Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Dreaming Place by Charles De Lint

Charles De Lint is one of my favorite authors. His work is almost entirely modern fantasy, but even with in that realm, he covers a wonderfully huge scope of stories! "The Dreaming Place" is one of his stories written for young adults. In the back of the book he tells us that he had always been a bit leery about writing for a teen audience, until he realized the biggest difference is that your writing with teen characters and using them in your stories!

"The Dreaming Place," tells the story of two girls, teenage cousins who live together and share a room. Ash has been fascinated with magic since her parents death, so when Nina starts to have strange dreams, she assumes that Ash has cursed her, she's never really trusted Ash anyway. The two girls are as different as night and day!

Nina's dreams begin to scare her more and more, even as she begins to learn to adjust to them. In her dreams she finds herself in the body of an animal and struggles to function in the world around her. The frightening part is that she often finds herself prey to predators she can't escape because of her poor control over her unfamiliar body.

Meanwhile Ash learns that one of her friends has a closer tie to magic than Ash was ever aware of, and this friend actually takes Ash into Magical Realms. There Ash learns what's really happening to Nina, and what must be done to protect her. Now the question is, what is she going to do? Will Ash save the cousin who's she's always resented for her invasion into her life?

1 comment:

Nayuleska said...

This sounds like an intriguing read.