Creatures Of The Night

[Nesacat]

I was just given this graphic novel as a birthday gift.

It contains two stories by Neil Gaiman that had originally been published in Smoke and Mirrors: Short Stories & Illusions. The book is illustrated by Michael Zulli who had also done the artwork for Neil Gaiman's The Last Tempation. Only this time he gets to work in colour and the results are as wonderful as the black and white drawings for Last Temptation.

The two stories in Creatures of the Night are The Price and The Daughter of Owls.

In The Price, a black cat like a small panther arrives at a country home and is soon beset by mysterious and vicious wounds. What is he fighting every night that could do this, and why does he persist?

The Daughter of Owls recounts an eerie old tale of a foundling girl who was left with an owl pellet as a newborn on the steps of the Dymton Church. She was soon cloistered away in a local convent, but by her fourteenth year word of her beauty had spread—and those who would prey upon her faced unforeseen consequences.

Both tales are well written and beautifully illustrated and the book is definitely a keeper.

 

[Talysia]

I've only just found this thread, but I think I'll have a look for this. It sounds interesting!

 

[Nesacat]

They are both beautifully illustrated tales and very poignant for what is not explicitly revealed. I'd read the tales in Smoke & Mirrors but seeing them illustrated was something else altogether, especially the first given the way I feel about cats.

There is a wild cat that comes every night to sleep under my bedroom window.