Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection - Hardcover

De Lint, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312852053 ISBN 13: 9780312852054

Publisher: Tor Books, 1993

Synopsis

Newford's citizens--fey folk, magicians, hustlers, painters, fiddlers, and ordinary people--stumble headfirst into enchanting adventures

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of conceptually innovative, thematically simple stories proves again that de Lint ( Spiritwalk ) is a leading talent in the urban fantasy subgenre, which seeks to unite the escapist whimsy of fantasy with the hard edge of cyberpunk SF. The stories are all set in Newford, a New York/Chicago-style urban jungle where citizens often encounter strange beings--worldly monsters, as well as unearthly ghosts--who coexist in what one character calls "a consensual reality where things exist because we want them to exist." In what may be his cleverest stylistic twist, de Lint links the stories through overlapping characters, all of whom have some familiarity with the fictional writer Christy Riddell, who (like de Lint) writes "mythistories," the "odd little stories that lie just under the skin of any large city." De Lint is at his best when his sense of wonder at the possibilities of imagination is rooted in an unsentimental view of harsh human realities: "Freewheeling" includes a sad view of urban street kids, and "In the House of My Enemy" takes a tough look at child abuse. However, De Lint's obviously sincere feeling that "if we learned to care again about the wild places from which we'd driven the magic away, then maybe it would return" leads him to spell out his moral messages, to the detriment of his fiction.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Nineteen associated tales, 1987-93, from the author of Spiritwalk (1992), etc., two previously unpublished, the remainder deriving from magazines, small presses, and minor anthologies. Newford, with its harbor, lost subterranean Old City, Chinatown, skid row, and so forth, is de Lint's all-purpose American city; his theme is Urban Faeries, wherein the creatures and beings of magic and folklore become real and tangible to those that believe in them. Though Newford's population leans heavily toward twentysomething New Agers, characters like author Christy (his stories are often related or read by the other characters), Professor Bramley Dapple of Butler U., and the ubiquitous, good- hearted Jilly Coppercorn, weave in and out of the stories. The ideas, too, display an entertaining diversity: magic birds, stone drums, ghosts in various guises, animated bicycles, Bigfoot, gypsy magic, psychic vampires, spirits of place, Frankenstein's monster, a conjuror and a Tree of Tales, a catalyst for bad luck, dreams, orphans and angels, night people, bridges and possibilities, music and mermaids, and spirits of the city. Tidy tales, with tingling openings, mundane middles, and limp or elusive endings: initially appealing but far from memorable. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0312852053
• ISBN 13: 9780312852054
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 414