Charles de Lint pioneered the urban fantasy genre with critically acclaimed novels and stories set in and around the imaginary modern North American city of Newford: The Onion Girl, Moonheart, The Ivory and the Horn, and the collection Moonlight and Vines, for which he won the World Fantasy Award. Among de Lint's many other novels are Mulengro, Into the Green, and The Little Country.
"De Lint can feel the beauty of the ancient lore he is evoking. He can well imagine what it would be like to conjure the Other World among ancient standing stones. His characters have a certain fallibility that makes them multidimensional and human, and his settings are gritty. This is no Disneylike Never-Never Land . . . . Life and death in de Lint's world are more than a matter of a few words or a magic crystal. The Sidhe are beguiling, terrifying folk and their Otherwold a realm from which no mortal returns unchanged. De Lint knows that, regardless of what names he uses." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
"De Lint can feel the beauty of the ancient lore he is evoking. He can well imagine what it would be like to conjure the Other World among ancient standing stones. His characters have a certain fallibility that makes them multidimensional and human, and his settings are gritty. This is no Disneylike Never-Never Land . . . . Life and death in de Lint's world are more than a matter of a few words or a magic crystal. The Sidhe are beguiling, terrifying folk and their Otherwold a realm from which no mortal returns unchanged. De Lint knows that, regardless of what names he uses." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
De Lint's ( Spiritwalk ) latest is like an old car on a cold morning--slow to start. The first third of the book follows Angharad--tinker, harper and witch--as she travels through the Green Isles seeking to awaken the inherited magic (``Summerblood'') in those ``Summerborn'' who have forgotten it. This bit is frustrating. But fortunately readers soon come to the main event, the story of a puzzle box with the power to destroy the fey Middle Kingdom, ``the green'' that is the source of the witches' magic. Its current possessor appears to be a wealthy merchant whose hobbies already include collecting the fingerbones of Summerborn (wherein lies their power). Seeking to both defuse the puzzle box and free other witches from the merchant, Angharad travels to the town of Cathal where, with the questionable aid of a reluctant, lame, partially blinded, alcoholic Summerborn war veteran and a vicious, tortured mercenary, she confronts the puzzle box in a smartly executed battle between the characters and their own weaknesses. Although the bulk of the book is engrossing, occasionally de Lint gets sappy, as at the end when ``the green'' is reduced to a 12-step healing device, or in the recurring expletive ``broom and heather'' or when he gets to harping. Then again, de Lint is a musician specializing in Celtic folk music, a fact underlined by an appendix of 13 of de Lint's ``Tunes from the Kingdoms of the Green Isles'' complete with lyrics and music. (Nov.)
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