Review by Karl Verhoven
It’s very small cover type identifying Ten Thousand Black Feathers as part of Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino’s Bone Orchard series of horror titles. It means there are connections with Gideon Falls and The Passageway, but this can be read independently as the series has a common horror affecting different people in different ways. Here it’s Trish and Jackie who meet at fourteen and bond over a shared love of fantasy novels, combining their talents with the aim of creating their own fantasy world.
Years later Trish is a fantasy novelist, once very popular, but now sales are on the slide. She’s returned to her hometown of Hamilton, where Jackie remains the girl who disappeared in her teens after attending a party Trish left. Trish carries the enormous burden of guilt, and hears voices in her head persistently asking “Can you hear them?”
Lemire’s storytelling is deliberately disorienting. It’s unclear at first whether scenes showing Jack and Trish working through their fantasy world are symbolic or literal, or whether Trish is actually being spoken to or mentally fractured. Sorrentino compartmentalises the different eras and locations. The present day is dark and heavy with shadows, while the boundless optimism of youth is drawn without shadow and brightly coloured by Dave Stewart, who has a distinct palette for each era and location also. As on the sample art, when worlds briefly merge, so does the style of art.
An ironic overlay is that Trish wants to create a fantasy quest when she’s actually already on one, and her horrors will continue until she confronts a truth. While certainly atmospheric and thoughtful, Ten Thousand Black Feathers drags us to a conclusion that satisfies one instinct, yet frustrates a desire for full closure. That leaves this reading as a prologue rather than the main course, and as Lemire and Sorrentino are building a joined world, that may yet be the case.
On balance the fantastic art and the corrupted innocence of two likeable people caught up by something beyond their control is enough to make this readable, yet instils a yearning for something more.
