Charles deLint lives in a weird, wonderful world peopled by Celtic fae and Native American mythic figures. Every time I read one of his books, I live there too for a while. The book explores many types of relationships between friends, lovers and family. It also touches on the effects of abuse and the methods of overcoming it. All these serious themes are wrapped in an engaging story of bogans, faerie courts, Crow girls, music and love. I find myself excited every time I see a new deLint book in...

wid·der·shins (w d r-sh nz ) or with·er·shins (w th -)adv.In a contrary or counterclockwise direction: “The coracle whirled round, clockwise, then widdershins” (Anthony Bailey).What would you do for love? Would you write a sonnet? Would you climb mountains for it? Would you battle for it? What about traveling to an alternate universe inside of the woman that you love, to battle beings from her past? This is just what Geordie Riddell has to do to save the love of his life, Jilly Coppercorn.Fans o...

I don't think I realized the first time I read this book that, because of how all the ends are tied up, this was probably the final big Newford book.

Ow. Did I say Onion Girl (the book to which this is a sequel) was painful? This was an order of magnitude more painful to read and experience. But I thought it was a better book, and truer to the Newford canon.In this one, a fiddler accidentally makes some enemies among a bunch of trouble-making boggans. Unfortunately, they're part of a larger crisis in the supernatural world, and precipitate a war between the native spirits and the European fairies. When Lizzie, the fiddler, gets pulled into th...

Two upfront disclaimers: One, I am not a fan of urban fantasy. I think it's a real kitschy genre and I've never been able to take it seriously. Two, I never read any of the previous books in this series. So, hey, if this is your thing and you've been following these characters for a long time, my review is going to be meaningless to you. Aside from those things, I just thought there were a number of problems. de Lint writes really poorly. There's nothing subtle in the narration at all. The expla...

A real grab bag that'll reward you more if you've read some of the earlier Newford stories. Why? Because the cast of characters is rather large, some have backstories or baggage introduced in past stories. Regardless of whether you've read other Newford stories, you'll need to pay attention to all of the characters because it's not so easy to predict who is going to be part of the action. That's part of the fun here - this cast of major and minor players really moves around. Their adventures are...

A sweet and charming fantasy, this rather hefty volume is in many ways a lighter version of Neil Gaiman's classic "American Gods." It is lighter in tone, being more of a romance than a horror tale, and lighter in impact as well. "American Gods" haunted my thoughts and dreames for weeks after I finished it. "Widdershins" has almost entirely faded from my conscious slightly more than 24 hours after I read the last page.This is not meant to be dismissive. I enjoyed de Lint's story and universe thor...

The 11th book of a series by an author I've never heard of? Well, really it was just a random borrow from the library. A bit on the long side, though it never seemed to stray into "boring". It always seemed I must be close to the climax, but really nowhere close. I've not had to go through the childhood trauma that one of the main characters had to, but I imagine that this novel could be helpful to people in similar situations.

I had high hopes for this book. I really wanted to love it as much as I loved The Onion Girl. But I didn't. This book was forced and meandering. So much filler and so much repetitive nonsense.

de Lint has come up with a really interesting background for the story, about a kind of war between the Native American spirits and the Celtic fae immigrants. This could be a neat way to explore the appropriation that especially occurs in genre fiction all the time which results in a lot of Celtic-driven urban fantasy. Unfortunately, it looks like (haven't finished it yet) the main focus is going to be on whether or not the human characters can find lasting luuuuuuuv, and....that's not really ve...

All of the love.Review to come.

This book disappointed me. I have enjoyed other books by the author and in this series. I loved the Onion Girl, and waited eagerly for its sequel. But I thought the plot of Widdershins was too fragmented. DeLint introduced too many new characters, used too many different points of view and tried to tell too many stories at the same time. Half a dozen new characters were introduced, most of whom got point-of-view chapters, and just as many minor characters from previous books made an appearance.

Widdershins is the continuation of where The Onion Girl left off. While technically it can be viewed as a sequel (some would argue that, since Spirits in the Wires came out after Onion Girl and before Widdershins), again de Lint creates a novel that can stand alone if you hadn't read anything of his prior. You open this book and it immediately takes off after a few fill-you-in pages. So now we know how Jilly Coppercorn came to be, but what happens now? How does she cope with her physical life

This is the closest de Lint has come to writing a sequel to any of his Newford novels; it takes place two years after the events in The Onion Girl and finishes Jilly's story. Still, it isn't absolutely necessary to have read The Onion Girl first; de Lint does a decent job of catching new readers up.As with The Onion Girl, the thing that takes me the most by surprise is that the returning characters hold less interest than the new characters for me. I was involved with Lizzie from her very first

For anyone who's been reading de Lint's Newford stories—this is Jilly and Geordie's story. They've been the best of friends, closer than friends, since their college days, and pretty much continuously, one of them has always been involved with someone else—not that that's ever worked out for either of them in the long run. But even they couldn't keep that up forever.The story within which they finally get appropriately whacked with two-by-fours concerns the efforts of one of the old native spiri...

Thank you, Charles De Lint, for this book. Not only was it funny, it was also scary, and heartwarming, and oh so full of magic. If Onion Girl made you feel deeply depressed (I did), than this book is the Anti-depressant. Read your fill, and you'll come out ahead. I promise.

This review and others posted over at my blog. I’m a big fan of de Lint’s work, though I haven’t read as much of it as I’d like. One of my favorite books is The Onion Girl, of which Jilly is the central character. I enjoyed reading about her magical adventures again and following some familiar and new characters.Many of de Lint’s novels and stories take place in the fictional city of Newford and Widdershins is no exception. If you’ve read any of his Newford books, you’ll likely come across se...

I love Charles de Lint. He was the first urban fantasy writer I encountered, and he remains the best. I like that he has created a cast of characters that he truly seems to love and enjoy hanging out with. And I LOVE that he's finally exploring Jilly and Geordie as a viable couple. The intersection of European myth and Native-American myth continues to be an interesting place upon which to stand in de Lint's capable hands. Very deep, though. Don't expect this to be a light read. Good with: chai

I'm afraid I didn't read the earlier books in the series, but had been recommended this one as a good example of a novel from several POV's. Although I like the world that Charles de Lint has built, I felt this book dragged. He could have trimmed 200 pages of inner dialogue and repetitive morality narrative and it would have been a tighter and more enjoyable read. The plot was engaging, if a bit all over the place, but by midway through the book, I became quite tired of hearing characters talk a...

I really like urban fantasy, Neil Gaiman is the author that made me a fan of fantasy in general, so I appreciate a well told tale of gods and supernatural beings interacting in the world with humans. When it comes to the Newford series from Charles de Lint, I was able to find both The Onion Girl and this book which, if not a direct sequel, follows closely the events of that previous book. There is a definite need, for me, to read the previous book before reading this one as the events will have