Reviews

Green Man Review: Spiritwalk recounts the further adventures of the inhabitants of Tamson House, in Ottawa. Most of the main characters from Moonheart continue, as they face up to another assault on the ancient house, gateway to other worlds and a place of great magic. The assault is twofold this time, on one side from an enchantress broken through from Celtic prehistory, on the other from a modern magician intent on claiming the power of Tamson House for himself. De Lint works his usual magic with a mixture of Celtic history, Shamanism and modern mysticism. His plotting is neat, his descriptive powers wonderful, and his characters are superb. It is a beautiful story, full of the courage of the human heart, the intricate world of the Fey and all that reside there, the battle between good and evil. I love his writing and how his imagination works. From The Toronto Star, April 1992: Charles de Lint has enjoyed a reputation as one of the world's leading fantasists, thanks largely to his enchanting 1984 novel, Moonheart. …de Lint re-weaves that spell in Spiritwalk, a sequel that ranks among the spring's top releases of fantasy and science fiction. Spiritwalk embraces conventional fantasy motifs…without resorting to hackneyed stereotypes or trite plot devices. At the same time, it deftly and repeatedly crosses back and forth between dimensions to create a unique tone that links familiarity with compelling foreignness. From The Montreal Gazette, June 1992: The marriage of modern settings with Old and New World motifs sounds unpromising, but de Lint weaves these elements together smoothly. De Lint's greatest strength is his ability to draw a large cast of distinct characters, each swiftly and confidently delineated. From Publishers Weekly, April 1992: De Lint infuses his powerful story of sacrifice, revenge and the responsibility of power, with an ancient sense of human unity with the natural world. From Locus Magazine, June 1989: …one of the most gifted storytellers writing fantasy today…de Lint makes each character real, each one capable of change and of many different responses. …bespeaks a knowledge of people, a knowledge of growth, and an empathy that is outside the common run. From Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact: De Lint's reality is a strange one, where the everyday and the supernatural walk side by side, hand in hand, as if the latter were not "mere" fabulation. Yet he makes it work, and work well. His reality is a charming place of great poetic truth.