Monday, June 8, 2009

Woods and Waters Wild by Charles de Lint

Buy it Now!

"Woods and Waters Wild" is a compilation of short stories by Charles de Lint - many of them from earlier in his writing career. I found it really interesting to read for many reasons. For one, it brought me back to my "roots" so to speak with De Lint because I was introduced to his work when a friend loaned me another one his compilations!

One thing that was different about this compilation than other works by de Lint that I've read is that he has a number of "high fantasy" stories included in here. While they were very interesting, the language was much more formal than I'm used to seeing from de Lint. It kind of threw me at first, but I enjoyed them as I got used to it!

I think my favorite part of the book was the section titled "Thomas the Rhymer." It contains three stories about Thomas, a simple story teller with Fey sight, that is given the gift of speaking the truth. Since this is all he speaks, his stories have incredible power to them. I love the testament to the power of truth and the spoken word!