Child of a Rainless Year (Kindle Edition)

by Jane Lindskold (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When middle-aged spinster Mira Fenn returns to her birthplace, Las Vegas, N.Mex., to try to find out what happened to her mother, Colette, who disappeared from their mirror-filled house without a trace years earlier, she finds a town full of ghosts and contradictions. Domingo, the hereditary caretaker of Mira's ancestral home, tells her that the house has been asking him to paint it in new and brilliant colors. As Mira and Domingo explore the house's awakening intelligence, their intricately entwined family histories and their own growing relationship, they find out more about color magic, Colette and Mira herself than they might have wanted to know. Conferring magical life on ordinary objects and people with a sweet flair reminiscent of Charles De Lint and Pamela Dean, Lindskold (Through Wolf's Eyes, etc.) spins a lovely and original yarn that ends up sadly tangled with unresolved questions; though billed as a stand-alone work, the novel contains a sequel's worth of untied loose ends. Mira phlegmatically declares that having more questions than answers is "fine with me," and anyone who agrees will find this an extremely enjoyable read. Agent, Kay McCauley. (May 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Obsessed with color and mostly ignored by her elegant mother, Mira spent her childhood waited on by silent women in an ornate house full of mirrors in Las Vegas, New Mexico. When mother disappears, Mira is sent to a foster family in Idaho that, changing its name, soon moves to Ohio, where the foster parents encourage Mira's budding artistic talent as she grows up, trying to be as normal as possible. She becomes an art teacher and, after her foster parents die in a car wreck, starts investigating her mother's disappearance and the Las Vegas house. She had known that she had a trust fund and that her trustees had specified that her foster parents change their name--and that they never take her to New Mexico--but not that she owns the house. Returning to Las Vegas, she finds that her mother's disappearance has never been explained. Strange things start happening: the silent women of her childhood reappear, ghostlike; she meets a woman hanged in the late 1800s; as she reads her foster mother's journals, clues to the truth about her mother and the house emerge. Lindskold conjures the atmosphere of nontourist New Mexico, beautifully evoking Las Vegas' long, turbulent history while spinning a fantastic yarn about Mira's odd inheritance. Neither an explosive story nor an edge-of-the-seat-thriller, the novel's strength lies in the unfolding of Mira's character. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• Print Length: 400 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (April 28, 2005)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001AOHVJ8
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #84,176 in Kindle Store (See Bestsellers in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easily the best new book I've read in several years , September 15, 2005

By	M. Garrison (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Child of a Rainless Year (Paperback)

It's hard to believe that it came out in May and I'm just now coming across it, but Jane Lindskold's Child of a Rainless Year is the best new book I've read in a long time. I'd read some of her short stories here and there, but none of her novels had jumped out at me from the bookshelf until now.

I'm struggling to put into words exactly what it is that makes the book such a great read. A good part of it is the pacing, I think, as well as just the right balance (for me, at least) between between description and action, and between language and story. This may just be me, but with most fiction out there, I usually feel that either the language overwhelms the story or the story overpowers the language. This is one of the rare books where they are equally strong, complementing each other rather than fighting for my attention. Most of all, though, it's simply a damn good story.

I guess a brief summary would be that Mira grew up in a house that was very mysterious in many ways (and not in the cliched ways which are no longer mysterious at all), in New Mexico. When she's nine, her mother disappears and she is sent to live with foster parents who are required to move to a new state and change their names as a requirement of the mysterious trustees of her mother's estate. All sorts of things happen, eventually building up to a middle-aged Mira returning to the house she grew up in, which she'd now inherited. She starts trying to understand all of the mysteries that surround her childhood, her mother, the house, her foster parents, and her connection with art and color.

The book pulls together an amazing mix of art, local history and culture, psychology, hidden family secrets, and the paranormal -- and more importantly, all in a way that builds the story, rather than just dumping information here and there because the author had it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Almost perfect. , June 4, 2006

By	C. Gilbert "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Child of a Rainless Year (Paperback)

Before picking up this book, I had not read much work by Jane Lindskold. I can assure you, I will be remedying that as quickly as possible. Child of a Rainless Year was a nearly perfect book. I loved it, and resented the time when I had to put the novel down to do something else.

The one thing that I have read by Lindskold in the past is Donnerjack-- the Zelazny novel that she completed post-humously after Zelazny's death. Unlike a lot of serious Zelazny fans, I really liked the book. I thought that Lindskold deserved credit taking on a truly daunting task in trying to complete it.

With that background in mind, it was with interest that I picked up Child of a Rainless Year. It had been recommended to me with the strongest possible praise by someone who generally does not do a lot of praising. I was also interested to see what Lindskold could do on her own.

No disappointments for me. The book brings to mind the best of the de Lint works, with enough personal touches from the author to make it unique and uniquely hers. I had no issue with the slow pacing. (In fact, I think that the pace may make this book a winner with people who are less fantasy fans than "normal" literature fans.) It was terrific to see a non-standard hero used in the book. The dramatic build worked perfectly with the concept and the plot. Lindskold is a skilled writer and she uses just the right level of description and detail to maintain user interest. The only little quarrel that I have is that I could have done with less New Mexico local color during the tours with Domingo, but that's a taste issue.

I suppose that how you react to this book will have something to do with your expectations. This is *not* a swords and sorcery fantasy novel. No dragons. No werewolves. No battles. Think Urban Fae and you are getting closer-- but without the fae. It is probably closest (as I said earlier) to the works of Charles de Lint. If you like the explosions and a lot of magic, this is probably not the book for you.

If you think that you are not really a fantasy fan, then I think that you should give it a chance. It's about the characters, not about the fantasy. That is what makes it such a good read.

The book is suitable for all ages. Probably even good for youngsters to see a main character over 25.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read, January 4, 2006

By	B. Foster - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Child of a Rainless Year (Hardcover)

This book sucks you right into it. It is magical realism that transported me right out of the work-a-day world into a world of make believe. For the time it took me to read it,I was somewhere else. And isn't that just what a good novel should do?!