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Summary: A mysterious and magical masterpiece. Windling's finest!
Review: Terri Windling has done it again. Breathing new life into the desert of Arizona and making it as mystifying and intriguing as the Borderlands. A mysterious and magical masterpiece. Windling's finest
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Summary: Tucson Magic
Review: Terry Windling is a quality reviewer of books, art, and concepts in the urban and Celtic fantasy genres. Not surprising that she turns out to be a good fantasy writer, as well. The book had a feeling vaguely reminiscent of the urban fantasy author, Charles de Lint, an excellent recommendation for fans of modern day fantasy. Similarly, her characters feel real, but not caught in the world of materialism, sensitive to the otherness that surrounds us all. The setting, Tucson and its surrounding environs, is evoked well, and the story keeps a good pace on a path that is comprehensible, if a little off kilter. Read and enjoy.
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Summary: I read it from beginning to end, breathless, excited.
Review: The way Terri Windling starts in the real world and gently moves us into a magical world is entirely believable. I felt as if I knew these creatures too, have seen them just around the corner, in the foliage of the trees or peering out from my chaotic garden. I have seen them in my paintings and wanted to jump up and paint to see who else was there but couldn't stop reading. I know too the time spiral on some level beyond fact or fiction. I hated to have the book end but devoured it nevertheless.
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Summary: Interesting story, but too predictable
Review: The Wood Wife is an interesting tale that encompassed beautiful prose. However, although the story had potential, Windling ruins it for her reader by throwing in too many clues before things happen. Her chapters all end with some shift to the fantasy world, which not only disjaunts her prose, but also gives the readers information about conflicts before she resolves them. Just when the story is coming to a climax of the fantasy world, she throws in a love story between the characters of Maggie and Fox, which distracts from the original mystery enough to change the tone of the novel from a wonderful science fiction story ending to a cop out romance. It removes all power and the believability from her ending. If you are one who doesn't catch on too quickly to symbolism, the story would be pretty fascinating, but if you are looking for something that you really want to think and ponder about, it's not Windling's book.
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Summary: A great book to read while traveling to Tuscon, AZ
Review: The Woodwife is a great read. I recently read the book while visting Tuscon, AZ. The book made my visit even more enjoyable! The story makes the Ricon mountains come alive.
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Summary: Poems and Tricksters
Review: There is high fantasy, such as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, urban fantasy as admirably espoused by authors such as Charles de Lint, and this piece, which might be called rural fantasy. Windling mixes elements of Celtic myth, native American folklore, the rarified worlds of poetry and surrealistic painters with the desert setting of the area surrounding Tucson to create a well crafted work of slightly nebulous otherness, an evocation of the mystical, that will resonate with and absorb the reader. Maggie Black, journalist and sometime poet, divorced but still somewhat in love with her high-profile musician husband, is the main character. Maggie inherits the property of Pulitzer prize winning poet David Cooper upon his mysterious death by drowning (in the desert!). With the idea of writing Cooper's biography, she goes to his home located in the hills above Tucson. Once there, she is slowly drawn into the rhythm of life in the desert, finding beauty in the landscape and the local people, and gradually finding new interpretations of Cooper's most famous poems collectively known as The Wood Wife. From this prosaic beginning, the story slowly adds elements of the fantastic, as Cooper's inspiration for the poems and his lover's surrealistically painted visions of the creatures that populate the area becomes evident. Maggie's character is well portrayed, that of a somewhat insecure woman slowly finding her own self worth from behind the smothering light of her former husband, finding her own long-buried poetic voice, finding a way to deal with fantastic events and creatures while remaining a practical cosmopolitan woman of today's world. Cooper himself becomes a distinct voice, as we see many of the letters that he wrote when he first settled in the area and was drawn into the area's ambience. The characters of Johnny Foxxe and some of the magical creatures are not so well defined, in some cases merely sketched in for use as plot enhancers, and could have used some further development work. The descriptive prose work is excellent - it is easy to get the feeling and mental picture of the area, people, and creatures, while at the same time things are not over-described, allowing the reader to fill in his own mental picture. The eventual story climax is perhaps slightly disappointing, as it seemed to me to derive too many of its elements from fairly well known folk tales, and certain of those elements were really unnecessary, gratuitously added to fill out the story line. But this is a minor quibble to what is in general a very engrossing story that is quite different from the normal, well told, with a definite poetic air that is far above the typical fantasy work attempts at the evocation of faery. And there is a level of meaning beyond the straightforward story line, a fair amount of both psychology and the symbolic, that is also quite unusual in a fantasy work. Recommended for anyone looking for something different from the standard everyday fare that fills the book racks to overflowing.
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Summary: A compelling, mythic evocation of the desert and the person
Review: This book *is* about the Great Sonoran Desert. If you're a "desert rat" who loves the place, and can't explain to your friends why - or if you're the mystified friend of a desert rat - this book may give you the vision. Though it stumbles just a little at one point, trying to integrate one too many mythoi, the promises of the beginning are delivered in the end: the myths are intact yet uncaptive, and the people are much more-seeing and a bit wiser.
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Summary: I LOVE this book!!!!!!!!!
Review: This book is Art, Myth, Poetry, Music, and Spirit in a landscape as clearly portrayed as an Ansel Adams photograph. Windling, give us more please! And Windling's publisher, PLEASE TAKE NOTE: BRING THE PAPERBACK EDITION OF THIS BOOK BACK INTO PRINT!!!! How else can I give it to everyone I know for Christmas this year??????
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Summary: Amazing, Magic, Mesmerizing...
Review: This book was my first foray into the genre of mythical fiction and what an introduction! I'm hopelessly hooked. I loved the way Ms. Windling wove real people into her fictional story (Henry Miller and Anais Nin to name a few). The haunting beauty of the desert jumped out from the pages and gripped my heart making me want to visit the desert for the first time in my life. I'm a water person by nature (Moonchild) but long to see the desert now and experience it's magic for myself. This book is a poem. No other way to put it. Read it only if you're tired of the same old, same old and be prepared to be whisked away to a whole new dimension from which you'll never want to return.....
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Summary: A visit between worlds
Review: This book won some important awards, and its easy to see why. It's one of the best books I personally have ever read, and sure to open a door to faerie for any who read it. I would give it six stars if that were possible. It's a shame Ms. Windling doesn't publish her own stuff more often.
If you love this book, you may also be interested in works such as The Little Country and Forests of the Heart, both by Charles de Lint.
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