ISBN: 0-312-85849-3 Order from: Amazon.com
An Urban Fantasy with several appealing characters, with a good plot made a bit less exciting by the fuzzy mysticism of the world view.
Reviewed by David on October 03, 1998
Genre: Fantasy (Urban Fantasy, High Fantasy, Shapeshifting)
Synopsis: Several apparently unrelated bystanders in a North American city get dragged into struggles between magical gangs. Fighting confusion, disbelief and old emotional scars, the protagonists slowly discover more information about the struggle, the reality underlying our world, and their own connection to the parties in the fight. The whole of creation, vaguely styled after some American Indian myths and influenced by Welsh legends, is in danger.
Full Review: This novel suffers from a common de Lint malady: while excelling in its portrayal of heroes and the environment, the magic which underlies the solid-seeming world of ours is explained with too much fuzzy mysticism. It doesn't help that for the first half of the book the wise magic-users, when instructing bewildered mortals (and near-mortals) resort to vague statements like "all stories are true somewhere", or "time is an illusion" or "if you look without preconception you will see the magic". Luckily, in the latter half the plot picks up and both the perils and the magic seems more concrete and amenable to justify the plot development.
The villains in their several varieties seem to have motivations too vague or petty for the amount of suffering they cause. Perhaps this is one of the points: evil is often petty, and even innocuous mistakes can cause enormous damage. However, this lack causes some imbalance in the plot.
The characters are well described, and their interactions sustain the story and lift a conventional save-the-world fantasy above the mediocre premise. The vulnerable but courageous Bean twins and the irrepressible Crow girls are both memorable and enchanting.
This book shows promise from an author, who, after almost single-handedly starting the urban fantasy genre, has stagnated by repeatedly recapitulating a fuzzy-mystical mythology. One hopes that de Lint's obvious skill will be concentrated more on characters and plot, and less on the Mystery.
Overall: 6; Plot: 5; Characters: 6; Style: 6; World-building: 5.5; Originality: 6;
Copyright date 1998, Tom Doherty Associates (Tor), February 1998, Cloth, 380 pages
ISBN: 0-312-85849-3 Order from: Amazon.com