Muse and Reverie

Charles de Lint's 2009 short story collection Muse and Reverie appears to be the last visit he planned to his fictional setting of Newford for some time. The stories, originally published in a number of fantasy fiction collections (including one featuring Hellboy!), are a nice mix of stories, shifting back and forth between urban fantasy and dark fantasy, as well as one adorable Christmas story featuring the crow girls.

The first story in the collection was previous included in his Waifs & Strays collection, but otherwise these were all new to me and were a great delight to read. As I've only got six more stories after this until I'm caught up, and it looks like this is the latest short story collection, I have to admit my enjoyment was a little bitter sweet - soon I'll be joining de Lint's other fans, but like them, I'll have to wait to get more stories until he publishes them.

Book Review: Dingo

Charles de Lint's 2008 novella Dingo focuses on two young men who both fall for the same girl, and what they do to try and win her affections.  Of course, being a de Lint story, there ends up being more than a little magic, danger and even a visit to a world separate, but not that different, from our own.

The novel focuses on Miguel, a seventeen-year-old high school student who falls immediately head over heels for the new girl in town, Lainey, an Australian girl with a strange dog.  Things get more confusing when the usually friendly Lainey starts acting like she's never met Miguel and then Johnny, a local bully, seems to take an interest in her as well.

The novel uses Australian folklore and merges it quite nicely with the world de Lint has created in his city of Newford.  None of his regular characters make an appearance in this novella, but as per usual, much of the story focuses on how normal folk deal with a undeniable confrontation with the world of magic.

A fascinating, if short, read.

Charles de Lint's Little (Grrl) Lost (2007) is a YA novel focusing on a friendship between two teen girls, T.J. and Elizabeth, the first having recently moved from the farm to the suburbs and the second having just run away from home. Although T.J. is more straight-laced and Elizabeth is a little more punk, the big difference between the two of them comes down to size; while T.J. is a pretty normal young woman, T.J. is a Little, and therefore stands at about six inches tall.

The Littles were first introduced in the collection Tapping the Dream Tree, and although this novel does take place near Newford, it's connection to de Lint's regular cast of characters is pretty limited. A fun jumping on point for new readers and a great story about friendship and finding your place in the world as well.

Book Review: Promises to Keep

So after finished Widdershins, wherein de Lint has written a very nice finale for two of his favourite characters, what is the appeal of a prequel novel looking at one of them during her college years? Actually quite a lot.

Promises to Keep follows perennial favourite Jilly Coppercorn in an earlier time in her life, shortly after she came to Newford in the first place, and works as both a great little story in its own right, and also a pretty great jumping-on point for new readers who may not want to go all the way back to The Dreaming Place, written nearly two decades earlier, as well as a story that acknowledges that although very interested in the magical aspects of the world, Jilly spends the first part of the series of books with no direct contact, only hearing about this world through the stories of her friends.

The story is short and sweet, focusing on issues of lost friends and things that may have been and left me feeling quite satisfied and looking forward to reading more.

Book Review: Widdershins

One of my favourite things about reading Charles de Lint's Newford stories is how characters will pop up as main characters for a novel or a short story, and then step into the background for the next story; sure there are mainstays like the Riddell brothers or Jilly Coppercorn, but overall you get a different view of the city each time you go back sort of like Terry Pratchett did with Discworld.

Sometimes, however, you do really want to know what happens next, and in the latest of his books I've read, Widdershins, we follow up with Jilly a few years after the events of The Onion Girl and get to see what may be one of my favourite things in these types of stories, a collection of almost all my favourite characters over the twenty-years of stories working together to help a friend in need.

Like Louis L'Amour's The Sackett Brand (1965) or heck, even Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), this book is really for the fans. For the people like me who have been reading about Jilly and Geordie since the short story "Timeskip" back in 1989, this is a really fun reward.

Almost every new story de Lint sets in Newford works as a standalone, but I will say this one works best if you've read the short story collections, The Onion Girl and Spirit in the Wires.

Well worth reading, and as I'm nearing the point where I'm up to the books published ten years ago, I'm already starting to get nervous about when I'll have to wait like every other de Lint fan for his new books to come out.

Book Review: Spirit in the Wires

Charles de Lint's 2003 novel Spirits in the Wires is one of those delightful fantasy novels that works both on it's own merits and as an interesting look at how we viewed The Internet in the early 2000s. The novel, based in his fictional city of Newford, connects Christy Riddell, a renowned folklorist (and regular Newford supporting character) to two women, Christianna Tree and Saskia Madding, both of whom come from strange beginnings and are about to go on a journey that melds the World Wide Web with de Lint's faerie mythology.

In the novel a virus has struck the Wordwood, a popular website that works like a sort of sentient Wikipedia, and has been mentioned in any number of de Lint's other works over the years. Initially shutting down the website, the virus mutates and soon regular users of the site disappear in a sweeping world-wide event that connects the novel's primary characters with a number of others from de Lint's world.

The story works as a journey, but travels back and forth between three groups, giving the reader a number of well-developed characters to follow and some pretty amazing wonders along the way. I don't want to get into too many specifics as much of the fun of the novel comes from the various twists and turns of the plot, but it is definitely well worth the read.

Book Review: Waifs and Strays

Charles de Lint's Waifs and Strays sits comfortable between a collection for Young Adults and a collection about Young Adults. Although four of the stories appear in other short story collections by the author, this collection focuses specifically on teen protagonists, and move throughout many of the worlds previously created by de Lint, whether in realms of high fantasy, the world introduced in his science fiction novel Svaha, stories he contributed to the Borderlands series and many stories set in Newford.

For me, the standouts were the two stories about the Apple, a teen vampire (which sounds horrible when I write it out that way) who is desperate to understand her new condition and hopeful for her future. Unlike the Twilight series, there is very little glorification of the vampire condition in these stories and de Lint works to get the reader very invested in Apple and her family.

In addition to some really great stories, each entry also includes an introduction (ranging from a paragraph to a page) giving background info for the story as well as suggestions as to how it fits in his increasingly expanding fictional world.

A great introductory read to de Lint and although I had read four of the stories before, I happy reread each of them, finding them to be like old friends I hadn't seen in a while, but was happy to spend time with again.

Book Review: The Onion Girl

When reading any series, in any genre, you eventually come across a book that works to put everything you've read together, showing you a perspective on the world you haven't seen before, sometimes this happens quite early (like Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three - book two of his Dark Tower series, or Louis L'Amour's The Sackett Brand - book five of his series focusing on the Sackett family).

For me, Charles de Lint does this in his tenth book focusing on his fiction city of Newford The Onion Girl, which focuses finally and specifically on artist/waitress/fierce woman Jilly Coppercorn, and finally grants her the wish she's had in all of his books, to see the world of magic; of course, seeing the larger world has it's own costs as well...

The book begins with Jilly awakening after a hit-and-run car accident, stuck in a hospital bed and in significant pain, and as she is now the person who needs support, all of her friends (and many of the leads from previous de Lint novels and short stories), rally around her in her time of need. But the accident, which seems to have put a complete stop to her life in Newford, seems to have awoken something else in her, as she now begins to travel in the realm of the spirits while sleeping, letting her see true magic, but also potentially stopping her from focusing on her life in Newford.

As a parallel story, the book introduces Raylene Carter, a woman with a history similar to Jilly's and who took a decidedly different path. Raylene is fun, brash, and more than a little dangerous, and her story was a really nice counterpoint to Jilly's.

The novel does include a previously released short story "In the House of my enemy" (1993), which fits nicely in the narrative and gives necessary backstory to readers new to de Lint's work.

A great book

Book Review: Forests of the Heart

Finally moving out of the '90s and into the 2000s, Charles de Lint's Forests of the Heart is a pretty fantastic way to start the new decade.

The novel, set in his fictional Canadian city of Newford, does feature a few of his fan favourite characters, but in this novel they are secondary to a new group, one including artists, musicians, a witch, and some very kind people who get in way over their heads.

As with most of his fiction set in Newford, de Lint focuses on how regular folk interact with the mythic, being creatures or events from beyond our world (but often also from just around the corner), but as with his best work, this focuses largely on his human characters and their all-too-human issues.

Two of the main characters, a used-record store owner named Hunter Cole, and an artist/social worker named Ellie Jones, actually begin with very little in terms of fantasy elements in their lives, neither are the latest in a family lineages of healers (another character in the novel) or have a family history involved with a group of creatures simply called "The Gentry" (that falls to two other characters).  A Big part of what I love about this novel is how well de Lint manages a large cast of characters, deftly switching back and forth between them, without ever losing the inertia of the story.

Forests of the Heart is a well crafted fantasy novel, something I might suggest to bring fans of Urban Fantasy into some of the amazing things the genre of Fantasy can bring to a story.

Book Review: Moonlight and Vines

Charles de Lint's third collection of short stories set in his fictional city of Newford, includes many reoccurring characters, including favourite Jilly Coppercorn, brothers Christy and Geordie Riddell, and the Crow Girls (featured in Someplace to be Flying). Many of the stories in this third collection focus on death and loss, but de Lint tends to end his stories on a hopeful note.

Standout's for me were "Saskia" and "The Fields beyond the Fields" both featuring Christy Riddell (Newfords analogue of real-world Urban Legend collector Jan Harold Brunvand) and a woman who may be something else entirely.

A fun find for me was "China Doll" a story originally published in an anthology for The Crow franchise, which, although a little at odds with de Lint's Urban Fantasy setting, was still an interesting visit to James O'Barr's original work.

A fun read!

Book Review: Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint's 1998 novel, Someplace to be Flying begins innocuously enough; a cabdriver witnessing a mugging decides to get involved and ends up getting shot for his troubles. Then, along with the mugging victim (a photojournalist on her way home), he is saved by two young women who appear to be able to fly.

de Lint has always excelled at stories wherein people meet the supernatural and end up shifting their views on the world, but Someplace to be Flying goes much further than this, adding in an entire hidden populace on Earth and drops both characters into the middle of a city wide war. The book actually takes it's time setting up the main events of the story, spending nearly a hundred pages introducing its ensemble and using another fifty for backstory before everything begins to move forward very quickly.

The story is set in Newford, includes a few characters from previous novels and short stories, but is largely populated by new characters, including a set of sisters that are like nothing I've read before (and I've been reading fantasy novels since the mid-eighties), and immerses the reader into an experience including emails, admittance forms and more.

The story works incredibly well at setting up its own mythology and plays fair with all of its charactes (although I have to admit to losing track of exactly who was who twice). A fascinating read and one that already has me looking forward to his next work.

Book Review: Trader, by Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint's Trader (1997) was, for me, a pretty great way to use fantasy elements to tell a story about starting over.  The novel focuses on a luthier (stringed instrument creator) named Max Trader who wakes up one day inhabiting someone else's body.  The story follows Max as he tries to come to terms with what has happened, attempts to put things back the way they were and tries to stop the man who seems to be ruining his old lie.

What I really loved about the book was how it showed the interconnections between all the folk in Max and Johnny's (the other half of the body swap) lives, and how this change had long lasting effects in all sorts of places.

De Lint mainstay Jilly Coppercorn appears in the novel in a smaller role, as do a few other characters from his previous novels and stories, but Trader largely focuses on Max, Johnny, two young women, a runaway and her mother, and deftly moves back and forth between all of these characters to tell an intruding tale of secret lives, starting over and the power of dreams and will.

In the end, much of the novel follows themes of how people deal with change that is beyond their control, asking whether you have the inner strength and drive to flow with change or stay forever focused on what you feel you are owed.

Another great read.

Book Review: Expiration Date

The second in Tim Powers "Fault Lines" series, following Last Call, Expiration Date (1995), focuses on ghosts and the effect they have on those they leave behind. As with Last Call, the book follows a number of characters connected to the fantastic conceit of the novel (the devouring of ghosts by the living, rather than spells that can be cast using playing cards, which was the conceit behind Last Call), including a ten-year-old orphaned (sorry for the 21-year-old spoiler) in the first chapter, a burnt out therapist, an ex-assistant to an exorcist, and Thomas Edison.

The book looks at a number of original concepts, and as someone who reads a lot of urban fantasy, it's kind of nice to read a title that isn't dependent on a Vampire/Werewolf/Demon lover of a young girl, which seems to make up the bulk of the sub-genre. Powers does sometimes lose my attention as a number of his characters are very vocal about not wanting to be involved - which can be an interesting character aspect, but is easy to bleed into the reading experience if repeated enough in the book.

In the end I didn't quite like it as much as Last Call, but it was still a fun read nonetheless and I'm looking forward to reading the final work in the series, Earthquake Weather later this month.

Also - check out the new (thematically related) trailer for Ghostbusters!

Book Review: Dreams Underfoot

Since March of 2014, at the rate of one book a month, I've been working my way through the works of Canadian fantasy author Charles de Lint. Beginning with stories clearly set in a high fantasy realm, over the course of his works he has moved his settings to a fictional Canadian city called Newford, which also happens to be the setting of his first short story collection, Dreams Underfoot (1993).

To be fair, the book could have easily been titled, Dreams Underfoot: The Jilly Coppercorn stories, as his artist character Jilly appears as a main or secondary character in about three quarters of the collection. But as Jilly is an open minded woman, trying to see the magic in all things, I was quite happy to have her along for the collection.

The stories move from funny to heartbreaking and back again, some of them include very graphic imagery, but each of them feels very human to me, focusing (as de Lint often does) on how people react when exposed to the otherworldly. A fascinating introduction to his style of Urban fantasy, and a great place for newcomers to his fiction to begin.

Book Review: The Dreaming Place

I've long been a fan of Young Adult (YA) fiction, so with Charles de Lint's first YA novel, The Dreaming Place, published in 1990, I found a pretty great story involving two young women, Ashlyn and Nina, cousins who have been living together since Ashylyn's mother died and Nina's parents agreed to take her in.

The novel alternates point of view between Ashlyn and Nina, Ashlyn dealing with her grief and Nina suffering from a series of terrifying nightmares.  Although the story begins in a pretty real world setting, it quickly moves into the Urban fantasy that de Lint is most famous for writing.

Including magic, spiritualism and an intriguing concept regarding the consequences of actions, the story works quite well and would be a good introduction to the author's works.

Book Review: Yarrow

Holy cats. Seriously, I don’t really know how else to begin. I’ve been reading a Charles de Lint book a month for almost half a year, waiting to be truly wowed, and so far the books have been pretty great, fun, experimental with fantasy tropes, and in the case of Mulengro (1985) a really neat blend of fantasy and thriller. Overall I was enjoying myself but I still hadn’t really been blown away by any of his books.

Then I hit Yarrow: An Autumn tale (1986) and everything changed. The novel focuses on a Canadian fantasy author named Cat Midhir, who is currently suffering from a bout of writer’s block. It turns out Cat has been using her dreams as inspiration for her work throughout her career, but now something has changed, something dangerous. I really don’t want to spoil the story even though it is now 28-years-old. What I will say is the story balances quite well between thriller and fantasy, and deals with questions of perception and reality as well, not to mention adding both a little comedy and a little eroticism into the mix as well.

With this book I can say that yes, I’m in it for the long haul and will be reading a De Lint book a month until I catch up (luckily, that is a lot of material before I have to slow down). Although I’ve never been to Ottawa (living in Edmonton), Mr. De Lint’s works make me wish I could travel to his Ottawa, a world of magic and wonder, with a feeling of danger beneath the surface.