Customer Reviews

The Gypsy (Tor Fantasy)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Brust and Lindholm blend elements of Hungarian fantasy and fable with a detective story that trudges through the noir underbelly of the big city, and soars in the mythical dark woods of fairy tales. THE GYPSY is pure magic!

Thank God! I picked this up 15 years ago in a Public Library and was entranced by the mystique of gritty cop show and the otherworldliness which shrouds the characters and intricately interwoven plot. This time I bought and reread it afresh and despite a few typos and hard cop cliche notes I loved it. It is an incredibly unique and suspenseful read, but then I have a tendency to feel that magical worlds exist within our mundane world anyway. I just read the disappointed reviews and can only say this must be one of those works you either love or hate. However, now I'm intrigued enough to read more from these authors.

i just finished this book after finding it hiding is some remote corner of a bookstore. And i must say it was one of the best books i've read in a long time. The writing was great. i am a huge steven burst fan and this ranks up there as one of his best. It is unfortunate that it has not been republished but any way on with the review. The book was not what i expected, it was mainly a cop story but with a supernatural twist, it was very sutble in the way in involved the spirtualy aspects of the book. In the beginning it was very hard to follow or now whats going on....and thats what made it good. You had to keep reading in order to understand what was going on. it wasn't predicatble like a lot of books out there these days. The character development was well paced and well written. The tale of the brothers was great and kept getting better with every turn of the page. The metaphors and symbolism in this book was also another great aspect of it. It was a nice change. i highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to read something different from their usual library. It may be hard to find but trust me its well worth the effort.

While the two story elements blend together in a satisfactory way, the pacing and balance of the story are unsatisfactory. I agree with other reviewers that the first third is confusing. I wish that the story had been structured differently, so that the revelations emerged in a more straightforward manner. While I will continue to list this book as one of the most imaginative and haunting police procedurals, It is marred by the undisciplined story line.

I love the coachman.

Brust and Lindholm are two of my favorite authors. Brust is still working on his fabulous Taltos series, and Lindholm is of course better known as Robin Hobb. So here we have a collaboration between two of my favorite authors ... and I didn't enjoy it at all.

"The Gypsy" seems an odd mix of present-day cop drama and fantasy-like mystic gypsy stuff. I know that sounds vague, but that's about the most flattering description I can come up with. Apart from one or two exceptions, the characters are cardboard and the dialogue is depressingly bad.

The main problem with the novel, in my opinion, is the general vagueness of the gypsy sections. It's very hard to link these sections with the sections on Stepovich and Durand. Moreover, the evil demoness who is trying to acquire more power is such a tired cliche - just like the good cop/bad cop idea and the teenage girl being subverted by the powers of evil.

I really wanted to like this novel, but ended up struggling through it. If you're thinking of getting this one, I'd recommend anything else written by Steven Brust (e.g. "The Book of Jhereg") or Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm (e.g. the "Assassin" series) instead.

To date this is my only 5 star review.

This is one of only a handfull of books that I have purchased just to give away. I have put my money behind this book at least five times.

The work blends "film noir" overtones with fantasy and the small tragedies of mens lives in way that moved me more than any work by a modern writer.

Will this book work for everyone? I doubt it, but it is books like this that keep me purchasing each new book that he authors or co-authors.

I also very much enjoyed the references to music and the small bits of poetry throughout the book.

This is a book which blends romance and fantasy most deftly into the grungiest of street-level murder mysteries.

Again, Brust has created a one-of-a-kind fable. His Gypsy and his brothers spring to fully convincing life under Brust's pen; modern-day (or semi-modern) Romanian versions of the Fates. The unlikely mix of their street wise and romantic gypsy characters with near eternal responsibility makes them very appealing.

Brust takes unusual ingredients, and blends them into an addictively delicious invention. Any more Gypsy books to come?

Strange and off putting in the amount of confusion it causes the reader. If you make it through the beginning it picks up a bit in the middle as you start to think perhaps you might know what's going on. On the whole though it isn't something I'd recommend in the slightest.

I am shocked, SHOCKED, I say that there are negative reviews on this book - which just points out the huge variety of readers out there. This is one of the handful of books that I must re-read every few years: every sentence feels like it is plunging me into a different world, and feels real and promising, sliding ne into this eery and dangerous place where The Gypsy lives. I would say this may not be an appealing book for the quest-fantasy reader: this is a book for the Peter S. Beagle or Peter Straub reader. For me, it is a perfect story: I keep wanting to come back again.

I'm pretty protective of the books I own, but this one is so good I had to give it away. I guess I'll have to buy another copy as I always read books I really like more than once.