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    Black Feathers
    Unavailable
    Black Feathers
    Unavailable
    Black Feathers
    Ebook409 pages5 hours

    Black Feathers

    By Ellen Datlow

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Birds are usually loved for their beauty and their song. They symbolize freedom, eternal life, the soul. But there’s a dark side to the avian. Birds of prey sometimes kill other birds (the shrike), destroy other birds’ eggs (blue jays), and even have been known to kill small animals (the kea sometimes eats live lambs). And who isn’t disgusted by birds that eat the dead—vultures awaiting their next meal as the life blood flows from the dying. Is it any wonder that with so many interpretations of the avian, that the contributors herein are eager to be transformed or influenced by them? Included in Black Feathers are those obsessed by birds of one type or another: A grieving widow takes comfort in her majestic winged neighbors, who enable her to cope with a predatory relative. An isolated society of women relies on a bird to tell their fortunes. A chatty parrot makes illegal deals with the dying. A troubled man lives in isolation with only one friend for company—a jackdaw.In each of these fictions, you will encounter the dark resonance between the human and avian. You will see in yourself the savagery of a predator, the shrewd stalking of a hunter, and will wade into this feathered nightmare, braving the horror of death for that which we all seek—the promise of flight.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPegasus Crime
    Release dateFeb 7, 2017
    ISBN9781681773803
    Unavailable
    Black Feathers
    Author

    Ellen Datlow

    Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.  

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    Reviews for Black Feathers

    3.5/5

    21 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is an interesting and varied collection of avian themed stories. Some are subtle in their horror, but they are all dark tales.
    • 4/5
      This is a deeply uncomfortable and metaphorical book. The stories are all very well written, but if you're looking for fantasies about killer birds or supernatural birds, there's only a bit of that here. Most of the tales are stories of helplessness, despair, and all-too-real tragedy. The greatest theme is women's fear of men - that men will harm or kill them, or harm or kill children. There are a few stories that break this theme, but if you're not comfortable reading about women and children at the mercy of insane or unfathomable violent men, you may not want to pick this book up. This is not to say this is a book full of sexual violence - it's all very metaphorical, symbolic, and dreamlike. I would say my favorite story in the book is one that broke this mold - a tale of birds acting as psychopomps (ferrying the souls of the dead to the afterlife).
    • 4/5
      Book received from Goodreads Giveaways.This was pretty good. There were some really creepy stories in this anthology starting with the poem that starts the whole thing. I think the one that got me the most was the one with the husband being obsessed with owls. I believe that one stuck out for me since most of the stories revolve around the family Corvidae, mainly crows, magpies, and ravens. I have read other books that Ellen Datlow has had a part of but I think this is my favorite. If you want a good creepy book on a rainy night, but one that's not too scary, this is a good book for you.
    • 1/5
      I have officially given up on this anthology of “Dark Avian Tales”After attempting to read 7 of the stories, I DNF’d 4 of them because they were either boring, drawn out, unnecessarily Info dumping or written in an interview style (yah I didn’t like that one a lot)I was so excited to read some stories that were marketed as dark and centered around birds as I absolutely love and adore birds. But out of the 7, only one actually hit that Dark vibe and that was the 2nd storyThe Obscure Bird by Nicholas Royle,the tale was just so intriguing and then the very last page gave it that creepy dark twist and oh was it so good.After that each story just plummeted in keeping me interested or entertained, I only made it through two others all the way and one was a poem and the other was basically about a dude on drugs the whole time, so that wasn’t dark at all, it was just a dude making poor life choices, I finished it and was like“Well that my friends is why I don’t do drugs”After trying for 7 stories and only truly liking one, and just getting more and more frustrated with the next tale, I’m giving up. This isn’t what I had hoped it would be and I’m sad for that.