Muse and Reverie by Charles de Lint

Muse and Reverie is a brand new collection of short stories set in Charles de Lint’s fictional city of Newford. Now available in one volume, these stories have been published in other venues over the last decade.  While there are some good stories, and only one real clunker, Muse and Reverie lacks the same magic that has characterized de Lint’s earlier collections.

I may have been at a disadvantage, because I have read several of these stories in other editions over the last year, so the bloom has faded from the rose, so to speak. Yet the characters that stood out to me in this volume were the old friends that I have read before: the irrepressible Crow Girls, Jilly and Goon, the mystical Meran, even the elf-like gemmin with their violet eyes. The new characters seem to lack the same spark of life as the ol... Read More