I spent the better part of the morning browsing through artist Brynn Metheny's blog, TheMoraeRiver.com.  Brynn is a fantasy artist and illustrator with a penchant for drawing imaginary creatures.  At some point she decided it would be more fun to create a new world, and locate her creatures within the ecosystem of that world's largest river.

The Morae River is an ambitious series, combining Metheny's rare talents for illustration, imagination, world-building, biology, and ecology.  These aren't just freaky animals plopped down "wherever."  She has chosen their forms and lifestyles with care, and locates them just where you feel they really would go.

The Morae River system has several different ecosystems, as it wends its way from the steep and snow-capped Balandic mountains (it is glacially fed) through high mountain forests (the Yabun Forest), down to tropical rainforests, ending finally in a series of salt marshes and flats.

Brynn describes animals in no particular order, except her imagination.  A post about a gigantic carnivorous fish (somewhat like the gar of the Amazon rainforest) is followed by a post about the Mountain Uru, a shaggy cliff-dwelling animal something like a cross between a musk ox and a mountain goat.

Metheny's love for and fascination with regular Earth animals comes through in both her descriptions and her illustrations.  Each animal is beautifully rendered and conceived, and the illustration style references nature coffee table books and antique Audubon plates by turn.  

Glimpses of Earth animals are sometimes possible, or perhaps it only seems that way because we want to superimpose our own experience upon these alien creatures.  The poses seem familiar, perhaps because Metheny has watched the same nature documentaries that I have, or just because they look so real.  Metheny's observations and writing style bring her text to life, and her artistic talents are enviable.  

I know it sounds weird to say that "you can really tell her reptiles are reptiles," but this is simply not the case with a lot of other world building efforts.  But with just a cursory glance at the Blue-Throated Hulompolus (best name ever!) it's obvious that it is a reptile, or a dinosaur of some kind (the categories overlap, but not completely).  This despite its lack of scales, which is what most artists would use to communicate "reptile."  Instead, the hulompolus has a thick, elephantine sort of skin, and communicates its dinosaur-ity through posture, the heavy dragging tail, and of course its big beak.

The conceit of the project is that it is being performed by an artist - slash - biologist who is visiting the planet Solturna.  We know nothing about the narrator, who remains perfectly invisible throughout the text.  This is not a Lewis and Clark style expedition, but the work of a budding future Audubon.  Perhaps it would break the spell to learn any details about the narrator, but I can imagine a companion piece, an illustrated personal diary about her (him?) and life on this strange new planet.

Metheny has chosen to self-publish The Morae River through Blurb, which seems an unlikely choice.  Surely a work this well-rendered and conceived would be able to find a traditional publisher?  I would have spent hundreds of hours poring over it as a kid, I can tell you that much.