The Riddle of the Wren

A wonderful, wonderful man in Pullcow (howdy, E!) introduced me years ago to the amazing worlds of Charles de Lint's imagination. It has been probably 3 years since I read anything by him, and I've been missing the eerie overlap of this world and that world that is the hallmark of de Lint's writing. So I picked up The Riddle of the Wren at a used book store recently. This is the first of his young adult that I've read (and I wasn't even aware he wrote young adult fiction until I nabbed this). It is also the first of his novels that I've read - prior experiences have been chains of short stories, many with recurring characters and/or shared worlds. Turns out this is the first novel he wrote, so kind of appropriate that it's the first I read, I guess. It is set in its own universe, a universe of many balanced worlds that can be traveled to and from if one has some magic and knows the secrets of the gates. The main character is a 17 year old girl from a backwater, magic-less world who is tossed headlong into the wider universe after an encounter with a malicious wizard. It was a very fun and satisfying read, and I recommend it, but ultimately wasn't what I was looking for - no fault of de Lint's writing or the story, but I was hoping for a return to the traces of wonder in this world sort of stories of Jenny Coppercorn and her lot. Any disappointment I found was for having expectations in blind disagreement to the description on the back of the book. So read it. And read anything else you can find of Charles de Lint's works, they are fabulous.

Spell of Intrigue

Some time ago, I read a book by Mayer Alan Brenner, Spell of Catastrophe. I promptly downloaded the rest of the series (available from the author's website, no piracy here!) and then never got around to reading them. I'm gonna fix that now, and rejoin the adventures of Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable. Today I started Spell of Intrigue, and 14 pages in am already encountering lines I feel the need to share. The hell did I wait so long to continue this series? Bah.

"Adventuring is an improvisational art."

"It's my kids," he said, "I should never have had kids in the first place. That was the beginning of the end. They warp your whole sensibility. You should have some."

Max was fully at home with the company of a highly functioning mind. The Lion, Max had discovered, had a brain with which no one could find fault, but was reticent to the point of pulling teeth about actually using it...

I had deep reservoirs of total incompetence whose surfaces I had barely begun to scratch.