Customer Reviews

The Little Country

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Little Country is my first foray into Charles de Lint country, and needless to say, it was a wonderful trip. Janey Little is a successful musician who nevertheless feels a growing sense of inertia. When she finds a mysterious manuscript written by her favorite author, Janey's world simultaneously gets better and worse. Old friends and lovers drift into her life, secret societies threaten members of her small town, and startling revelations are made.

Intertwined with Janey's story is the saga of young Jodi, a girl who finds herself face to face with curiouser and curiouser situations. Do Smalls really exist? Can music really mend whole worlds?

The Little Country is a tale of urban fantasy with epic proportions. What really makes this rather long novel (500 plus pages) work is the beautiful development of secondary characters. Janey's friends Clare and Felix, for example, are indispensable pieces of the puzzle. Even the most minor of characters are realistically rendered as three-dimensional people with their own unique outlooks and problems.

Music IS magic, as The Little Country so beautifully conveys. Mysterious, charming works of fiction are also rather magical, themselves.

I bought this book because of the cover illustration, and the first sentance, thinking these things to be enough for me to actually buy it. Upon delving into the book I realized I was reading something very, very different and interesting. This author has altered the way I view things. I have appreciation for things that I never thought of before. I have read 3/4ths of his books, and I will complete them all soon. Anyone seeking mystery in life should read this book.

This book changed me. It will change you too. It is one of the most 'complete' books I've ever read. The characters are so real that I have contemplated writing them letters.

de Lint is a better storyteller than most - I've described his writing to friends as "as clear and inventive as Steven King, but with actually well-written prose and resolved characters - not just good storytelling." But don't let any mention of Steven King push you away if it's likely to. My main point is that his writing is going to appeal to a broader market than the typical SF/Fantasy crowd that it's aimed at.

I walked into the library one day, looking for, "something different." As I turned the Fantasy rack, a book literally fell into my hands. I didn't look at it. I'd asked, the Universe supplied. Back home, I began to read what turned out to be a book of short stories, and I couldn't put them down. I kept saying, "She got it right!" and, "This is sooo good!" After I turned the last page, I looked at the front cover and got a shock. He got it right. This author, who had just moved to the top of my "To Buy" list, was a man who wrote with so much insight and emotion that I'd mistaken him for a woman (yeah, not PC, and?) I bought the book, "Dreams Underfoot," read it again, then years passed before I had time to read for relaxation. To my joy, I saw that de Lint had just published, "The Little Country" - about a magical book, and an adventure dealing with the Little People of Another Land... A third of the way through the book, I had to check the cover to make sure I had the right author. Don't misunderstand, the book is good, it just isn't as good as I expect from de Lint. I wondered if I'd gotten hold of an early draft of a work meant to be a series, because this is a very fragmented work. The story is laid out in a way that makes the reader flip back and forth between the groups of characters who are involved in the same quest, but not with each other. Each of their sections ends with a cliff-hanging moment, then you get to read about another group getting to their crisis, while keeping straight all the names, locations, and threats. It could have been done better, especially the confrontation between Janey's grandfather and Bett, the resolution of which was delayed too long. By the end, I was annoyed with the protagonist, Janey Little (not the most likeable person,) loved all the other characters, (he could write one whole book about Edern and his people, another about Denzil, Taupin, Henkie, and the children of theTatters, and a third about Peter Goninan.) The most disappointing thing, however, was the author's voice. It was as if he wanted to write this book, but he was tired. Some of it sounds like a travelogue, some like a music lesson, and other parts were like a class in myth and metaphysics (Blavatsky, Colin Wilson, and the superstitions of Cornwall.) This was not the passionate voice I'd come to expect, and at the end, it wasn't the magic I'd wanted. Read it, then, if you haven't already, read the Newford Stories, and get a better idea of why de Lint is known as, "The Master of Urban Fantasy."

The book isn't bad. It's not one of de Lint's better books that I've enjoyed. What with it alternating between two different stories. That made it rather "eh" for me.

We have the story of Janey Little, a musician who discovers a manuscript from her grandfather and the story around it to keep it from the "wrong hands."

And then we have the story of Janey, which is far more memorable to me with the more fantastic elements as she battles and confronts a Witch with help from her friends.

I did enjoy this book. But it just didn't have the same feel as his Newford stories.

This book caught my interest from the first page and held it for the entire story. Officially, it is about a young musician who discovers a previously unpublished book from a famous writer who also happens to have been an old friend of her grandfather, the realization that the manuscript is also a powerful talisman, and the struggle to keep the manuscript/talisman out of the hands of some dangerous enemies. More broadly, it is about the idea that art, such as literature or music, can be real magic, a powerful transformative force.

The story switches back and force between the adventures of Janey Little, the musician who discovers the manuscript, and Jodi, the main character in the story she reads in the book, who has been transformed by an evil witch.

The story was a bit long, but I didn't share the feelings of some reviewers that it lagged. There's plenty of adventure in each story, as Janey fights a mysterious circle of powerful black magicians and Jodi rallies her friends to help her fight the witch.

Once again DeLint has woven a beautiful story of magic, mystery and myth. I was immediately in love with the West Country, Janey Little and her grandfather, known as The Gaffer. There are two stories interlocked and connected by the music of the universe, and the magickal energy we all share. If you want to be transported to another country....try "The Little Country!"

Apparently I'm one of only two people to give this book such a low rating, but ... I've tried to read this book twice now. It's lyrically written, and the premise is fascinating. However, each time I've tried to read it, I get a ways in and then find myself closing the book in annoyance. Maybe it's just me, and maybe I've been misreading it, but the split that results between Janey and (I've forgotten his name now) is based, in my mind, on a pretty weak fight. The split is obviously necessary to propel the story forward, but I found the reason for the split to be so juvenile and unbelievable, given these characters' depth and personalities, that, as stated before, I've tried and failed twice to read the book. I am however reading Moonheart and think it's wonderful, and fully plan on reading more of de Lint's books. Perhaps one day I'll be able to finish The Little Country. I hope so, as it showed a lot of promise.

This is a very good book, the main male and female characters are engaging and likable. But it didn't quite have the mythic weight of Memory and Dream to me...some of the characters seemed like they belonged in a second-rate detective novel, not in this book. But still well worth reading.

I am a big deLint fan, and am sort of reluctant to write this review, but I think I have to. If you read the other reviews closely you will detect a lot of suppressed disappointment. There are a lot of four star reviews that are really three stars, with the fourth star being tossed in because, hey, it's deLint.

I think that the biggest problem is that this is a "book within a book" project, and it's really a "good book within a bad book" project. By that I mean that the fantasy book that is the magical heart of the work is very good and very satisfying. As a stand-alone novella or short novel it would be outstanding. In fact, I would recommend that if you find yourself in possession of "The Little Country" you just read every other chapter, (which would be all of the excerpts from the mystery book).

As for the larger work that frames the whole story, it is a stew of tired conventions. There is a psychotic assassin whose carefully described love of torture is freakishly out of place here. There is an incoherently described secret society of powerful whatchamacallits that is laughably childish. The heroine is of the freeze-in-the-headlights variety, and the hero is so conflicted and indecisive that he is a cypher. Probably worst, every time the protagonists can't figure what is happening or what to do, they visit a wise hermit, or a witch, or a mysterious stranger, who explains the plot to them, tells them all of the facts and developments he has "sensed" or divined, and then tells them all what to do next. This is not even mentioning the goofy secondary characters who are either idiots or shallow whiners, or the sex zombie dust that generates sex scenes explicit enough to keep this off the middle grade reader shelf.

So, if you took a low quality airport bookstore paperback thriller and mixed it in with a wonderful and compelling fantasy story, you'd get this. I'm sorry.