Into the Green

The harp was a gift from Jacky Lanter's fey kin, as was the music Angharad pulled from its strings. She used it in her journeys through the kingdoms of Green Isles, to wake the magic of the Summerblood where it lay sleeping in folk who had never known they had it.

Harping, she knew, was on third of a bard's spells. Harping, and poetry, and the road that led . . .

Into the Green

Charles de Lint takes us once again into lands infused and transformed by magic. Magic that grows in the roots of old oaks and dances by moonlight among standing stones. Magic that sleeps in an old soldier's eyes and glows in the gaze of a phantom stag. Magic that pumps through the heart and the veins of those born to the Summerblood-to be stolen at knife point, burned, destroyed, in danger of fading back into the green and disappearing forever from the world.

The author of Spiritwalk tells an "imaginary world" tale in the manner of Tolkien and Peter Beagle. A young woman travels through the Kingdoms of the Green Isles with a witch staff in her hand, a harp on her back, a puzzle to solve, and a quest to fulfill. Magic abounds in the land--but within magic, there is also danger. . . .

The harp was a gift from Jacky Lanter's fey kin, as was the music Angharad pulled from its strings. She used it in her journeys through the kingdoms of Green Isles, to wake the magic of the Summerblood where it lay sleeping in folk who had never known they had it.

Harping, she knew, was on third of a bard's spells. Harping, and poetry, and the road that led . . .

Into the Green

Charles de Lint takes us once again into lands infused and transformed by magic. Magic that grows in the roots of old oaks and dances by moonlight among standing stones. Magic that sleeps in an old soldier's eyes and glows in the gaze of a phantom stag. Magic that pumps through the heart and the veins of those born to the Summerblood-to be stolen at knife point, burned, destroyed, in danger of fading back into the green and disappearing forever from the world.

Publishers Weekly

De Lint's ( Spiritwalk ) latest is like an old car on a cold morning--slow to start. The first third of the book follows Angharad--tinker, harper and witch--as she travels through the Green Isles seeking to awaken the inherited magic (``Summerblood'') in those ``Summerborn'' who have forgotten it. This bit is frustrating. But fortunately readers soon come to the main event, the story of a puzzle box with the power to destroy the fey Middle Kingdom, ``the green'' that is the source of the witches' magic. Its current possessor appears to be a wealthy merchant whose hobbies already include collecting the fingerbones of Summerborn (wherein lies their power). Seeking to both defuse the puzzle box and free other witches from the merchant, Angharad travels to the town of Cathal where, with the questionable aid of a reluctant, lame, partially blinded, alcoholic Summerborn war veteran and a vicious, tortured mercenary, she confronts the puzzle box in a smartly executed battle between the characters and their own weaknesses. Although the bulk of the book is engrossing, occasionally de Lint gets sappy, as at the end when ``the green'' is reduced to a 12-step healing device, or in the recurring expletive ``broom and heather'' or when he gets to harping. Then again, de Lint is a musician specializing in Celtic folk music, a fact underlined by an appendix of 13 of de Lint's ``Tunes from the Kingdoms of the Green Isles'' complete with lyrics and music. (Nov.)

CHARLES DE LINT and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, The Onion Girl, and Widdershins, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.