A collection of previous released short stories related to characters from his 1984 novel Moonheart: A Romance, Charles de Lint's 1993 book Spiritwalk is pretty fantastic.
Part of what I'm loving working my way through de Lint's fiction is how he ties everything together - this book is not only a sequel, but acknowledges it exists in the same world as both his Jack of Kinrowan character (Jack the Giant Killer, 1987, and Drink Down the Moon, 1990) and his own author character Caitlin Midhir (Yarrow, 1986), and although the shared-world and world-building devices he's used are really fun for readers of his fiction, they aren't even the best part.
What's really great about the stories in Spiritwalk is how he can handle multiple characters through multiple storylines and yet continues to deal with the same themes while never losing their individual voices, from the gruff ex-biker Blue to the mythical Coyote, he creates this amazing world full of characters that breathe and yearn and desire.
Although Spiritwalk may not be for the de Lint first timer (it is a sequel, after all), it was a delight to read and has me quite excited to continue my journey through his stories.
Moving through the works of Charles de Lint from the ‘80s to the ‘90s, I’ve found a couple of great reads, but so far nothing has compared to Drink Down the Moon, his sequel to his 1987 novel Jack the Giant Killer.
The book takes place a few years after Jack saved the fae of Ottawa in the first book, and brings a much darker threat to the citizens of Kinrowan (the fairy side of Ottawa), and one with terrible plans for all.
As with many of his previous books, this novel focuses on myth and folklore as well as a lot of music and even a mention of Cat Midhir (the protagonist from his earlier book Yarrow - who I'm hoping to come across again in a future story).
The story is a lot of fun, moving back and forth between Jackie's story and that of a young musician who is just beginning to see the fairy world...
The book was pretty great and has me looking forward to to more of the shared world that De Lint has created in his later works.
I think I'm just on a roll with my Charles de Lint reading right now.
Last month I read Yarrow and absolutely loved it - the merging of high fantasy (completely new world) and magic realism (wherein magical events happen in our world), was just incredible, and the characters were becoming incredibly strong, three-dimensional people that I would either love to meet, or in the cases of the villain, found intriguing.
…and then I hit Jack the Giant Killer.
This book is absolutely brilliant, it takes concepts from fairy tales and specifically merges them with modern day (well, 1987) Ottawa - which was amazing, and then begins to hint that the Ottawa of Jack the Giant Killer is also the Ottawa of Moonheart - just in a quick reference to a physical location, but still, this is the kind of stuff I get excited about when reading Terry Pratchett or Stephen King.
The novel focuses on a girl named Jackie Rowan, who ends up becoming the "Jack" in a fairy tale, which is both a lot of fun with gender-swapping the traditional role, and bringing forth an incredibly fun character, also Jackie starts doing things that may not work exactly in traditional fairy tales, but make a heck of a lot of sense if strange magic stuff started happening around a real person - like telling her best friend.
This book is great. I spent almost half the story smiling and the other half really anxious about what was going to happen to this great character.
Since last week I've started re-reading my collection of Bill Willingham's Fables to get myself caught back up as one of my other current comics, The Unwritten, has a pretty major crossover with Fables and I'm really looking forward to reading that when the trade comes out (July 2014).
This week's character is also the star of the first major Fables spin-off, Jack (also known as Jack of Jack and Jill, Little Jack Horner, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, etc. etc. etc.). Like the rest of the characters in the series, Jack was chased out of his own realm when an invading army arrived and has since moved to our world and taken up residence here.
Like the Jack of various fairy tales, this Jack is not above bragging about his own exploits (in the spin-off series, Jack of Fables, he actually writes the final caption of each issue, usually explaining all of the amazing things he is planning to do in the next issue - which usually do not come to pass) and he may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but what Jack is, is a pretty amazing trickster - he can usually talk his way in or out of any scenario and although he doesn't always succeed at his various schemes, he does became a very loyal friend to those who stand by him (not that there are many of them) .
If you've never read Fables, I would strongly recomend giving it a try, and Jack is one of the main reasons I love this strange world he inhabits so much.
