Assessment:
Overall rating (8 votes)
Recommended by Eli James, Sarah Suleski, and 3 other members.
A Timely Raven
An ongoing series, with new episodes monthly.
A sprawling, multi-tiered account of a raven, his would-be victims, demonic possession, ghosts, murder, and the city of Austin. It is both multimedia and interactive.
A Timely Raven
A serial account of meditating a murder.
Tags: fantasy modern supernatural series urban fantasy
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Editorial Reviews
Takes advantage of the web to spin an intriguing tale
A Timely Raven is just starting out, so there are only two vignettes posted at the time of this review. However, there is still much to read and explore, as the author utilizes different aspects of the internet to tell her story. There are sidebars and embedded text which you can click on to get a different perspective from some of the characters, along with maps, sections in audio, and external blogs and twitter feeds for different characters.
This all may sound a little busy, but it’s set up in a clean and orderly manner on the main site. The main site itself has an attractive design. One of the sideblogs was black with white text, which I find tiresome on the eyes. It also was a little hard to follow as it’s arranged like a normal blog, with most recent entries first, but it’s telling a linear story and you need to go all the way back to the start to follow it properly. That blog (Under the Bridge) was one negative for me, due to the design. The other blog, for Emily and Lily, only has two entries (thus far).
As to the story itself. There are three separate plots at the moment. One, that of the raven, which acts as a sort of grim reaper, for reasons it cannot itself explain. It meets the woman whose child it killed many years ago, and is compelled to find a replacement for her. It flies off in search of a soul to snatch, and stops for a while to observe a conversation between some witches. This offshoots into a plot about a coven that does something during a ritual which leads to some members being possessed and becoming succubi.
The raven doesn’t seem to care all that much about it, or them, and decides to fly off again. It finds some children, one of whom has an invisible friend. This was my favorite part of the story, the one I found most compelling. I won’t tell much more about it, because I think that you should just go read it yourself.
It’s not clear to me whether all these plots will intertwine, or if the raven is meant to be a starting point which spawns all different stories to be continued on their separate character blogs. Either way, I’m interested to see how it unfolds and will be watching the story grow.
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Now This Is Web Fiction
I should start by telling you that Amber Simmons was the writer/web designer who originally talked (on ALA, the web-design trade journal) about how a design should give shape and context to site content. She believes that presentation on the web can make prose stronger, just as she believes that at the heart of the web lies good writing. The Internet is her medium: the canvas she is most comfortable with, and it shows with Timely Raven.
Raven is a story of (waitforit) Raven, a bird that functions as the grim reaper for a small geological area in Austin. The main story in Timely Raven is the bird’s journey to find a soul for a woman he has wronged. She wants a child in return for the one Raven killed sometime ago, and Raven is compelled to find one to fill her empty womb. The story is short - it has only 4 parts - but it is a well-written, decent distraction from whatever you’re busy with. It is a good story, but it is not a great one.
You’ve probably flicked your eyes to my rating at this point, and you’re probably wondering why I gave Raven a 4.5. The reason? Timely Raven’s genius is not in its writing - which is solid - but in its presentation. Simmons makes full use of the Internet to tell her story - and I’m not kidding when I say full use. There are drop down hidden sections on the web page, containing unsaid things in a conversation; there are Google Map mashups, twitter updates and blog offshoots.
This last point is of particular interest: Timely Raven serves as a starting point for two other stories. In his search for a suitable soul Raven lands twice, and each of these landings provide characters that branch out to become stories of their own. One is the tale of a coven of witches, some of whom are mysteriously becoming succubi, and the other is about two sisters: one real, one invisible. These stories exist on beautifully designed blogs, twitter channels and Evernote collages, and it’s really up to you how you want to explore each story. You may start from a witch’s perspective, for instance, or you may choose to read from the POV of the staff of a rehabilitation centre. This is non-linear fiction at its best.
Is this worth your time? Yes it is, definitely. It’s short, it’s beautifully produced, and the ending adds a twist that is both sweet and painful. I’m fairly certain that the ideas Simmons uses in this project will be integral to web fiction’s tomorrow. Read this, and you’ll find yourself a taste of the future.
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Most Helpful Member Reviews
Excellent use of the web
A Timely Raven is worth looking at, if only for the excellent integration of web tools, such as Twitter, Flickr, Google Maps, and some cool ajax stuff. I’m a bit of a web geek myself, and this is the type of thing I have wanted to do with The Germaine Truth, but haven’t had the time. Simmons has pulled it off with style. It is a site which is beautiful to look at and meticulously designed.
Raven is a common messenger of death in southeast Native American lore, which is one of my primary interests of study. In Cherokee myth (I am an enrolled Cherokee), Raven Mocker, The Stealer of Souls, comes to the dying in the guise of Raven. Myth can be retold in a modern setting (Neil Gaiman, for instance, is a master at this), but the writer must listen carefully to the voice, and know the narrator, and know the reader.
Although the writing is competent, and the concept is interesting, I am less impressed with the narrative than the design. Mostly, I had trouble with a bird, even a spirit-bird, knowing about such things as Twitter, or that the place he/she is flying over is called the Mary Moore Searight Park. There are devices which could make this easier for me to accept, such as, perhaps, Raven takes human form at night, or maybe Raven holds the memories of the souls he’s taken. But, I need to have this spelled out for me.
Much of the writing I have found on Web Fiction Guide deals with magic, vampires, zombies, and other such supernatural things. I write myth, magical realism, and science-fiction/fantasy, myself, so this is not a negative prejudice, but a lot of this stuff, with a few notable exceptions, I find boring and immature.
I do not include April Simmons in this group. Her premises and the stories are both promising, but just need to be developed with a keener ear on her main character: Raven. And overcoming the readers disbelief.
Even with my reservations, I gave A Timely Raven a four-star and a recommendation, because I think it’s a site you should check out simply for its design, beauty, and innovation.
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