Dreams Underfoot (Newford, #1) by Charles de Lint

Dreams Underfoot (Newford, #1) Reviews

• 
  Ambertronic

  I was just a wee freshman in high school when I discovered Charles de Lint, and my addiction to his characters and fictional world of urban mythology all started with this book. It has been 14 years now and I'm still a huge fan.
  
  The first edition paperback of this book actually has an oil painting by Terri Windling on the cover of a celtic looking woman with deer horns, a flute, and an oak leaf tattoo over her eye. I want to say John Jude Palencar has been doing the reprint cover art as these anthologies are re-released, I still love Terri's artwork better. But I digress.
  
  This book came into my life at a time when I couldn't commit to reading novels; for some reason I just didn't have the patience for them. But this collection of stories is very palatable in length and variety...each story stands out as an individual and wanders from enchanting, to mild horror, to just plain weird. Most of the stories has some element of old mythologies from different cultures. De Lint focuses a lot on Kickaha native american ideas since Newford is a fictional town in Canada. He adds a lot of Celtic flavor as well, but I think a lot of this has to do with him being an adept Celtic musician who plays regularly in a band. Hey, write what you know, eh?
  
  That's another thing about Newford: most of the characters are bohemian artists in one form or another, and they're all friends. They're all "fine boned" and "pixie faced" and rarely are their any actual ugly characters in his books; though I've noticed he has a penchant for writing in first person with predominantly female characters; what males he does write about have far less detail than his women. A little romantic/unrealistic but I'm willing to look over that. Anyway, his characters are all artists in some capacity or another: corner-busking fiddlers, fine artists that moonlight as waiters and waitresses, flute players, sculptors, musicians and writers. Everyone has some creative niche they struggle to live on. The characters tend to dress very punk/grunge from the '90s as well (which makes sense since his first three Newford anthologies are set in the early to late '90s). Lots of women with blue or pink dyed hair, facial piercings and tattoos, and most of them dress to reflect their income: like they walked out of a thrift store. De Lint also has a lot of homeless people in his stories. He really gives a face to those that fall between the cracks in society. Unfortunately he succeeds more in romanticizing living on the streets rather than representing the reality of people in such a position. Don't get me wrong, he makes an effort to show how sucky his hobo characters have it but it comes across as cool rather than the truly dire situation that it is.
  
  My all-time favorite of Charles de Lint. 14 years and counting....
• 
  Werner

  Note, Nov. 26, 2015: I edited this review just now to correct a misspelled word.
  
  All but one of the 19 stories in this collection take place in de Lint's favorite setting, his imaginary city of Newford, Canada and its environs, and they furnish a great introduction to his characteristic urban fantasy. (Strictly speaking, two of the stories here don't actually have a supernatural element; but they fit right in with the rest.) Newford is home to such creatures as mermaids and fairies, skookins and Bigfoot (along with some more sinister entities), as well as to a gallery of likeable, mostly young characters who are often involved in creative arts --music, painting or writing-- and who may interact in more than one story. (Free-spirited artist Jilly Coppercorn is the most-often recurring character, but there are several others.)
  
  De Lint's protagonists tend to be secular in their attitudes, and a few stories seem to explain the magical elements in terms of the idea that believing something can make it so. Instances of unmarried sex occur in four of the stories (though they're neither explicit nor gratuitous), and there's some bad language, including a few uses of the f- word, mostly by villains or by street kids whose speech patterns aren't shaped by the best of influences. But de Lint's messages here are essentially about the importance of human community and relationships, of kindness and caring and responsibility, of openness to finding "the world a far more strange and wondrous place than its mundaneness allowed it could be." (Some of the stories clearly discourage loose and exploitative sex.) So its "moral tendency," if you will, is a wholesome one, and its vision winsome --given half a chance, I'd gladly move to Newford, and count it a privilege to be friends with Jilly and her buddies!
  
  Probably my favorite story in this collection is "Ghosts of Wind and Shadow;" but "The Stone Drum," "That Explains Poland," and "Romano Drom" are standouts, too. But read it for yourself --you'll pick your own favorites! :-)
• 
  Althea Ann

  A collection of short stories that actually works very well as a 'novel.' They all share a setting and theme - that of troubled, often creative young people encountering myth and magic in the imaginary city of Newford. Having never been to either city, for some reason Newford conjures up a sort of cross between the Seattle and Vancouver of my mind.
  
  Some of these stories are very, very good. I'd say some of them are some of de Lint's best work.
  
  However, around the second half of the book, it began to bother me in the same precise way that so much of de Lint's work ALWAYS bothers me. And this time, I pinned it down:
  
  de Lint reminds me, exactly, of any one of a number of usually well-meaning counselors, teachers and other 'adult' figures, who, when I was a teenager, were CONVINCED that due to my 'alternative' look, creative bent, and independent, rebellious attitude, that I must be suffering from low self-esteem, and hiding some sort of dreadful trauma that had 'made me that way.'
  
  
  There's even a story here where a girl tells a counselor a story of trauma and then says, "Oh, I'm lying, I just said that because I knew it was what you wanted to hear." I said "YES! FINALLY! He's admitting that sometimes counselors TRY to elicit this stuff from you whether it happened or not!" But then the twist ending to the story is that it really DID all happen to her. Ugh.
  
  Believe it or not, some people are just creative and adopt an unusual look because it fits their personal aesthetic. Some people are eccentric without being mentally ill. Some people leave home early and go their own way because they are naturally more independent than others.
  
  de Lint's writing makes me feel conflicted, because while people with the kind of attitude I've described are DEEPLY ANNOYING, his stories also make a reader (if the reader is me) feel guilty for being annoyed by them, because of course you have to have sympathy and empathy for any character who's been through the traumas his characters have, and appreciate people that are trying to 'help.' And bad things DO happen to lots of young people; and some of them are impelled out of the 'mainstream' due to those things.
  
  So - I feel it's a good and helpful thing to encourage empathy and understanding of people who've been through a rough time. But on the other hand, I DON'T think it's helpful at all to encourage the false stereotype that people that are non-mainstream are always depressed, abuse survivors, or 'damaged goods' in some way.
• 
  Stephen

  3.5 stars. I liked this collection and certainly would recommend it to fans of de Lint but in all honesty I was expecting to like this collection more than I actually did. I had previously read
  Moonheart (which I loved) and
  Memory and Dream (which I thought was excellent, though not quite as good as Moonheart).
  
  First, this is not really a short story collection as much as a group of individual tales all set in Newford and involving many of the same characters (and often building on events that occurred in previous stories). The prose in each of the stories is lush and beautiful with a dream like quality that de Lint is well known for. The stories themselves are a mixed bag of excellent to merely okay. Some of my favorites were Paperjack, The Stone Drum, Pity the Monsters and Our Lady of the Harbour.
  
  Overall, a good collection with writing superior to most of the Urban Fantasy out there but sort of hit/miss on the strength of each story.
  
  One Final note: I listened to the audio version read by Kate Reading (who I think is terrific) and she did an excellent job with the book.
  
  Nominee: World Fantasy Award for Best short story (several stories nominated)
  Nominee: Locus Award for Best short Story (several stories nominated)
• 
  Michael Havens

  Charles de Lint seems to do what many New York Times Bestselling authors fail to do; he is able to tell simple (Note: I do not mean simplistic) stories, and keep the “meat and potatoes” in place. What do I mean? There is nothing more irritating to me than a story which is more a sketch than a story, where characters are given the thinnest of descriptive lines, where the plot is as thinly unveiled as the characters, are given to long dialogs that meander in order to get that extra pages in so that the book will be big enough to sell at a higher price (and by this I do not mean that a book has to be thin. It has to be what the story demands of it. There is as much artistry in ‘The Brother’s Karamazov’ as there is with ‘Of Mice and Men’. Both Dostoevsky and Steinbeck knew what was needed in their books, but never sacrificed quality).
  What we have with de Lint’s ‘Dreams Underfoot’ is not only a great introduction to the Urban Fantasy world of Newford, but also characters who run the gambit between the fantastic and the tragic. These are artists, mostly, and around their thirties or so. They are characters who are trying to make a living, pay bills, improve their arts (de Lint is also a folk musician), and who struggle with issues of the daily world. What’s also revealing about these set of short stories is not only has de Lint managed to capture the essence of many myths of the past, by portraying a good portion of the stories in tragic terms, tragedy being something we forget embodies more than a few fantasies, myths, and fairy tales, but that these stories, in both their senses, have characters who are deeply affected and/or scarred by their experiences, experiences that will not always resolve itself, if ever, at the end of the last page of the story.
  I have read other de Lint novels; ‘Into the Green’, ‘The Little Country’, ‘Svaha’, and ‘Greenmantle’. What impresses me most about many of his stories is that they have real, and sometimes violent, grit. They are fantastic, without simplifying the world. The world outside can be a rough and sometimes unfair place, and at least on one level, perhaps metaphorically, ‘Dreams Underfoot’ underscores this many times. The other thing that strikes me is that while de Lint is not a Christian, and certainly not a Catholic (in other places he has been quoted as not only being an Animist, but that he has trouble with “organized religion”), there is something defiantly “liturgical” in the sense in which he presents the magic in his Urban Fantasy as a process between the mythic and the man or woman who either is not aware, or struggles with his/ her spirituality. In one of the stories, Jilly, an painter living in Newford and one who has experienced the fantastic, gives an explanation to a friend that the fantastic, the magical, has to be experienced by going through the process of the unfolding magic. This is as much an explanation for the Sacraments and the Liturgy as it is a condition of confronting the magic of Newford. And at least for de Lint, there is also the human element in the process, “Its existence [magic] becomes an affirmation of the power of the human spirit can have over its own destiny.”(14). In the same way, liturgical and sacramental practices found in Christian spirituality requires the participation of the individual, is in fact a process by which one finds their destiny in the divine. So, in one very real sense, all of the stories found in ‘Dreams Underfoot’ are processes, and do affect the lives of the individuals who pass through them.
  Other stories here have more of the horror embodied in them. In fact, some of de Lint’s early Newford novels, written under a pseudonym, are classified as horror. In this collection, ‘Pity the Monsters’ and ‘Small Deaths’, are examples, with ‘Small Deaths’ displaying a really great kind of Hitchcock type of psychological horror, with just a touch of the magical to shape the story into something quite powerful. There are also tragedies contained between these pages. ‘Freewheeling” about a young, possibly schizophrenic, possibly magic touched young man, Zinc, whose “freeing” of bicycles are interpreted by the law as stealing is one such story. What makes this story interesting, is that the story is told with no pontificating, so one does not know really which way he really is, magic touched or mentally ill. And the ending is powerful enough to hit one square in the chest. Another story, ‘In the House of My Enemy’ is about child abuse and the consequences that usually end up at the foot of the abused. In this story, we learn a little more about Jilly’s background, and her connection with the hurting she is always trying to help. Here again, de Lint does not give us a “satisfactory” ending, even for a strong, brave, and resourceful person like Jilly, and the person she is trying to help in the story is faced with an obstacle so huge it overwhelms her. It seems that for all the magic that happens in Newford, tragedy still occurs in the deepest part of the city, and like all great myths of the past and present, tragedy remains a key element in much of mythic storytelling.
  The only distraction with this collection is a few glaring typos I found. This is not the fault of the author, but of the editors and publishers of the book.
  One last thought on these stories. While reading this book, I was struck by how much it reminded me of Rod Stirling. I’ve always considered Stirling a great storyteller who found the new invention of the television a way to express his art, in the same way that Frank Zappa, a student of composition, found rock and not orchestral music as a format for his art. Stirling was the master of irony, as the twists at the end of almost every Twilight Zone episode displayed brilliantly, and help to set up something not only stunning to the mind, but thought provoking at times as well. I bring this up because this is the same type of thing that is exhibited in most of the stories of ‘Dreams Underfoot’, which only creates that added dimension of the process and the after effects and consequences magic has in Newford as well as for the reader, because like the residents of Newford, we too, through the joyous practice of reading, have completed all the journeys ourselves, and hopefully not afraid to walk the streets of Newford at night or meet the occasional faerie.
  
  
• 
  Juliet

  Charles de Lint was writing urban fantasy well before the genre's current wave of popularity. In fact, his work sits outside what people mean by urban fantasy these days - it eludes classification, falling somewhere between magic realism and folkloric fantasy. Terri Windling's introduction to this edition discusses the difficulty of trying to pin such a book down to a single genre.
  
  I'm currently attempting to read through all Charles de Lint's Newford books in order of publication. Dreams Underfoot was published in 1993. It contains 19 related short stories, all set in or connected with the North American city in whose downtown district live de Lint's set of regular and irregular characters, Jilly Coppercorn the artist, Christy Riddell the bard, his brother Geordie, and a cast of musicians, painters, poets and street people. And the uncanny folk of Newford, who dwell alongside humankind - sometimes beautiful, sometimes menacing, always different.
  
  Some of the stories are stronger than others, but all reflect a deep understanding of traditional narrative. De Lint's writing reflects the fact that he is a musician with a bard's sense of rhythm and flow. The Newford settings remind me of the hippy culture of the late sixties and early seventies, when life seemed to move at a gentler pace.
  
  The stories have been collected in this volume, but first appeared individually in various publications. This means a certain amount of repetition, and that can be a little annoying (for example, the introduction of certain key characters with a physical description each time they appear in a new story, including details of what they're wearing.)
  
  Overall I enjoyed the book. For readers who enjoy folkloric fantasy and who are not familiar with the work of this prominent writer in the genre, I recommend this collection as a starter.
• 
  Skip

  Dreams Underfoot introduces readers to DeLint's imaginary Canadian city of Newford: a mecca for urban fantasy. Magic is on the streets of Newford, if you just know where to look for it, often in unusual places, or more accurately perhaps, if you believe in it. Newford is home to many imaginary creatures, some sinister and some benign. The novel is a collection of 19 stories, many of which tie into others, with a small group of central characters, such as the free-spirited artist Jilly Coppercorn: most are involved in the creative arts --music, painting or writing or in charity. There are many cultural themes too, such as Kickaha native american and Celtic myths. Very weird though. I will probably read another book before deciding whether or not to read the whole series.
• 
  Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship

  This is an enjoyable collection of 19 linked short stories, of the sort of urban fantasy that mixes the ethereal and mundane. Just right for nighttime reading.
  
  De Lint is a prolific Canadian author who has written many books set in the fictional city of Newford, of which this is the first; most of the stories were originally published in magazines in the late 80s and early 90s. They tend to feature bohemian types – artists, writers, musicians – and street people, encountering magic beneath the surface of everyday life. Many of the stories feel like modern fairy tales. For the most part I found them very satisfying reading, hitting all the right notes: sympathetic and believable characters, good writing and interesting plotlines that come to satisfying conclusions. Not every author can write a complete story from beginning to end in 20 pages, much less create reader investment in such a short time. De Lint can. It doesn’t hurt that some of the characters recur, but although every story can stand alone, I did not find the re-introduction of characters too repetitive.
  
  The majority of De Lint’s protagonists are female, and although one begins to notice similarities (waif-like beauty, tragic or mysterious pasts), they are interesting characters who form friendships with each other and don’t revolve around men – indeed, Jilly, the closest the book has to a protagonist, isn’t attached to a man at all. De Lint does less well with minority characters, however; the one black character is a mute fortune-teller, and the story with a Latina narrator is full of forced and awkward uses of Spanish words and cultural references. My least favorite stories, however, were the two originally appearing in horror anthologies; that’s simply not my cup of tea. And another story beats readers over the head a little too hard with the “child abuse is bad!” stick. Finally, there are occasional mistakes that one more pass by a copyeditor could have corrected.
  
  Overall, this gets 3.5 stars that could easily be rounded either way. I enjoyed this book, with its mix of bohemian life and the supernatural, and would consider reading more De Lint in the future.
• 
  Daniel Hayden

  "There are no endings, happy or otherwise."
  
  I came to this book and really, really wanted to enjoy it. Sadly, I didn't at all. Even though each individual story is short, I found it a slog to get through and definitely didn't feel in a rush to pick it back up. I kept starting each new story hoping that maybe this would be one I'd really like, or find beautiful or profound, but never quite managed it. If I had to put the book down midway through a story, I often forgot what happened before, or where I'd got to.
  
  Each story felt formulaic and unconvincing. There was a pattern of "Person with only a cursory interest in the paranormal encounters something paranormal, spends a short time in shock or disbelief, consults a friend who either shares their disbelief OR is somehow incredibly versed on all these unwritten arcane teachings to guide them through, they instantly transition from disbelief to fully-convinced person with some sort of magical power or connection or problem solving capabilities".
  
  The endings to each are all vague, which isn't a problem inherently, but each plot felt two-dimensional and I found most of the characters either uninteresting or flatly unlikeable, and their motivations and developments bewildering. Something about the style and description felt incredibly dated; like a writer playing with genre in the mid-70s, so I was pretty surprised to see this was written around 1990. Each story also felt rushed, which again, was shocking considering the author spent a fair amount of time in between each novella. Everything hinged on exposition and heavy handed simile, with the 'urban realism' phoned in with pointless descriptions on minor details, like short bios on characters we'll never meet (I assume, I doubt I'll pick up anything else by de Lint).
  
  There are some repeated characters (with really irritating names) but I found I kept backtracking because I couldn't tell if other characters had been featured before - honestly most of the female characters felt homogeneous; only this one is free-spirited because her hair is messy, and this one is uptight because she's well dressed, and maybe this one has a mohawk. Doesn't matter too much though. They'll still go through the disbelief > weird encounter > magical awakening arc.
  
  The fantasy elements felt pretty immature and tired. I kept wondering who this book was aimed at. The creatures and stories and plots all definitely felt like they were aimed at children, but then the cursing and sex and sideswipe heavy themes (I'm looking at you, In The House of My Enemy) were definitely very adult in nature. The more I read, the more I cringed.
  
  And despite all the description of places, I couldn't really picture any of them, or imagine how this town actually worked - when half the people seem to be grounded in the mundane working, at diners or radio stations (until they get a novella that lets them figure out some ancient secret), and everyone else is some sort of wizard or fairy or paranormal archivist. What the hell are Starbucks queues like in Newford?
  
  And I see a lot of retorts to criticisms of this book saying "You were expecting a novel! You don't like short stories!" - Perhaps that is true of me. I do read short stories fairly often, especially when I'm commuting, and I always thought I enjoyed them (which is one of the main reasons I had such high hopes for Dreams Underfoot), but they should always offer either a contained plot arc, or offer some deeper meaning that gets you thinking, or feeling, or ideally both.
  
  I don't think any of these short stories achieved that for me. Sure they might, collectively, build the world of Newford - but not in a way that makes me care about it. As for bookended individual plots - there wasn't any resolution for the characters. It felt like de Lint had several 'good ideas' for a story, and the book is a collection of beginnings - apart from maybe Freewheeling, which apart from insufferable Sue was my 'favourite' story and the least awkwardly fantastical, but this felt more like an ending that didn't have the build up for any effective emotional payoff. But we know we're meant to be sad about the ending. Because we're told Jilly is sad. Great storytelling.
  
  And as for deeper meaning... I honestly can't pick a single thought I sat and considered after I'd finished a chapter or closed the book entirely. There were a few messages that seemed to suggest 'stories lose their power when they're written down', which is a pretty self-defeating philosophy for an author. And everything else... You'll sometimes have to pick between hope and despair? Child abuse is bad? Be more magical, somehow? I couldn't find anything substantial enough to actually chew on.
  
  I'm sorry. I really wanted to like this, and I know my opinions will offend some of the fans of the series. But I just ended up feeling constantly aggravated by this book, and I had to jot that down somewhere.
• 
  Chris

  This collection of short stories was the first of Charles de Lint's Newford books that I read 20 years ago. I might not rate it quite as high now (perhaps a 4), but at the time - it was immersive and amazing and I could almost (not quite!) see hints of the magical from the corner of my eye after I finished reading. I was happy to discover that de Lint's Newford tales have retained their own immersive magic all these years later.
• 
  Barb

  This was a collection of connected short stories. I liked some of the stories more than others. They were all beautifully written and included a lot of music and art.
  
  I listened to this as an audiobook. The narrator did a nice job but I wish I had a real copy of this book because the writing was so beautiful I would’ve liked to slow down during some parts. Some of my favorite stories were “The Sacred Fire” and “Our Lady of the Harbour.”
• 
  Svetlana Dorokhova

  Читала этот сборник рассказов еще в электронке много лет назад, а сейчас перечитывала в бумажном варианте. Как же я была рада вновь пройтись по улочкам Ньюфорда и послушать его истории, снова встретиться с его героями, как с родными, и окунуться в эту немного мрачную, реалистичную и пронизанную магией неповторимую атмосферу. Де Линт и его книги неповторимы.
• 
  Vigasia

  I am not a fan of short stories in general but there's something in Charles de Lint prose that I couldn't refuse to read this collection. I love how he presents magic into everyday living of the characters. It makes me believe there's more than we can see in this world.
• 
  ♥Xeni♥

  This is another one of those books where I just have to say 'How does one review something this special, this odd and this wonderful?' I can't. I can, though, try and tell you why I love this anthology so much.
  
  It's the second of de Lint's works that I have read. The first was
  The Blue Girl, which, when I started it, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This anthology really connected some dots about Newford for me, though.
  
  The characters in here are just magical in that they are totally realistic, but believe in their imaginations and the true spirit of the world. They are exactly the type of person I'd like to be... quirky, funny, interesting, imaginative, creative and open to other things.
  
  Strewn among the many many short stories are famous and not so famous quotes that pertain to the story. Some of them were very memorable.
  
  Also, it felt a bit as though de Lint was trying to tell me something with each story, trying to make me learn a lesson about life, love, living, what have you. But it didn't feel negative to me, like most authors bring it across.
  
  This collection left me with a feeling of hope, awareness and but also knowledge. Just because something is magical doesn't mean that it's not bad as well. These stories are as much positive and wonderful and happily ever afters as negative and threatening and trying to explain that life isn't just cherry blossoms and tea time.
  
  I know that some of these stories will stay to haunt me for a while yet. I know that the characters will; they definitely came off the page and seemed so real, like if I were to start walking the 2am streets of my city I could meet them, and they'd open the doors to the Faerie realm for me!
• 
  Kaila

  Short stories, I have decided, are simply not my favorite medium. They don't offer up enough satisfaction or closure, and there's that obscurely frustrating first couple pages of a story when you don't know what is going on, and that happens over and over again. Thankfully all the stories in this case take place in one area, the city of Newford, with a cast of characters that show up repeatedly. Jilly is a great character and I can't wait to see her again, as well as Geordie the fiddle player.
  
  De Lint has this "magic is just out of the corner of your eye if only you knew how to see it" philosophy, which I suppose makes it urban fantasy, but it felt more like folklore. There was no hard-boiled detective making snarky comments, just simple people with problems like the rest of us, turning to fantasy to take care of them. It struck a chord with me that most urban fantasy does not. A few of the stories became rather disturbing, and the best I could compare it to were the heart wrenching passages in Infinite Jest. Sadly abused young girls and women forced into prostitution telling their childhood stories; they were pretty horrifying. It definitely means Dreams Underfoot is meant for adults, not young adults.
  
  I was so-so on the book until the third story, Time Skip, that had me sobbing into my burrito at Chipotle. Unfortunately I felt that it turned so-so again, and none of the other stories have really stuck with me like that one. I didn't have a desire to go reread any of them immediately. Time Skip has a resolution later on in the book but I didn't like that story nearly so much. It robbed me of some of the original poignancy.
  
  This was my first foray into the magical world of Charles de Lint, and although it will not be counted among my favorite books ever, I still enjoyed it.
• 
  Diana Stoyanova

  
  " За сънищата не съществуват правила."
  
  
  Страхотна книга, която сама по себе си не е роман, не е точно и сборник с разкази, по- скоро е жива сплав от кратки истории, които хем могат да се четат отделно, хем са свързани помежду си. Стилът се води градско фентъзи, а в него са вплетени много легенди, приказки, поверия и митове, в които присъстват както свръхестествени елементи, така и ужасии :)
  
  Действието се развива в Нюфорд- на пръв поглед обикновено градче, но дълбоко в сърцето му магията е жива. Тя е навсякъде и се проявява по различни начини.
  
  
  "Помнете - никой не вижда света така, както вие го виждате и никой не може да разкаже историите, които вие може да разкажете."
  
  "Магията на този свят, изглежда е творение от шепоти и малки добрини."
  
  
  Жалко, че творбите на Чарлз де Линт са останали незабелязани или по- скоро пренебрегнати от издателския бизнес в България, защото той е наистина много добър и талантлив разказвач. За щастие, имах възможност да ги прочета в оригинал. Хиляди благодарности на Иван Величков, който ми отвори очите за Де Линт. Определено проявявам интерес да прочета още негови книги. Даже вече съм си набелязала някои :)
• 
  Stefanie

  This felt like the literary equivalent of putting on a flannel shirt, lying on old carpet, and listening to Nirvana with your eyes closed. It is so evocative of 90s grunge that it's hard to enjoy in 2020 (though I admittedly suspect I am just too young to have this grunge nostalgia).
  
  The stories themselves are just interesting enough to keep you going, but not interesting enough to make you care or even think about them much after you've finished one. It was all very bland and ethereal. The first few stories seemed very focused on are fey folk real or are they not, which was kind of interesting, but then you realize they are definitely real but you aren't going to learn anything more about them, and that was so disappointing to me. The stories lacked any kind of substance.
• 
  Jammies

  Good reviews are always harder for me to write than bad ones. This book just sings to me--I love the sparse, clean prose; the engaging, three-dimensional characters; the twisted but familiar storylines and the city of Newford. I love that de Lint sets his urban fantasies in a Canadian city, which is a welcome change from the UScentric urban fantasy I usually read. I was sad to close the book after reading the next page, and I want more.
• 
  Kitty

  kogumik de Linti lühijutte, mille kohta ta ise on öelnud, et see on hea koht, kust Newfordi lugusid lugema hakata. ma ise alustasin mujalt ("Kusagil lennata" muidugi) ja ütleks, et vahet pole. osa tegelasi neis lugudes on mulle teistest raamatutest tuttavad, osa ei ole, osa tuttavaid ja minu jaoks olulisi tegelasi (varesetüdrukud!) on täiega puudu.
  
  igas loos kohtuvad mingil moel Newfordi... eluheidikud või muud veidrikud ja midagi maagilist või üleloomulikku. suur hulk tegelasi on kunstnikud või muusikud, enamusel on olnud raske lapsepõlv ja heitlik noorus, kõigist räägitakse suure mõistmise ja soojuse ja kaasaelamisega. ja mingi minu jaoks kohutavalt sümpaatne üheksakümnendate vaib on ses kõiges :) iga inimese välimuse kirjelduses tunnen ma ära omaenda teismepõlve trendid ja lahe-olemise-viisid ja ma tahaks kõigi nendega kohtuda ja hängida nüüd. (muuhulgas lootuses saada vastus sellele, mida juba üheksakümnendatel teada tahtsin - kui kõik on kohutavalt vaesed ja praktiliselt elavad tänaval ja riideid hangivad kaltsukatest, siis kuidas neil kõigil saavad olla hästiistuvad teksad, valged t-särgid ja mugavalt sissekulutatud nahktagid?)
• 
  Kerry

  I've been familiar with the name of author Charles de Lint for a number of years, but I've never really got around to reading his books. I read Moonheart many years ago and remember being very impressed with it (to the point I bought the audiobook from Audible last year and hope to get to listen to it this year), but I never read anything else.
  
  de Lint writes urban fantasy. Somehow, in the years between the late 80s/early 90s when people like de Lint and Emma Bull and were writing it and now, the designation of urban fantasy has developed two fairly disparate meanings. "Old school" urban fantasy of the kind de Lint writes tend to involve the instrustion of some form of "faerie" into a modern, often a least slightly decaying, urban setting. Art and music are often important to the characters and the tale. More current urban fantasy is more likely to involve an up-to-date urban setting that includes fantastical creatures such as werewolves and vampires, and novels often crossover with paranormals and paranormal romance to some degree. The lines between the two are blurred, but the tone of each tends to be quite different and I do think they can be counted as separate styles (all in my opinion of course).
  
  While de Lint has written a wide variety of books (I hadn't realised just how many until I went exploring his website), a significant number are set in his imaginary city of Newford, where strange things live in the underground Old City, mystical beings walk the streets and magic is just around the corner, waiting for you to believe in it to see it. Several of the later Newford books have caught my eye in the past, but being kind of anal about reading series in order and never knowing where to start, I stayed away from the books. I can't remember what it was that recently sent me to de Lint's site, but there in the FAQ I found his recommended reading order for the Newford books. That was what I needed to give me a push into reading them.
  
  I was getting around to putting Dreams Underfoot on reserve from the library when I discovered it as an ebook on fictionwise. That bumped it to the top of my reading pile and it was the last book I started in 2008. This is a collection of short stories - most gathered from previous publications and two new to the collection - that introduce the reader to Newford and some of the major characters that people later books and stories.
  
  I generally don't find short stories easy to read, but I read my way steadily through these tales, each time I finished one moving on the to the next, not ready to leave Newford and it's strange and delightful inhabitants behind. These are not light tales, magic has a dark side, and discovering it exists tend to change a person's life forever (in fact, in one of my favourite stories, Ghosts of Wind and Shadow, we see the devastating effect this had on one character who refuses to accept the magic that touches her life). Happy endings are rare, and instead we get ones that feel true to the tales and tend to be bittersweet but satisfying. Indeed, in one story the "prince" totally fails to recognise the "princess" and fails her totally. She is doomed and he remains a loner of a man, unable to interact properly with other people. Not all the tales end this badly, but they aren't bows and bunnies either. All the same, they are wonderful to read.
  
  I highly recommend this book and I'm looking forward to reading my way through the series now that I know what order I'm supposed to read them in. I also find myself looking forward all the more to listening to Moonheart (not a Newford story).
  
  Just one word of caution. If you do read the ebook, I found it to have a number of typographical errors. Small words were often missing (strangely, most often "a") and sometimes I had to read a sentence twice to pick up that something was wrong and work out the intended meaning. I don't know if this problem occurs in the print book, but be aware of the ebook anyway.
  
  Dreams Underfoot
  Charles de Lint
  Newford Novels, Book 1
  9/10
• 
  Jim Bowen

  On a scale of 1 to 1 trillion, words cannot describe how highly I would score the pretentiousness of this book. It's so pretentious I have no idea where to start with my criticism of its' over serious pomposity.
  
  So... where to start? Well, I'd start with the damn introduction, an introduction that has the... (I don't want to say gall, so I'll say...) confidence to claim that de Lint is an author of the quality of Isabel Allende (at least in terms related to magical realism), and that the only reason de Lint isn't recognised is because he writes genre fiction.
  
  Now I wouldn't mind if the short stories were actually any good, but they weren't. Most are 20-odd pages of all build up and no closure. An example is a story about a kid who thinks that bicycles have a mind of their own, and breaks locks to set them free. As this is the fantasy genre we can as, is he crazy, or...? Well, who knows. We don't even get to a position where we can have a good argument about it (within the confines of the story -I don't actually think bikes have souls). There isn't even the chance to think about the continuity of belief systems and the shared nature of some delusions, because the narrator is as bemused by the kid at the end of the story as she is at the beginning.
  
  And it's like that all the way through. He sets up story after story where there is the potential for these discussions to be had, but with no follow through.
  
  The second thing is I know there's a division between those who are Star Trek and those who are Star Wars. The technical vs. the mystical. And I know I'm very much Star Trek, rather than Star Wars, but part of me feels even die hard Star Wars fans would struggle with the complete lack of explanation of fantastical beliefs in this book, and the condescension with which believers hold non-believers. Maybe I lived in Texas too long, but I found that resonated with some of the experiences I had, and one or two of the people I met there too much.
  
  Another thing is the repeated use of the word punker to describe a certain type of character in the book. I can't work out really why it grated to much, but it certainly made me feel the book had dated, and not in a particularly good way.
  
  My final grumble is that it reminded too much of the final series of the British tv show A League of Gentlemen, where a final scene to the series is built to throughout the series, effectively answering how did the focus of the episode got there. The only problem is this book isn't funny (which is a relief, as it isn't meant to be), and there isn't the payoff at the end, which is a shame, because it was alluded to in that pretentious introduction again, and had me wondering (at least a little) how all this tut ties together.
  
  So all in, I'm not impressed. I won't be reading that again, or any other de Lint book for that matter.
• 
  fantasy fiction is everything

  Dreams Underfoot is a urban fantasy, which has similarity in fairy tales. It is told in a bit slow pacing that suit for the short stories in this book. I was immediately caught by the first story uncle Dobbin's parrot fair. It has interesting concepts and with rustic beach background that was a relaxing read for me after I picked it up. Those short stories have enchantment to me to want to explore the meaning and the adventures or conflicts with those characters. Those characters have real flesh for me while I was reading DU. I can comprehend why their disputes or struggles with others and they didn't get help by magic or supernature to solve their problems or desires, they overcome the dilemmas even though they chose hard choices or paid dearly price. This is why I felt a bit gloom while I was reading it, however I was still gripped by DU this kind of slow and heavy ambiance. Their life is like us but had been living with folklore tales and subterraneous mystic creatures in a town is called Newford.
  Charles de Lint has his own way to reveal the mysteries behind plots. many predicaments are not only with human in Newford also for other Mysterious residents whom had been living in Newford for a long time. Charles de Lint spent time to built up a usual urban life on the surface of stories but intertwined urban myths in the Newford ; It makes me feel more surreal and Magic realism for the stories. It seems that DU was written in a more dreamlike but not entirely fabricated to show me how a urban life could be living with enigmatic phenomenon or fairies in Folklords.
  Dreams, desires, uncertainties all have chances to become butterflies after pupating states in Newford.
• 
  Lisabet Sarai

  I wish this had been a novel.
  
  Charles de Lint guides us through the streets of Newford, through the derelict buildings in the Tombs and the mansions of the town's Dutch founders, the punk-rock clubs and the arty cafes, the public spaces and the hidden corners, pointing out the magic that's everywhere. These are stories of light and shadow, madness and vision, desperation and hope. But ultimately, they form a patchwork that I found less than satisfying. Some characters turn up multiple times, as the protagonist in one story and a secondary character in another, but this doesn't provide enough continuity to make the book feel whole.
  
  Evocative prose, complex emotion and vivid flashes of imagination make this an enjoyable read. I wouldn't choose to read another volume in the series, though.
• 
  James

  This was my second time through this collection of short stories of Newford. When I first read it several years ago, it enchanted me, scared me, and made it hard to sleep. It was one of my first forays into urban fantasy and has stuck with me ever since. The magic was still there with this reading, just a little harder to access at times. Some of the stories were amazing, some fell a little bit flat. But it did leave me wanting to read more from the series to try and find more pieces of the magic.
• 
  Aubrey

  A long, long time ago, I read a fantasy short story collection called
  My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales and was almost uniformly disappointed with the results. At some point, I distinctly remember worrying that I remembered the surname de Lint hanging around at least one other work on my TBR, but then life came along and the whole connection slipped my mind until I came round this section of my TBR again. I can't remember the specifics of what disappointed me with the de Lint story that I first encountered so long ago, but if it were anything like this, there are a few hypotheses I could generate: the endless manic pixie dream girl women, the banal attempts at coupling magic to your typical mildly white urban space, and the rise/fall/conflict/closure/characterization/dehumanization that powered each and every story and tended to be nothing more than a twist on the usual story that Fox News scares its audiences into kyriarchical compliance with. Now, this isn't the first time I've dealt with such things in the white male section of literature, and as I've said in reviews of similarly grounded books, if there was any sort of qualities that compensated for such drab disappointments, I'd stand the middle ground and argue either side. However, four-hundred pages later, I've gotten my fill, and unfortunately, I can see exactly where the praise and relative popularity must be coming from in this paranoid, self-absorbed, cishet WASP homeland of mine.
  
  I remember back in the day imbibing the kind of histories and historical fiction that cultivated in me aspirations of writerdom in some vein, or indeed whatever could be squeezed on the side of my still ongoing engineering career path. At some point, I began to notice how often the writing was a second step after a trust fund, a wealthy beneficiary, a medical career, any number of things that provided the nest egg first and the creative initiative (or perhaps the sheer boredom) to write and the skills (aka the approved social habitus) necessary for achieving success, and after failing at a PhD in English and succeeding as a full time librarian, I have largely grounded (although there's time for that to change) my artistic inclinations in collection development and these reviews. The perspective of these stories is as if one never grew out of that magical assurance that the arts would reward those who truly deserved it with fame, or at least enough money to put food on the table. Such a blinkered perspective is not unforgiveable, but when the kind of self-esteem extends into pure egotism and isn't even balanced by anything but more than the most basic of prose or simplistic of characterization of triteness of plot, well. Those disgruntlements aren't so bad for being almost purely narratological, but the last is the last thing I need as a genderqueer librarian looking for a bit of escapism is just another box, and the fact that is so well rated makes me wonder how much reading, let alone living, these folks actually do.
  
  It's been a long 2023 already, and with all these reports of extraordinary high levels of book banning during 2022, most of them singling out the work
  Gender Queer: A Memoir, I'm feeling especially less than charitable as a genderqueer librarian in my reading. I don't expect all books to successfully promote a course that truly saves the world, but if a work fearmongers about addiction and homelessness and settler state enforced poverty and then turns around and wants to talk about magical sources of hope only available to the truly worthy, I can't find it in me to care anymore. These days, my kind of magic involves much of what was violently drowned out by various hegemonies pushing for a certain kind of 'civilization' that a book like this loves to treat as the norm, and anything that falls short but still professes to be 'urban fantasy' is, well. That kind of attitude will easily win you a seat on the city council, but my supernatural lies deep in queer wells, long before there were more empty homes than there were homeless folks and health became a pay per meter, and anything that purports to be fantastical and wants to succeed in my book these days is going to have to keep up.
• 
  Deborah Ideiosepius

  This was a lovely collection of short stories, with de Lint's characteristic deft, mythic style which he brings both to his more gritty urban fiction and to his light, delightful fantasy stories. These are all stories of Newford, and the cast of characters grows incrementally as you read through them. This is something I have always found noticeable with de Lint writing. That way in which he grows his cast of characters by having a story about one, then the other all of whom know each other, so that once you have read a body his work you feel as if you already know all the characters that appear, however peripherally, in the story.
  
  I have read most of these stories before, but not recently and it was really good to revisit and encounter new ones in this collection. In general I don't really enjoy reviewing story collections because I never feel the same about all the stories. The first story in this collection was one I read ages ago, loved, and have been looking for again ever since. There were a couple more that gave me stories I have never read before, like that of the story tree, and the story of Sam and Geordie, that I had read references to in other books. I can't itemise them now: One of the things I do not like about the audiobook format is that there is no list of stories/chapters to refer to once you have finished with it. SO annoying.
  
  Now, as I have broached the subject, this was an audiobook, a format I have a love hate relationship with. This format is quite exquisitely suited to short drives, where you hear one or maybe two stories. This is better (for me) than having a book of stories, where I tend to read them all at once. Stories work better if you finish one and then think about it for a while before reading another but I read way to fast for that so audiobook works well for me in the realm of short story collections. The narrator can make or break a audiobook. In this collection the narrator, Kate Reading has a voice and style of enunciation that is perfect for de Lint's writing (to my mind) in every way but one. That one I did find agravting.
  
  In the Newford stories artist Jilly Coppercorn is a major character, beloved by de Lint and many readers including myself. Jilly is a mature (20-30) woman who is described as small and at times waif-like but a mature and attractive woman nonetheless. Why did this narrator chose to give her a squeeky, scratchy, whiny voice, more suited to a pre-adolescent child? She might as well have added goo-goo ga-ga to any sentence of Jilly's it was so infantile it drove me spare.
  
  As Jilly is a major character in these stories, this was a problem for me. Kate does it a little to other women characters, but Jilly takes the brute of the damage. As a consequence, most stories with Jilly in them, I spent more time thinking about the narration than the story. The really strange thing, is that the natural timber of the narrators voice is exceptionally similar to the way Jilly always sounded in my head, reading the stories rather than listening - and that messed with me too. Also, Jilly's background is explored by de Lint extensively apparently she comes from some backwater so if the narrator wants to distinguish her voice, surely she could have added a redneck/backwater twang...? She does do other accents at times.
  
  Aside from this one problem with the narration, I really enjoyed hearing this story collection, I would definitely listen to other audiobooks by this author and even this narrator reading more de Lint as long as it was NOT a story with Jilly Coppercorn.
• 
  Tattooed Horror Reader

  I first read these stories in high school & fell deeply in love with Jilly Coppercorn, the city of Newford, and the magical denizens who call it home. These interconnected stories have become a part of my personal mythology & are integral to how I understand myself & my worldview. Charlea De Lint is a masterful storyteller, one who can create characters who jump off the page straight into your heart, well...my heart at least.