards are beautiful. If you are a fan of the The Faeries’ Oracle, Brian Froud’s work, or oracle cards in general, pick this up.

The Goblins of Labyrinth

The Goblins of Labyrinth


Yep. Another Brian Froud book. I can’t get enough of them.

The drawings and paintings are, as always superb. The simplest lines and scribbles turn into expressive faces and claws and tales. The paintings are vibrant with life and movement, even though the colors are often muted.

While all of the drawings inside are Froud’s, this book was written by Monty Python’s Terry Jones, who had worked on the script of the 1986 film Labyrinth. Of course, the snippets about the goblins and their little stories are hilarious in a Python-esque fashion. You know, rude jokes and immature humour.

Very appropriate for goblins.

Some of the goblins were taken from the drawings and made into puppets. If you watch the movie Labyrinth, you can easily pick them out, which is really fun and entertaining. Others never made it in, but Terry Jones wrote them their own little stories and quirks.

I, of course, recommend these books to everyone, especially to those who love Labyrinth and Brian Froud’s books already. I would definitely recommend this book to fantasy fans and fans of the absurd. Brian Froud’s art is wonderful and Terry Jones’ words are brilliant. You can’t really get better than that.

Lady Cottington's Fairy Album

Lady Cottington's Fairy Album


Companion to Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Letters and Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book, Brian Froud gives us another look into the childhood life of Lady Cottington. In this book, Angelica Cottington has found an old journal that belonged her deceased sister, Euphemia, and has begun reading through the entries. On one page, you have the first hand account of a delightful faerie tea party or dance through the woods, and on the other page you have Angelica’s appalled reaction… and a squashed faerie or two.¹

It’s no secret that I love Brian Froud’s books. In my opinion, the man can do no wrong. The squashed faeries are beautifully painted with hilarious positioning and cheeky facial expressions. The stories are told in fantastically contrasting narratives – Euphemia sweet and ladylike, Angelica abrasive and annoyed. It’s just a fun book to read through.

I would definitely recommend this book to fantasy fans, faerie fans, or those who particularly enjoy a narrative told in letters. If you’re a fan of all three of these, this is definitely a book for you.




¹ Lady Cottington is well known in the art of faerie pressing. Faerie pressing is the process of slamming a book shut on a faerie that is flitting around your face in an annoying manner.

Good Faeries, Bad Faeries

As many of you are aware, I am a huge fan of Brian Froud’s work. I got into it almost three years ago and have since bought almost all of his books. You need to be aware that I was going into this knowing that I was going to love it. There was never any question about that.

There’s just something very organic about the way Brian Froud draws. His sketches are often simple, even rudimentary (depending on the subject), but they’re so expressive and lively that they don’t need any additional line work or color. That’s not to say that his color work isn’t amazing, of course. In another of his books (The World of Froud), he explains the geometric pattern that lies beneath all of his paintings. Where Brian’s sketches are organic and unstructured, his paintings are carefully lain out along this pattern, which creates this beautiful symmetry and balance in the figure(s).

And his paintings are incredibly unique in the way that the human eye perceives them. There’s not much variance in terms of light/dark contrast in each of the characters individually, and there’s little three dimensional set up in terms of foreground and background. Each figure is placed in the same plane as all of the other figures. Our eyes register this as something off, but it isn’t something that you’d necessarily be looking for. It just makes viewing his work a memorable experience, like looking at an intricate tapestry.

One aspect of Brian Froud’s work that I’ve mentioned before in my video reviews as something that I particularly enjoy is the layout of his books. In his book Goblins! for instance, paragraphs were flipped, words were crossed out, and a general mess was made of the text by the goblins depicted in the book. When you pick up a Brian Froud book, you’re experiencing more than just words and pictures- you have a tangible experience of the book itself. Changing the way you hold the book and read the words changes how you think about the subject.

Which is the whole point of the book anyway. If you understand one thing after reading this book, it’s that things aren’t always what they seem. Not all Faeries are good, but neither are all of them bad.

Good Faeries/Bad Faeries is really two books. If you’ve picked up Good Faeries, Bad Faeries is on the back and reversed. The good Faeries are literally the reverse of the bad Faeries, and as you read towards the middle, the Faeries get more and more vague. Some bad Faeries are on the Good Faerie side, some good Faeries are on the Bad Faerie side, and some Faeries have faces on both sides, so you never really know what you’re looking at.

The spectrum is complicated and fascinating, and the writing is lovely.


It’s amazing how much information is contained within only a few sentences. In one short paragraph, Brian Froud can provide the basic history of the creature, cite its appearances in three different cultures, and crack a joke, all without sounding like droning mythology professor. His tone is consistently conversational, so it reads as if you were having a chat at your kitchen table, and his personal stories and anecdotes make his writing a joy to read.

As per my usual, I’d recommend this book to anyone at all interested in Faeries. Perhaps not young children, as there is quite a lot of information to read, but certainly anyone above the age of twelve.