Book Review: The Little Country

For a while now I've been making my way through the works of Canadian Fantasy author Charles de Lint; finding his books a delight, delighting in his mix of folklore, mythology and fantasy over the course of more than a dozen novels.

Last month I read his 1991 novel The Little Country and it simply blew me away.

Significantly longer than his other books, The Little Country is filled with three distinct storylines, moving from magic realism to high fantasy and interweaving them into something that shows the magic of music and the music in magic.

The novel begins by following Jenny Little, a folk musician from Cornwall who discovers a book in her grandfather's attic by a local author who passed on many years ago, and through her reading of the book, begins to open herself to a strange, and sometimes frightening world of magic.

Seriously, this book is great - I've completely enjoyed my run through his books published throughout the eighties, but if The Little Country is any sort of indication of what I'm going to find in his nineties work, I think I may have found a new favourite fantasy author - and the fact that he, like me, is Canadian, is simply the frosting on the cake.

Read this - it's pretty amazing.