Moonheart by Charles de Lint Sara and her uncle Jamie live in Tamson House, the old family mansion that takes up a street block in Ottawa. While Sara runs their cluttered curiosity shop, Jamie spends his days studying the arcane and playing host to the eccentrics and homeless people who come and go through Tamson […]
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Yarrow by Charles de Lint I’d been meaning to read Yarrow (1986) for years. I loved Charles de Lint’s Memory and Dream, in which he tells the story of a painter touched by the Otherworld. And I’m a writer (or at least a wannabe one), not a visual artist, so I figured, “if I liked […]
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Jack of Kinrowan by Charles de Lint Jack of Kinrowan is actually two books — Jack the Giant Killer and Drink Down the Moon — in an omnibus edition. Jack the Giant Killer served as de Lint’s volume in the excellent Datlow and Windling edited series of modern retellings of classic fairy tales, as it […]
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Memory and Dream by Charles de Lint “In the world of fairy tales, what was strange was also invariably trustworthy. One quickly learned to depend upon the old beggar woman, the hungry bird, the grateful fox.” I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Charles de Lint’s urban fantasies until I borrowed Memory and Dream from […]
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Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint Someplace to be Flying is the story of a gypsy cab driver and a freelance photographer who meet each other during a chance encounter with the “Animal People” in a dark alley in the familiar setting of Newford. This glimpse into a magical other world leaves them […]
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Moonlight and Vines by Charles de Lint Moonlight and Vines is a well-written collection of stories, set in a modern city, intended to give the reader a sense of wonder, and make us believe that there is magic afoot, even in our most run-down urban slums. Charles de Lint is wonderful at treading that line […]
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Medicine Road by Charles de Lint Some fantasists develop gritty, realistic alternate worlds that draw in the reader. Some swoop us away on flights of gorgeous prose. Some create detailed and intricate magical systems to delight the puzzle-lover and game-player in us. And some, like Charles de Lint, create with character, tone and authorial voice […]
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The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint What drew me to The Blue Girl wasn’t the bad girl trying to be a good girl premise. It wasn’t the thing about the resident student ghost or the gang of malicious fairies or being a social misfit. Been there, seen that — not just in books. It […]
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Promises to Keep by Charles deLint Promises to Keep is the story of the early Jilly Coppercorn, how she meets so many of the other central characters from the Newford stories, and the adventure that results when she unexpectedly bumps into Donna, a friend from her past who she had met while in the Home […]
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Dingo by Charles de Lint Dingo is a YA novel that tells the story of a young woman who has the ability to turn into a dingo because she is a descendant of the original animal people from the beginning of the world. Her breeding causes problems for her and her family when other animal people […]
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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, […]
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Into the Green by Charles de Lint What a strange little book. That was the first thought that crossed my head after I closed Into the Green. It concerns the adventures of Angharad, a tinker-woman who is also ‘Summerborn’, which means that she has a mystical gift that connects her with the realm of Faerie, […]
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The Cats of Tanglewood Forest by Charles de Lint From its charming dustcover to the muted two-page illustration at the end, The Cats of Tanglewood Forest is a beautiful book that I would love to read with, or to, a child. Charles de Lint and artist Charles Vess form a perfect collaboration here, with a […]
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The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint The Mystery of Grace tells the story of Altagracia — known as Grace — Quintero, a tattooed, rockabilly mechanic who finds her greatest joy in customizing old cars and building hot rods, and John Burns, a graphic design artist. Both of these characters have unfinished business that […]
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Eyes Like Leaves by Charles de Lint The magic is leaving the Green Isles. The Summerlord Hafarl’s staff has been broken, and the Everwinter is coming to blanket the islands in snow forever. To make matters worse, the Vikings are raiding up and down the shore, laying waste to everything in their way. It’s up […]
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The Very Best of Charles de Lint by Charles de Lint With a title like The Very Best of Charles de Lint, I had high hopes, and I have to say that they were met. Yes, this is the best of Charles de Lint’s fantasy. Chosen in consultation with his readers on Facebook and on […]
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The Urban Fantasy Anthology edited by Peter S. Beagle & Joe R. Lansdale It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of most urban fantasy. I tend to find problems with almost every urban fantasy book I’ve tried to read. When I got this book in the mail, I kind of rolled my eyes and […]
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Jack in the Green by Charles de Lint Maria Martinez works as a maid in an upscale gated community. One day while she’s cleaning an upstairs bedroom, she glances out the window and notices a gang burglarizing the house next door. One of the gang members is a girl who used to be her best […]
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The September/October issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is always a feast: 258 pages packed with stories by some of the top talent in the field. It isn’t unusual for this issue each year to contain at least one story that will show up on the award ballots the following year, and that’s true this […]
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The March/April issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is worth its cover price for the new Peter S. Beagle novelet all by itself. In “Olfert Dapper’s Day,” Beagle demonstrates that there are still new tales to tell about unicorns if you’re a master of the short fantasy tale. Dr. Olfert Dapper was a seventeenth century […]
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The best story in the May/June issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is the novella, “”Maze of Shadows” by Fred Chappell. And isn’t it lovely that a man who has won numerous literary prizes, is known for his poetry and essays, and was the poet laureate of North Carolina, is writing fantasy? And writing it […]
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The novella is the ideal length for a science fiction story. It’s long enough to allow a reader to become immersed in a scene and involved with the characters; and it’s short enough to allow a reader to suspend disbelief as to the more unscientific or strange aspects of a story without questioning them too […]
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The November/December 2012 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is a mixed bag. Some of the fiction is excellent; some is not. The best story in this issue is Naomi Kritzer’s “High Stakes,” a novelette that is a sequel to “Liberty’s Daughter” from the May/June 2012 issue (about which I said that I hoped there […]
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The latest issue of F&SF is stuffed with good reading. I can’t pick a favorite, as I often do; many of the stories hit that sweet spot. Robert Reed’s short story, “Among Us,” is a good example: it’s about the Neighbors, creatures who look exactly like humans but are not, though they may not know […]
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“In Her Eyes” by Seth Chambers is the novella in the January/February 2014 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and it’s a doozy. It’s one of a number of stories and movies I’ve seen lately that address the question of what it is we love when we love someone. Do we love […]
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Snow White, Blood Red edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling Snow White, Blood Red was the first of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling‘s adult fairy tale anthologies. The series later developed into a treasure trove of beauty, horror, humor, brightness, darkness, and above all, terrific writing. Here, though, many of the authors seem to […]
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Black Heart, Ivory Bones edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling Black Heart, Ivory Bones is the sixth and final entry in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s series of fairy tale anthologies. Of the six, I’ve read four, and each has its own particular flavor, its own unique mood. While all of the books contain […]
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The Green Man edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling In fairy tales, whenever someone journeys into the forest, you just know something strange is about to occur and that the protagonist’s life is going to be changed forever. The same is true of the stories and poems featured in The Green Man: Tales from […]
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The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales is another thematic fantasy anthology by the trio of Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, and Charles Vess. Coyote Road features twenty-six pieces of fiction and poetry. Each story is preceded by art by Vess and ends with a short […]
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Wings of Fire edited by Jonathan Strahan & Marianne S. Jablon I don’t like dragons. This is probably not the first sentence you’d expect to find in a review of Wings of Fire, an anthology devoted exclusively to dragon stories, but I thought it best to get it out of the way right from the […]
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Sympathy for the Devil edited by Tim Pratt Please allow me to introduce Sympathy for the Devil, a fine new anthology filled entirely with short stories about the devil… who is, as we all know, a man of style and taste. However, you won’t just find the smooth-talking stealer of souls here. In addition to […]
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Magic City: Recent Spells edited by Paula Guran Things you should know: 1. This is a reprint anthology. If you read a lot of anthologies in the field, you will probably have read some of these before. I had read three, though two of them were among the best ones, and I enjoyed reading them […]
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Newford — (1990-2015) Each of these novels and story collections can stand alone, but they all take place in a fictional contemporary city (Newford) and have recurring characters. We’re presenting here the ones that we haven’t reviewed above. Publisher: Welcome to Newford… Welcome to the music clubs, the waterfront, the alleyways where ancient myths and […]
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We’re updating our theme, so things may be a little messy or slow until we’re finished.
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