Quicksilver & Shadow: Collected Early Stories, Vol. 2: Contempory, Dark Fantasy, and Science Fiction Stories.

Book by Charles de Lint

The second installment of Canadian author de Lint's collected early stories opens powerfully with haunting tales from his contemporary and dark fantasy period. "The Soft Whisper of Midnight Snow," "Scars," "We Are Dead Together" and others typify Charles Grant's "quiet horror" approach. All deal with grief and even rage at the loss of loved ones and the importance of recovery. The next section features contributions to Terri Windling's shared world Bordertown anthology series, the best of which, "May This Be Your Last Sorrow," focuses on a lonely and endearing street urchin. Closing the book is a quaint if sometimes awkward selection of what de Lint describes as "science fantasy" that comes off as pulpish, but still manages to include two brilliant jewels, "A Tattoo on Her Heart," about the importance of totems, and "Raven Sings a Medicine Way, Coyote Steals the Pollen," a retelling of a traditional Blackfoot Trickster tale. The first collection, Handful of Copper (2003), showcased heroic fantasy's influence on de Lint; this sequel highlights the Newford magician to come, who likes to "juxtapose old mythic matter with the modern world."
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The successor to A Handful of Coppers [BKL F 1 03] contains more of de Lint's earliest stories. He provides a succinct, informative introduction about these stories' geneses and what they led to in his later fiction. Since he demonstrated extraordinary command of the language very early, the stories speak for themselves as to readability, though many now have rather a historical flavor. Like its predecessor, this collection appeals primarily to de Lint's fandom, especially the completists among them. Fantasy fans of a scholarly bent, interested in the development of one of the genre's most influential writers during the past two decades, may add their numbers to de Lint's fan base. Especially noteworthy to pleased readers of de Lint's many Newhaven (a fantasy avatar of Ottawa, Canada) stories and novels will be the stories here about Bordertown, where reality meets legend. Frieda Murray
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