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Spirits
In The Wires by Charles De Lint check out website: www.tor.com
For many years, Charles de Lint has been writing urban fantasy, allowing supernatural beings access to the city landscape and the folks who live there. He has peopled the Crowsea district of the city of Newford with believers, sceptics and magic. Those familiar with his work will already have met some of them. The latest in his cycle of stories set in Newford is 'Spirits In The Wires'. Here he takes the 'What if...?'
a step further. When
Holly Rue and her friends created the Wordwood website to gather literature together
and make it accessible to all, they did not foresee that it would grow exponentially
as others accessed to added and to it and evolved until it seemed to be running
itself. That is until Aaron Goldstein blackmails Jackson Hart into taking the
website down with a virus. At the moment of the crash, anyone on-line to the Wordwood
disappears. Christy Riddell watches as his girlfriend, Saskia Madding, disintegrates
into pixels and is absorbed by his monitor. Anyone familiar with the
Newford cycle will know Christy as the author of supernatural stories based on
things he has observed or he has been told. His friends include people who are
either magical themselves or believe in the supernatural. One is Christiana. She
is Christy's shadow constructed from all the parts of his personality that he,
as a seven-year-old, did not want. She may have started as this opposite self
- female to his male, dark to his fair, wilful against his reserve - but over
the years she has matured, developing her own personality. She now runs a bookstore and has a hob as a partner. She is not fazed by
magic, accepting it as fact. She, Christy and others, some of whom have appeared
in previous volumes, set out to discover what has gone wrong with the Wordwood
site and to try and bring back the disappeared. To do this, they have to find
their way through the borderlands. Their guides are Borrible Jones, a tinker,
and Robert Lonnie whose music can open gateways between worlds. As
a novel, 'Spirits In The Wires' also explores the idea of reality. Not only is
Christiana not born in a traditional way, neither is Saskia. She was created as
a functioning person with memories and a career by the spirit of the Wordwood.
Do their origins make them less real as people? Is magic less real because you
do not believe in it? Is Dick, the hob, unreal because you cannot see him, or
cyberspace because you cannot capture or measure it? While the development of the characters and the description of the events in urban Newford are as excellent as ever, some readers may have problems, especially if they are newcomers to de Lint's work. Christy and friends are not newly sprung in these pages but have previous histories and at times it can be like being in a room with elderly relatives reminiscing about a past you have not experienced. By all means, read de
Lint. He has an imagination, style and a grasp of myth that should be enjoyed
but don't start here. His collection 'Dreams Underfoot' is a good introduction
to Newford and its inhabitants and is an excellent precursor to 'Spirits In The
Wires'. The novel, 'Some Place To Be Flying', is also a good introduction, and
passing reference to events in it are made here. 'Spirits In The Wires'
is not quite as satisfying as some of de Lint's other works, mostly because of
the amount of time characters spend in the borderlands. This is much to like traditional
fantasy and is woollier in texture. de Lint is best where there is gritty realism
touched by magic rather than the other way round. Yes, read and enjoy
this book but only after having immersed yourself in others of his first. Pauline
Morgan
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OTHER REVIEWS - December 2003
Other reviews this month Dreams Underfoot by Charles De Lint Spirits In The Wires by Charles De Lint First Rider's Call by Kristen Britain Roma Eterna by Robert Silverberg The Life Eaters by David Brin and Scott Hamilton Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones Dreams of the Compass Rose by Vera Nazarian One Lamp: Alternative History Stories edited by Gordon Van Gelder The Druid King by Norman Spinrad Star Trek: Nemesis novelisation by J.M. Dillard Unto Leviathan by Richard Paul Russo The Sundering by Walter Jon Williams Nylon Angel by Marianne de Pierres Falling Out Of Cars by Jeff Noon The Darkest Part Of The Woods by Ramsey Campbell Lord Of Snow And Shadows by Sarah Ash Tales Of Ten Worlds by Arthur C. Clarke Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Radio Sunnydale Dante's Equation by Jane Jensen Archform: Beauty by L. E. Modesit Jr
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Once
upon a time, people invoked the supernatural to explain phenomena
they didn't understand. A person suffering from a stroke was elf-shot,
a victim of a malicious being loosing off arrows indiscriminately.
A milch cow ran dry because wicked fairies were stealing the milk
or it fell sick because the crone from the next village was using
her evil eye. 
The
chimney caught fire because the hearth spirits were dissatisfied
with their offerings of ale and oats. We think we know better now
but what if the hobs and pixies and the rest of their ilk were still
out there but we didn't notice them because our sceptical mind sets
prevent us? If they can travel between our world and Faerie at will
through the borderlands that separate them, what else might be out
there?
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