(This is a review of the Two Cranes Press chapbook, A Field Guide to Surreal Botany.)

My first impression of Surreal Botany is that it is gorgeous -- amazingly sumptuous, with beautifully nuanced textures and an authentic, "vintage guide to oddities" feel to it. Awesome font choice, among other things.

As for the contents, it really can be summed up by the statement in the introduction: "This book may be read by gardening enthusiasts, paranormal investigators, and conspiracy theorists alike."

It is a fascinating, varied collection showcasing a wide variety of bizarre flora, from adorable (Kitty Willow) to trippy (Time Cactus, Waterbaby Cress) to pedantic (Wild Homilywort) to intellectually intricate (Schattenbaum, Twilight Luon-Sibir) to laugh-out-loud funny (Kvetching Aspen, Big Yellow Flower of Unnecessarily Obvious Information) to -- oh, heck, I want to just list each of the entries, and that's too unwieldy. Some of the entries didn't do much for me, personally, but there were so many entries that were beyond wonderful that those that didn't grab me didn't detract from the overall enjoyment. In addition, each is illustrated by beautiful watercolors that deserved to be framed in their own right.

And, for the sheer quirkiness factor, I'm going to be filing this not with my fiction, but right between Sunset's Western Garden Book and Wildflowers of the San Bernardino Mountains (for the same reason that my dad, a clinical psychologist, stores the copy of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases that I gave him next to his DSM IV -- how could you resist?)