Jeffrey Overstreet lives in two worlds. By day, he writes about movies at LookingCloser.org and in notable publications like Christianity Today, Paste, and Image. His adventures in cinema are chronicled in his book Through a Screen Darkly. By night, he composes new stories found in fictional worlds of his own. Living in Shoreline, Washington, with his wife, Anne, a poet, he is a senior staff writer for Response Magazine at Seattle Pacific University. Auralia's Colors is his first novel.
Publishers Weekly (Review, 7/16)
Film critic and author Overstreet (Through a Screen Darkly) offers
a powerful myth for his first foray into fiction. The kingdom of
Abascar is cloaked in gloom, sentenced to an ongoing “wintering” by
a jealous queen, in which colors have been done away with and are
only allowed in the royal court. But young Auralia, found as a baby
by the river and raised by outcasts, has a talent for finding
colors everywhere and bringing them to life in a way no one has
ever seen before. The fate of the kingdom rests on what Auralia
chooses to do and how the king responds. Overstreet creates a world
with not only its own geography but its own vocabulary — it is
haunted by beastmen, home to cloudgrasper trees, vawns (something
like dinosaurs) and twister fish. ... Overstreet’s writing is
precise and beautiful, and the story is masterfully told. Readers
will be hungry for the next installment.
“Through word, image, and color Jeffrey Overstreet has crafted a
work of art. From first to final page this original fantasy is sure
to draw readers in. Auralia's Colors sparkles.”
–Janet Lee Carey, award-winning author of The Beast of Noor and
Dragon's Keep
“Jeffrey Overstreet’s first fantasy, Auralia’s Colors, and its
heroine’s cloak of wonders take their power from a vision of art
that is auroral, looking to the return of beauty, and that intends
to restore spirit and and mystery to the world. The book achieves
its ends by the creation of a rich, complex universe and a series
of dramatic, explosive events.”
–Marly Youmans, author of Ingledove and The Curse of the Raven
Mocker
“In Auralia’s Colors, Overstreet masterfully extends the borders of
imagination. Whereas so many writers sacrifice characterization for
plot or substitute weirdness for substance, Overstreet does
neither. His characters are richly crafted but still recognizably
human, and therefore, inhabitable. This story is wild and intricate
tale, a high-octane full-throttle fantasy. Fasten your seat
belts.”
–Gina Ochsner, author of The Necessary Grace to Fall and People I
Wanted to Be
“The late John Gardner said that a good story should unfold like a
vivid and continuous dream. With Auralia's Colors, Jeffrey
Overstreet has crafted just such a story, one that will leave
readers ready to dream with him again.”
–John Wilson, Editor, Books & Culture
“Jeffrey Overstreet weaves myth and reality, hope and loss into his
tapestry, and he ties off The Red Strand with a cataclysmic
flourish.”
–Kathy Tyers, author of the Firebird trilogy and Shivering
World
“Welcome to the land of the fangbear, the muckmoth, and the
Midnight Swindler. To a story brimming with lovely literary rewards
and a cast of characters by turn loathsome and hilarious, winsome
and mysterious. It’s not often one gets to be present at the birth
of a classic, but Auralia’s Colors is that kind of storytelling. A
true delight on so many levels.”
–Clint Kelly, author of the Sensations Series: Scent, Echo, and
Delicacy
“In this new fantasy novel Auralia’s Colors, Jeff Overstreet weaves
together a wide cast of compelling characters and an intriguing
story in the setting of a world both imaginative and arresting–a
world phantastic in both old and new meanings of that word.
Readers will care what happens both to the characters of the
tale (all of them) as well as to the realm of Abascar itself, and
will not want to put this book down.”
–Matthew Dickerson, co-author of From Homer to Harry Potter: a
Handbook of Myth and Fantasy and Ents, Elves, and Eriador: the
Environmental Vision of J.R.R.Tolkien
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