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Sep 29, 2010

Ambertronic rated it:

I was just a wee freshman in high school when I discovered Charles de Lint, and my addiction to his characters and fictional world of urban mythology all started with this book. It has been 14 years now and I'm still a huge fan.

The first edition paperback of this book actually has an oil painting by Terri Windling on the cover of a celtic looking woman with deer horns, a flute, and an oak leaf tattoo over her eye. I want to say John Jude Palencar has been doing the reprint cover ar More...

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May 15, 2011

Irene rated it:

Copied from the author's website, I thought this would be a handy guide for myself (since I lost track of which ones I've read and who knows in what order). * for the ones I have/read.

Q. Where do I start reading the Newford stories?
A. The books have all been written in such a way that you should be able to pick up any one and get a full and complete story. However, characters do reoccur, off center stage as it were, and their stories do follow a sequence. The best place to sta More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Michael rated it:

Charles de Lint seems to do what many New York Times Bestselling authors fail to do; he is able to tell simple (Note: I do not mean simplistic) stories, and keep the “meat and potatoes” in place. What do I mean? There is nothing more irritating to me than a story which is more a sketch than a story, where characters are given the thinnest of descriptive lines, where the plot is as thinly unveiled as the characters, are given to long dialogs that meander in order to get that extra pages in so More...

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Feb 09, 2012

Kaila rated it:

This review is also available on my blog, Stumptown Books.

Short stories, I have decided, are simply not my favorite medium. They don't offer up enough satisfaction or closure, and there's that obscurely frustrating first couple pages of a story when you don't know what is going on, and that happens over and over again. Thankfully all the stories in this case take place in one area, the city of Newford, with a cast of characters that show up repeatedly. Jilly is a great character a More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Juliet rated it:

Charles de Lint was writing urban fantasy well before the genre's current wave of popularity. In fact, his work sits outside what people mean by urban fantasy these days - it eludes classification, falling somewhere between magic realism and folkloric fantasy. Terri Windling's introduction to this edition discusses the difficulty of trying to pin such a book down to a single genre.

I'm currently attempting to read through all Charles de Lint's Newford books in order of publication. Dr More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 29, 2010

Zoe rated it:

In every urban fantasy, in every fictional story where our world intersects with the unreal, there is a moment where the protagonist must somehow transition from "this can't be happening" to "could this really be happening?" to finally "I have to remove the singing frog from the belly of the evil dragon." Dreams Underfoot is basically just a collection of this same moment rewritten a dozen times over.

The pages do not turn but laboriously and with great e More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 29, 2010

Werner rated it:

All but one of the 19 stories in this collection take place in de Lint's favorite setting, his imaginary city of Newford, Canada and its environs, and they furnish a great introduction to his characteristic urban fantasy. (Strictly speaking, two of the stories here don't actually have a supernatural element; but they fit right in with the rest.) Newford is home to such creatures as mermaids and fairies, skookins and Bigfoot (along with some more sinister entities), as well as to a gallery of l More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Aerin rated it:

This isn't a novel. But then again, it's not exactly a collection of short stories either, at least not in the typical sense. The different chapters share characters, setting, and theme, and all of them tell different aspects of the same story: There is much more than meets the eye in the city of Newford.

Other than this book, I've read very little urban fantasy ( Sean Stewart's Galveston is the only other one that comes to mind), but it's an interesting genre. So often when we th More...

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Sep 29, 2010

T.M. rated it:

I had high hopes for this book but, ultimately, I had difficulty getting through it. The nice thing about short story collections, of course, is that you can always skip ahead if the one you're reading doesn't work for you.

In this case, I found myself skipping every story once I hit the halfway point -- which made me a bit sad because I'd been intrigued by what I'd heard about De Lint's work, by the central premise of his writing, and how it dovetailed with so many of my own interest More...

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Apr 23, 2011

Josie rated it:

I read The Onion Girl last week, and decided I needed to read, um, the preceding books in the Newford universe. So I basically picked up half the shelf of Charles de Lint novels at the library (I literally could not carry more books) and started in on what seemed to be the "first". But as I assumed, it seemed like I could jump into the world at any point and be able to get a handle on what was going on, sort of like Discworld where people actually tell you not to start with the first More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Jammies rated it:

Good reviews are always harder for me to write than bad ones. This book just sings to me--I love the sparse, clean prose; the engaging, three-dimensional characters; the twisted but familiar storylines and the city of Newford. I love that de Lint sets his urban fantasies in a Canadian city, which is a welcome change from the UScentric urban fantasy I usually read. I was sad to close the book after reading the next page, and I want more.

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Jul 04, 2011

Alkatraz rated it:

The start of a grand adventure through a world so beautiful and dangerous that we cannot help but read more, to be guided through such a place where the Dreamlands and the World As It Is are so close the most fantastic things will happen, if only you believe. De Lint has created, in this collection, a world of his very own that he has graciously shared with the rest of us. In his city of Newford, we see the light and dark sides of the Dreamlands and fairy.

Never does he disappoint wit More...

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Mar 29, 2011

Paul rated it:

After the first two stories of Dreams Underfoot, I knew that I had found a new author to call one of my favorites. Welcome to the club, Mr. Charles de Lint.

Dreams Underfoot is a collection of short stories that are based in the town of Newford, a melting pot of a city where there exists every demographic extreme and everything in between. Unbeknownst to many of the residents, there are also fairies, spirits, mermaids, goblins, and other fantastical creatures lurking just out of sigh More...

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Jan 04, 2012

Karyn rated it:

O.k. I'm retiring this book unfinished. I rarely finish short story collections so I am unsure wether it was this or the audio format that did it for me. I did get most of the way through it, and liked what I read/ heard but just wasn't intrigued enough to choose it over the other books all lined up on my shelf.

Earlier thoughts.
I'm making a proper attempt at an audio book, so I thought I should use an author I know I already like. I was pleasantly surprised that I liked the first More...

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Nov 04, 2010

Debra added it

This is one of the earliest works by De Lint that I remember reading years ago. These short stories eventually become the basis fro the Newford series. This also contains the short story that makes me think De Lint sees himself in Christy Riddell. I could be wrong. At the end of Talllulah he writes "I have this fantasy that it's still not too late; that we can still drive that mean spirit away and keep it at bay. The city would be a better place to live in if we could and I think we owe it More...

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Jul 28, 2011

Meghan rated it:

Judging by the fact that it took me at least three years (if I recall correctly) to make it through this book, I don't know that I would recommend it as a good place to start with the Newford books. Every story quickly becomes very samey and less satisfying, like eating mouthful after mouthful of cotton candy until you have sticky hands, an empty bag and a stomachache.

I have enjoyed several of de Lint's other books and will probably return to another Newford book at some point, but i More...

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Jan 09, 2012

S.M. rated it:

This is a very fine collection of stories that range from the uplifting to the heartbreaking. Centering around a handful of characters in and around a single city, each story links with the other in much the same way lives tend to link; varied and often randomly.

The writing was excellent, drawing you into a cityscape with a smouldering underbelly or forgotten and magical things, places and people. While urban fantasy is not my favourite genre, this collection of stories was equal p More...

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Jul 27, 2011

Michelle rated it:

I love just about anything this man puts to paper. However, this is one of my favorites. It is a collection of short stories about the extraordinary, everyday magic to be found around his fictional city of Newford. This is where I fell in love with many of his main characters who show up on later novels. Many of his characters are the kind of people who often become invisible in our bustling lives - the homeless, street people and the like. His stories remind us to look for magic in our everyday More...

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Sep 29, 2011

Betsy rated it:

Audiobook. Narrator: Kate Reading (she's good but not my favorite, a little slow and heavy-sounding)

Short stories aren't my favorite, but this is the first book in the Newford series, and I'm a little obsessive about starting series at the beginning. And I suspect it's actually a very good introduction to the setting for the world of Newford. I haven't read a lot of urban fantasy, either, so it was a good introduction to the genre.

The stories run the gamut of emotions More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Kaylee rated it:

This book is not my favorite by De Lint. It is the first collection of short stories based in his fictional city of Newford, a city where magic lurks in every corner. What I love about it is that all his stories feel like modern day fairy tales. It defamiliarizes us with the urban setting, giving it an underlying mystery. Also, his female characters are really engaging even in this first collection. Many of them reoccur in later stories and a lot of first time readers might not get the connectio More...

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Apr 21, 2011

♥Xeni♥ rated it:

This is another one of those books where I just have to say 'How does one review something this special, this odd and this wonderful?' I can't. I can, though, try and tell you why I love this anthology so much.

It's the second of de Lint's works that I have read. The first was The Blue Girl, which, when I started it, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This anthology really connected some dots about Newford for me, though.

The characters in here are just magical More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Rachel rated it:

Charles de Lint creates some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read…

In literature, there are many places to visit while one breathes in the scent of ink and paper, but how often can we find a place that we wish were real? And because it seems so very real and solid, naturally there should be a way to find it. I want to visit Newford. I want to see the Tombs from Gracie Street, and talk with Jilly, Geordie, and Christy.

Newford sucks me into the vast history of it More...

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May 21, 2011

GaryandRuth rated it:

The first story is Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair. This brings many threads that I only half-remembered from The Onion Girl back to the surface again. Of course, for the newcomer to Newford it must do the reverse. It starts off many threads that develop into fascinating stories in their own right. I begin to seen how easily CDL slips between the worlds in the story and I have to stop frequently amd catch myself as I peer through the shadows and wonder which world I'm walking in at the moment. The re More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Erin rated it:

My unread Newford books have been tugging at me lately, so I figured I'd finally get to reading them. Better yet, I'd start at the beginning.... I am usually not one for contemporary fantasy and was even more skeptical when Dreams Underfoot turned out to be a short story book. The first story is definitely the weakest one and I didn't think I'd keep reading but sometimes my intensely stubborn streak pays off.

de Lint's use of adjectives can get so heavy handed it's cliche at times, bu More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Megs rated it:

I think De Lint really summed up the allure of urban fantasy in the last story Tallulah:

“I liked things to do with the city the best because that seemed the last place in the world where the delicate wonders that are magic should exist.
Truth to tell, a lot of what showed up in those notebooks leaned towards a darker side of the coin, but even that darkness had a light in it for me because it still stretched the realms of what was into a thousand what-might-be's. That was the re More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Kerry rated it:

I've been familiar with the name of author Charles de Lint for a number of years, but I've never really got around to reading his books. I read Moonheart many years ago and remember being very impressed with it (to the point I bought the audiobook from Audible last year and hope to get to listen to it this year), but I never read anything else.

de Lint writes urban fantasy. Somehow, in the years between the late 80s/early 90s when people like de Lint and Emma Bull and were writing it More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2011

Stephen rated it:

3.5 stars. I liked this collection and certainly would recommend it to fans of de Lint but in all honesty I was expecting to like this collection more than I actually did. I had previously read Moonheart (which I loved) and Memory and Dream (which I thought was excellent, though not quite as good as Moonheart).

First, this is not really a short story collection as much as a group of individual tales all set in Newford and involving many of the same characters (and often building on e More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Betsy rated it:

Man, this book comes so close. I'm giving it a 4 because I enjoyed the worlds, the settings, the experience of curling up with the premises behind these stories about faeries and monsters and various magical folk in and around and under urban environments and human characters. Those alone are worth reading it for... but it's when De Lint goes too far into the psychology behind his mythical creatures that his weaknesses as a writer are shown. This evil underground creature dies if you tell it The More...

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Sep 29, 2010

Loni rated it:

I like urban fantasy, I like Charles De Lint. I don't like Charles De Lint ala the 'hood.

While he has a real knack for co-mingling the modern and the mythic in most urban settings, when he tries to do the whole 'down with that' sort of talk he comes off as, well, pose-y.

This is a bit of a pet peeve for me, and I imagine others like me, who grew up in the sorts of environments he is writing about. The fact that he isn't really familiar or comfortable with the environm More...

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Jun 19, 2011

JG (The Introverted Reader) rated it:

"Every time it rains a ghost comes walking."

Dreams Underfoot introduced readers to de Lint's fictional city of Newford. Magic is on the streets of Newford if you just know where to look for it. It's usually in the most unexpected places.

Man, I love the Newford books. This book started my re-read of them all in order. They aren't really a series, so I've skipped around, reading them as I find them, but I'm curious to see my favorite characters grow in a more na More...

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