One story of the Animal People and Jack Daw.

Very good, very well written. ( )

I hadn't meant to read the Newford series out of order, but when I picked up this audiobook I hadn't been aware that it was a Newford book. However, once I started it, I fell in love with the story and didn't want to pause it again. I highly recommend this one, even if you haven't read the rest of the series. ( )

[Someplace to be Flying] is noted as the 8th in the Newford Series, and it was hard for me to believe I've read that many, usually just dipping in once or so a year - I want to savor these, as De Lint deserves to be though of as the true founder of the Urban Fantasy novel. This one centers on the Corvid (think crows, etc.) people who helped to establish the world we think of as real. Origin narratives play a large role in the book, weaving the mystical into a tapestry with the 'real' seamlessly. When a warring faction steals the chalice through which the 'real' world was created, the Corvids have to save the world - though it ends up being less about their own fate and more about the fate everyone else, including those who can't see. De Lint is always preaching, subtly, about making things better, holding things together, through self-realization. There are always sacrifices, but willing and noble ones. It feels that De Lint was really hitting his stride with this entry in the series.

Highly Recommended.
5 bones!!!!! ( )

I really enjoyed this book. It has all of the hallmarks of a great Charles de Lint novel. We have a disparate cast of characters who end up together by the climax to try to solve whatever problem has come up. We have fantastical elements in the form of beings from another place that is adjacent to ours, or came before ours, or exists on a separate plane from ours, who inhabit the world with us. They offer a glimpse into something more, if you can open your mind to the possibility. But these beings aren't trying to moralize, or guide humans. They have all of the same shortcomings that humans do, its just that things tend to get more interesting when you are a magical being. The climax of the book was a bit anticlimactic, but I was really more interested in the characters' journeys, and not necessarily some big end of the world event. I find that when you have all of these big epic events that happen all of the time (Doctor Who I'm looking at you), they become less affecting. I just can't summon up the energy to care every single time the world is going to end. But on that note, there was a possibility that the world could have ended in this book, or at least reverted to a time before humans. I was less interested in that part of the story than I was in the characters learning who they were and reckoning with their own histories. In that department, it fell a little short, but I still enjoyed the journey. ( )

To be honest, during the first few chapters I thought it was going to suck. (I mostly dislike the "urban fantasy" type books) but I was wrong. This was really very good, and I'll be looking for more of his books. ( )