LadyCrow

I'm getting basically dragon's blood, with jasmine or a similar flower amped somewhat (dragon's blood by itself tends to smell like lilacs to me anyway), and a tangy, spicy top note -- a pepper? -- for the bloodiness. In short, this isn't dramatically different from the pure resin -- which is great! I love dragon's blood! This is a keeper!

I started to type this up as "The Lantern Ghost of Iowa," which would have been nowhere near as cool, but much funnier. In the imp: Tea and cherry blossom. Wet: Tea, cherry blossom, and that delicate, delicate white mint. Drying: As this settles in, I get the pungency of the ho wood, which I love. I've really become a ho for ho wood. (You keep cranking them out, Beth, and I'll keep making the dumb jokes!) That grounds the blend nicely as the OH YUM! subtle rice wine rises up with my body's warmth. I'm not finding the calla lily, but then I'm not really trained in that note. What I do get is a scent with, not incredible sillage, but at least a moderate throw -- and greater staying power than I would have expected for the scent category. The mint never overwhelms, but keeps everything feeling alive and fresh during the wear time of the scent. This one's a winner.

In imp: Deeply resinous-woodsy. Wet: The resin is almost astringent wet. The blend settles into a sweet bottom note and a resinous, astringent top note. Drydown: The resins stick around for a fairly long time, but eventually mellow out enough that the sweet and woodsy notes are more prominent. Still, I can't smell the florals that others have mentioned, because somebody's shoved a chunk of resin incense up my nose. I want to say there's a smidgen of red patchouli involved in this in some way, but it's difficult to pick out. By the time the resin finally goes away, what remains in the drydown is lovely and complex -- but whenever I find myself starting one of these sentences with "by the time," the scent is not destined to become a fave.

First impression: Barbecue smoke, as from charcoal briquettes. (We're assuming no pork or anything else trayf would be on this barbecue, of course.) Great. This first stage makes me want to go get some kosher all-beef franks and grill them. Second impression: Backyard-bonfire smoke, as from leaves. And it's giving me a headache. Third impression, well into the drydown: Ah, finally with the leather. Apparently the owner of the jacket has recently been hanging out at a bonfire. Maybe this would make a good layering note to give some oomph to Scarecrow? A bit salty, like the leather in Dragon's Hide. ... and here comes the smoke again, and it's the kind that's chasing me indoors. Happily, I don't need to buy a bottle of this before it retires!

In the imp: Sharp, deep resin. Wet: Fruity, but still resinous. Sweet, though. Drying down: Is that the grape? Yeah, it's all coming together like some kind of ancient wine. Wait, there's honey! No, the honey's gone away. Wait, it's back! Oh, here's the resin again, that kind of lemony-resin like Ahathoor has. No, now we're back to grape. Beth is a master at evoking scent concepts (e.g. the unsettling factor that Kuang Shi seems to have, even though the fruit notes in it are very pretty), and this really smells... streaked, the way a sunset can be. You'll see streaks of gold, orange, dark pink, purple, what have you, and this smells like that. Only ancient. I'm not going to mortgage my leg for a bottle, unless I suddenly decide that having mead with a mummy at sunset is my thing, but it's hugely evocative and very well done.

I'm not as excited about this as I have been other Ars Draconis blends. I'm glad I tried it for the sake of completeness, but it takes so long for the initial WHOOMP! of cassia (appropriately fiery, I admit) to dry down on me (and stop stinging!) that, by that time, the patchouli is completely submerged under the dragon's blood and the musk, and what pomegranate I get might as well be my imagination. I mean, this would be fabulous for cold weather. But it's very one-note on me until a kind of unfortunate potpourri stage. Not my favorite Draconis, no.

In very green imp: Pungently resinous. Wet: Heavy on the labdanum and woods. Drydown: The closer your nose actually gets to the slathered area, the deeper the woods get -- "the woods are lovely, dark and deep," says the man tempted by oblivion in Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." The patchouli is there, but decidedly buried under the woods and resins; the saffron floats lightly over the top. I get little of the musk, but lots of the smoky astringency that's in this scent's near-opposite, Scarecrow. Unusual, dark, earthy, grounding and grounded. A keeper.

This is like walking through a bakery! Wet, it's all vanilla cake, and that stage lasts a while. Then I get a sort of cinnamon phase (not a hot, burning cinnamon -- a very foody cinnamon), which is fairly brief; then the vanilla's back, accompanied by coconut. You know, you're entering the bakery by its front door, and then walking all the way into the back to have a meeting with your wedding cake decorator, or something, and you pass absolutely every variety of delicious that they make. Earlier today, I wrote of MB: biggerCritters that you could cause a riot in any office by walking through at about 11:30 am wearing it. That is equally true of Beaver Moon -- and I don't know why this Lunacy is so foody, except maybe that so are the Enraged Mammal Musks a bit, and this is a mammal -- but whatever the cause, this is faboo!

*accompanies self on six-string guitar* I got the blues today, I got those mean old Lady Luck blues. Yes, I got the blues today, child, I got those mean, mean Lady Luck BLU-ues. I put some on my hand now, and I smell like my old man's gym SHO-oes. Some rose is good to me, honey, and one rose is just low-down bad. Yes, some rose I can wear, now, but Rose Cross rose is just plain mean and bad. I hoped that old Lady would smile, but instead she went and made me sad. Hear me, now! I went looking for Miss Iris, I went looking for my honey and my sugar plum. I searched high and low for vanilla, I looked for tonka, I looked for smokey plum, yes, child! But that bad rose wrapped around me: now I'm just sittin' here feeling DUH-umb....

Even though my decant has a picture of one of the adorable Critters on the label, it's pretty clear to me that I have the second version. Imp: Butter? Lemon? O hai, I can has cake? Wet: CAKE! This plastered a big, silly grin all over my face. This is exactly like making a lemon cake with my mother, way back in the day. You could seriously cause a riot in any office by walking through wearing this at about 11:30 am. Drydown: The vanillas hang around for a long while, as does the lemon note. Excellent throw. The jasmine and gardenia start to come into their own next, but by then this is nearly a skin scent, and as musky as it is vanilla. A major advancement of the MB tradition. I might be just saying that because it caused me a happy-nostalgia flashback... nah. This really is some good shiz right here.

Wet: Grass and cut hay. Drying down: This smells exactly like a drought in farm country -- the dangerous kind where a cigarette butt carelessly tossed, or a grill not quite thoroughly put out, can cause a devastating fire. Hot, grassy, maybe even a little curled and crisp as if there's already smoke in the wind. Oddly, this reminds me more of sunflowers than Sunflower does! This is a "place" scent for me, very much like Coyote; it recalls the plains and farmland where I grew up, and where summer heat could turn into dangerous aridity over the course of a single day. As a crow, I'm not scared -- just pleasantly unnerved.

Wet: Almondy, but not the aggressive almond note of Bastet. This quickly changes to almost pure orange. Drydown: The clove and neroli rise up next. For a very, very large portion of its wear time on me, Seraglio smells indelibly like orange-spice herbal tea. I'm talking good orange-spice tea, mind you, definitely a grade above Celestial Seasonings, but still... tisane. Later on, I get a bit of subtle rose, a nice rose, but nothing that makes me want to dance like a harem girl for the hubby. It's pretty. It's nice. I would just rather drink my herbal infusions than wear them.

In imp: Green, fresh-cut rose. Wet: Fresh rose, and -- Lwas be praised -- NOT the rose note in Rose Cross that goes bug-repellent on me. Drying down: The hazel note actually comes out a bit before the rosewood; they combine nicely to give that sense of mystery along with age -- what is that hazel presence in this attic? The rosewood almost has a cedar edge to it as a result of the fresh rose, so again, there's that sense of age and storage -- which is its own mystery. A light scent -- appropriate to the scent concept.

I had to get an imp of this, because apparently, if you study English and American literature, it's de rigueur for a poet to have Mania in some form. In imp: Sweet fruit. Wet: Shiny! (I can't believe nobody's mentioned that Kaylee from Firefly would absolutely wear a blend that offered both strawberry sweetness and animalistic musk.) This is so sweet. I can't stop sniffing. Drydown: It takes a while for the musk to come out and ground the blend; all the way through, though, it's really seductive. It wasn't the least bit upsetting... hmm, maybe that's a symptom!

This is a lazy, lustful, overconfident dragon. Here, the sweetness of the resin is tempered by the musks, which come out almost salty in the drydown -- a bit like Dragon's Hide, in fact. I like the layered effect of the different musks, and the warmth it lends; dragon's blood can be chilly in some combinations. There isn't as much staying power (!) as I would have liked, but that also makes it possible to apply some and go out in public without attracting obnoxious attention.

This is probably the sweetest patchouli I've ever smelled, from the Lab or elsewhere. Really, given the listed notes, there is no logical reason why this excellent scent -- indeed deep green on me, as others have pegged it -- should be so sweet. But it is! It goes on, and remains, extremely earthy, extremely foresty. This is Czernobog as Neil Gaiman sees him, the one you could have a cup of coffee with, not the one from Fantasia. It's like taking a hike into the deep woods, which again makes no sense, but that's just the picture Czernobog evokes.

Okay, this is one floral that's found a happy home with me. Smokeflower! Flowersmoke? Flokesmower. Smowfloker. Flokersmow. Sssssmoke. And flowers. Prickly a bit, like a real poppy. Georgia O'Keeffe, you could just fall in, man. A leeetle soapy in the drydown, don't worry though, it gets you over. Magnificent sillage, really maximum throw. You don't want to be doing this on the down-low in the restroom at work. No. Chasing the dragon -- like, Dragon's Reverie, this is reminiscent of the sweet-smoky nature of that. The floral is sufficient to get the user through the normal routines society provides, while the smoke satisfies the need, or causes you to dream of emperors and lost cities until some git from Porlock knocks at the door.

At the beginning, the frankincense combined with some other note to seem quite sharp, almost overly resiny. However, this dries down into something almost indescribably creamy, sweet, and golden -- albeit grounded here and there by flashes of the salty olive leaf. This is a joyful scent, despite the complicated mythology. I did have to reapply and slather a fair bit to get it to stay, but once on, it hangs in there close to my skin for a good long while; gradually, the other notes exit, leaving the frankincense until last. There's something oddly uplifting about the whole experience.

Almost immediately, with very little morphing, Kabuki becomes its best self: deep, rich, red. It never gets overly sweet on me (I feel awful for the responders for whom this turns into Robitussin!), and the licorice-candy tone to the anise quickly burns off, leaving the musk sweetened to a point where it's almost woody. Although few notes are listed, the ones here interplay in a way I wouldn't have thought of in a million years, but which rivals some of the Salons. I might need a 5ml.

No wonder this one got away, given how fast it tries to escape! Wet: Green grass and herbs -- maybe a little fresh mint. Later: Neroli, tempered by amber. The musk and patchouli are barely there. This scent was disturbingly true to its name, in that I had to exercise trickery to get it to stay perched on my hand. The interplay between the neroli and amber in the middle stage is very nice; it reminds me somehow of tall, dry grass. The fruit at this point is bright but muted, not noisy the way it is in Kuang Shi. Mantis is interesting enough that I wish it had been able to stay longer -- in both senses!

In the imp: Very strongly bamboo. Wet: Bamboo dominates first, then cherry blossom and orchid come in, along with the fruits. Drydown: This is both stronger and longer-lasting than I would have expected of an ozone scent, or one with these notes in general. I think the metallics anchor everything and the fruits give it that slight stickiness of walking through a hot city in summer, when you wonder how the people in extremely formal business suits aren't dying. I lived in a city for a decade and have been exiled from it (not literally, but we all like to be dramatic, or we wouldn't relish these scent descriptions, would we?) for two and change; this scent makes me miss it. Alas, a modern city fallen so soon!

This is almost entirely civet on me for a good hour of its wear time; it put me in mind of visiting the big-cat enclosures at the zoo. (Dear Male Cat: Please do not pee on my arm tonight. Thank you.) After that, the cloves and musk rose to the surface a bit more, and something else spicy, like cinnamon. This is actually a subtler blend than initial sniff-tests might indicate; it's just that you have to tolerate a lot of raw civet first -- which I personally like, but not everybody's skin does. On me, this is just raw, about as subtle as Mick Jagger suggesting that you spend the night together.

Strongly patchouli and myrrh at first; then the tasty ylang-ylang comes in, giving it a citrusy-fruity bite. Only later do I get that sexy, sexy musk floating up from the base, but this really is Lust at every stage. The ylang-ylang makes it sweet enough that it almost -- almost -- reminds me of my beloved dragon's blood early in the drydown. Oh, yes, yes, more, please.

To echo some other reviewers of this scent: This really is the best experience I've had with an aquatic/wet scent. It's very salty at the beginning, incredibly evocative of the scent concept. The olive leaf comes forward, making me really understand it as a perfume, rather than food, ingredient! The sea moss is astringent, and the oakmoss is kind of a bridge (over troubled waters?), bringing the aquatic stage logically into the earthier appearance of the Snake Oil well into the drydown. The Snakes I've had the fortune to handle so far really have been beautiful, and this one is no exception.

Some people have mentioned a piney feeling in Habu. Y'all, I know where you're getting that -- it's in the lemony-rosewood thing of the ho wood, abetted by the bamboo -- but I assure you, there are not significant amounts of pine. I have been wearing this for several hours. In that time, I would have been running for the Benadryl, frantically scrubbing this off, and possibly having to use my asthma inhaler as well. There's a similar crisp cleanness to the wet stage, but I don't think pine. Wet: Bamboo and bright ho wood. Very clean and light. Just hints of teak at this stage; something almost like melon. Drying down: It takes some time for the bamboo to recede into the background, and for the woods -- the teak wasn't as strong as I'd hoped -- and the musk to come up, but when they do, they make a very sexy, subtle blend with the Snake Oil that finally appears. This lasts a long time for me and is very nice, conjuring places I haven't been yet -- not as aggressively sexy as other blends, but alluring in a way some of the recent Salons have been. Verdict: I will always give it up for Habu, just like a ho wood.