When Sara and Jamie discovered the artifacts, they sensed the pull of a dim, distant place, a world of misty forests, ancient magics, mythical beings, ageless bards, and restless evil.

Now, with their friends and enemies alike—Blue, the biker; Keiran, the folk musician; the Inspector from the RCMP; and the mysterious Tom Hengyr—Sara and Jamie are drawn into this enchanted land through the portals of a sprawling downtown edifice that straddles two worlds.

This is my second Charles de Lint novel, and the second one I have been slightly disappointed in. de Lint, should be an author I love and I should want to read everything he has written, but something is missing that elusive little thing that moves an author from being someone whose work you can enjoy to someone whose works you devour.

Now, in this books case, I think it might come down to two things, firstly this was the audio version, and it’s a long ‘un! somewhere around the 19 hours mark. Not something that you can listen to in one or even half-a-dozen goes! and especially not concentrate on for that long, so naturally parts of it become ‘background’ noise that you drift off from.

And secondly, it gets seriously bogged down in the middle, I thought the first few chapters were very good, the characters likable, and the plot gently intriguing.

Then more and more characters were added, and plot strands woven in, and it started to muddy the waters somewhat, as much as I liked the character of Tucker, the inspector from the RCMP I could have done with out most of his story line, and allowed the story to concentrate more fully on the residents of Tamsin house.

Kudos has to be given to de Lint for not taking the obvious route of giving Sara and Keiran a romance together but the romances they did have I never 100% accepted.

I don’t want to give anyone the idea I did not like the book, I did, and de Lint does hold all the various plots together with some skill and resolves them all fairly well, and we do get a satisfying climax, but I just can’t get excited about his work like I would like to.

From what I’ve read, de Lint, is almost universally praised for his characters ‘feeling’ real and people who you would like to meet, and I have to say, the one thing I can take from his work so far is that, Tucker and Blue are both excellent characters for instance who I enjoyed immensely.

I do have a few more mooched books of his to go, and my next up is to finish his Dreams Underfoot collection and/or Memory and Dream, so hopefully one of them will be the one that does it for me.

Rating:

Other reviews to consider:

• Stuff as Dreams are Made on