Customer Reviews

Eyes Like Leaves

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The magic is leaving the Green Isles. The Summerlord Hafarl's staff has been broken, and the Everwinter is coming to blanket the islands in snow forever. To make matters worse, the Vikings are raiding up and down the shore, laying waste to everything in their way. It's up to Puretongue, leader of the dhruides, to weld together the last scraps of the Summerlord's power that can be found in the people to create a defense against Lothan, and bring summer and magic back to the isles.

Eyes Like Leaves is well-paced, and the action scenes flash with energy. Charles de Lint shows signs of the bardic gift in his ability to make scenes come alive, especially the chase scene with the direwolves pursuing the tinker caravan.

While the characters are interesting and detailed, and individual scenes are beautifully written, the plot is oddly flat and lacks originality. This feels like a too-literal retelling of classical Irish mythology, without enough innovation to be fresh or exciting. It seems a little too scripted, with each character arriving just when needed, and advancing the plot in exactly the right direction. While terrible things do happen, there is not a great sense of tension -- just a sense of inevitability.

This book proves to me that talent is not the sole ingredient of success. Eyes Like Leaves is well-written, but I never actually cared about the story. I never felt emotionally connected to the characters. While there is nothing overtly bad about the story, there is little here to merit recommending it above all the other quest fantasy novels that have been published.

Eyes Like Leaves is actually one of the first books Charles de Lint wrote, but it has never before been published. His editor told him that having published two secondary world fantasy novels, and one urban novel, that the next novel he published would pigeonhole him. He put this manuscript on the shelf and published Yarrow instead, putting his feet firmly on the urban fantasy path, a decision that I, and legions of his other fans, are grateful for. He recently reworked Eyes Like Leaves and released it for publication. This is obviously not de Lint at his peak, but there are the glimmers of greatness here that he has realized in his later works. I would recommend this book for fans of Irish mythology and de Lint completionists.

Title Eyes Like Leaves
Author
Charles de Lint
Rating ****1/2
Tags fiction, fantasy, magick, wizards, evil

Charles de Lint is one of my favorite writers, and one of the creators of the contemporary urban fantasy. Eyes Like Leaves, though, is a novel he wrote before he started the urban fantasy stories, and fits into the high fantasy genre.

Magick is fading from the Green Isles. There has been a balance between Hafarl, the Lord of Summer, and the Winter Lord. Now the Winter Lord is determined to destroy Hafarl and hold the Isles under his reign forever. Tarn, a wizard trained by Puretongue, seeks to find all those touched with Hafarl's magick and bring them to the Summer Lord's aid. The Winter Lord is destroying all of Hafarl's kin he can find. Meanwhile the Viking-like Samarand are destroying villages along the coast. Young Carrie has lost her family to the raiders and has been taken in by a family of tinkers. When Tarn meets her he knows the magick is strong in her. Can Tarn, Carrie, and the few of Haferl's kin who are left save the Summer Lord and keep the Isles from being lost?

de Lint, a consistently excellent writer, shows his mastery again in this work that he put aside for various reasons and has now been published many years after it was written. Eyes Like Leaves is a deeply magickal and spiritual work that is also an excellent adventure.

Publication Subterranean (2010), Edition: Signed Hardcover, Hardcover, 350 pages
Publication date 2010
ISBN 1596062827 / 9781596062825

Charles Delint is an accomplished and gifted writer. The story itself was well done and intriguing, the characters real and compelling. I am concerned about the publisher's quality control, however. In the copy I borrowed from my public library, there were errors on literally every page, missing or misplaced punctuation, extra spaces where they weren't needed; in a number of places, a word obviously meant to replace another word appeared with the original word "stuck" to it. It was incredibly distracting to read and does a huge disservice to an excellent author.

I have found this new book to be enchanting in its story line as well as beautiful in its secrets. I read it within 3 nights which is a short amount of time for me. I just had to finish it as fast as I was able because it kept my interest throughout reading the whole book. A lovely and exciting story just as magical as Charles de Lint always writes. Thank you again for this wonderful book. BJ Baril

Despite being published in 2009, this was a book that de Lint wrote way back at the beginning of his career. Told by his publisher that its publication would get him cemented in to the niche of high fantasy, it was put aside as de Lint pursued his urban fantasy.

Eyes Like Leaves is set in a thinly disguised British Isles, with a war starting as Lothan, the king of Everwinter, strives to take over the world, disrupting the balance between himself and his brother Hafarl, the Summerlord. Lothan's vicious, evil, cold minions scour the land to kill all of the Summerlord's kin. But the Summerlord's kin are willing to give up their lives to keep balance in the world.

Puretongue, the founder of dhruidery, is a wizard with a secret. A huge secret. Tarn is a wizard who fights a dark side within himself. Carrie is a recent orphan who is told she has great power, but longs only for family and security. Deren has but recently begun to be taught wizardry. Together they must face the king of ice and winter.

You can tell that it's an early work by a great writer. It doesn't have the strongly drawn characters that de Lint's later work does. The story starts very slowly, then races at the end. It's an interesting high fantasy work, but I would have loved to see what it could have been if the author had gone back and rewritten it, but he preferred to let it stand and allow the reader to see how far he has come. It was written, after all, during the era when sword & sorcery was at its most popular, and fits right in there. The one thing that disrupted my enjoyment was that the proof reader missed huge numbers of typos; an expensive, special edition like this should have been better proofed.

Mailing was quick and the book itself was very good as all of this authors books are.