Video Premiere: The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge

Last month I found myself overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, that is, with an incredible desire to review a book a full four months before its publication date. This is not an unheard of action on my part, but I do try to avoid talking up books too far in advance of their releases. Sometimes, though, when the book is particularly good, I can’t help it. I just gotta crow.

Enter Brangwain Spurge.

Folks, I’ve never seen anything like it. A book with a reliance on art ala Brian Selznick but with an unreliable visual narrator. A comedy. A Cold War metaphor. A fantasy novel replete with elves and goblins. And a visual cacophony of images that I’ve described as Hieronymus Bosch by way of Terry Gilliam, and no one has yet corrected me on that point.

And now, after all of that, I’m being allowed to premiere the video for this very same book. Here you’ll get just a taste of what I’ve been talking about. You’ll also get, much to my amusement, a bit of old-fashioned back and forth patter between the author and artist. As a general rule, anytime a person says that they got their first root canal from a KBG dentist, I pay better attention. Pay attention now:

Many thanks to the kind folks at Candlewick for the premiere.

Filed under: Videos