I've long been a fan of Charles de Lint's work, going back about twenty years, when I first read GREENMANTLE. He practically invented the genre of Urban Fantasy, blending myth and magic with contemporary settings and characters, and he does it well. Many of his stories and books are set in the fictional city of Newford, and it's a pleasure to revisit familiar places and characters, learning new things about them along the way.
In this, his latest offering, he takes us far away from Newford, to a fictional city in the Southwest. New characters and landscapes take us to a whole new place, and it's quite different from his recent stories.
It's difficult to talk about the story without giving away too much, because some pretty major things happen fairly early on in the book that would spoil it if you knew they were coming. The titular character, Grace, finds herself in a mysterious place, and her path is to figure out why she is there, and how she can get out. She crosses paths with various others who have also ended up there, and together some of them try to figure out the mystery.
There's some interesting world-building, and glimpses of the world of hotrod enthusiasts, Hispanic culture, and a different magical mythology from de Lint's usual offerings. There's a sense of melancholy that pervades his stories, and here it is even more pronounced. His love of the desert and of the Southwest shows in his writing, bringing to life a region that has long intrigued me as well. As much as I love Newford, it was nice to explore a different place with a favorite author.
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