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Greenmantle

Greenmantle

List Price: $14.95
Your Price: $10.17
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: High Fantasy, the Wild Hunt & a romance all rolled into one!
Review: Meet Mally, of the tangled hair and tiny horns, who's not important enough to be a "mystery" -- she's just a "secret." Mally's friend, Ali, a girl who is drawn into the magic of the forest where she meets the Mystery and finds that all things do not need to be explained -- some are just to be experienced. And Ali's mother, Frankie, who becomes a believer in magic -- and in love. Put a Zamfir CD on and settle down for an incredible trip into the magical world of Charles DeLint.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Touches of magic are smeared by propagandist
Review: Once again, as others have said, de Lint has done it again. He has taken an intelligent, solid, magical premise and used it to reiterate commonplace dogma-- "Christians tried to take Mystery and enslave it to their way of thinking". This is the kind of obvious drivel one would expect from a fourteen-year-old Wiccan; whatever truths may be found here, are not the ones de Lint has his characters express.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: When worlds collide...
Review: One of the things de Lint does best is dealing with what happens when the everyday (ordinary) meets the magic (extraordinary). In this case, the everyday is Ali, her mom, and Tony. The magic is, of course, Mally, the village, and the mystery - the green man. What happens next is pure de Lint magic.

This was the second de Lint book I read after I discovered him, the first being "Yarrow", and it's still one of my favorites. I come back to it again and again when I feel the need for a little magic in my life... something de Lint does extraordinarily well!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: When worlds collide...
Review: One of the things de Lint does best is dealing with what happens when the everyday (ordinary) meets the magic (extraordinary). In this case, the everyday is Ali, her mom, and Tony. The magic is, of course, Mally, the village, and the mystery - the green man. What happens next is pure de Lint magic.

This was the second de Lint book I read after I discovered him, the first being "Yarrow", and it's still one of my favorites. I come back to it again and again when I feel the need for a little magic in my life... something de Lint does extraordinarily well!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Fast-Paced de Lint Urban Fantasy
Review: The Story: Frankie Treasure wins the Wintario lottery, packs up her daughter, Alice ("Ali"), and moves into the home where she grew up, after renovating it, even though her deceased father made her childhood there miserable. Unfortunately, Frankie's ex-husband, Earl, hears about Frankie's good fortune. Earl has developed into a first-class thug, with mob connections, and he decides that he can kidnap his daughter and get the lottery money from his ex-wife, which he can then use to finance a big-time drug deal. Meanwhile, Tony Valenti, a fratellanza (Mafia) hit-man, ends up on the wrong side of an internal power struggle in his Family, and goes into hiding, one block away from the old/new home of Frankie and Ali Treasure. What none of them knows is that, not far away, back in the woods, there is a hidden village of people who reject the modern world and modern religions, in favor of a worship of nature and the Horned God of the Forest.

Technical: This is one of de Lint's earlier novels, and it's the fastest-paced one that I've read so far. It still features the de Lint trademark of introducing a diverse cast of characters, rich with cultural elements, and bringing them together so that beliefs and cultures clash and mesh. There are a few more typographical errors than one expects in a novel of this caliber, but not enough to detract from the story.

First Commentary: Charles de Lint likes to study different cultures and introduce them into his stories. In "Greenmantle", we have the Mafia, we have Celtic nature-worshippers, and we have a Horned God who is a modern-day version of the Roman god Pan. The clash of cultures often highlights belief systems; in this story, concepts like honor, violence as a means, exploitation, and self-image get put in the spotlight. The book has good character development, a coherent, fast-paced story, and intriguing ideas.

Second Commentary: Some have commented that a story featuring a Mafia element is outdated. The story was written in 1984, I believe, which puts it before many of the Mafia movies made since then. That also puts it before the government did much to disable the Mafia in North America.

Warning: This is an R-rated book, with sexual scenes, profanity, and considerable violence (more than usual, of all three, for a de Lint book).

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not as good as "Moonheart" but not bad.
Review: This book was half mafia crime drama and half fantasy. It would have been a better book if it concentrated more on the fantasy than the crime element. The way the paths of the characters in the book crossed was also kind of hokey. The book was'nt bad, it just was'nt all that great either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Step into magic
Review: This is perhaps my favorite Charles de Lint book, and is definitely one of my favorite books of all time. I've read Greenmantle three times since I discovered it in 1997. I can't go into the woods now without looking for Mystery, secrets, and secret villages where the Old Traditions live. If you want a book that will make you believe in magic, read Greenmantle.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Step into magic
Review: This is perhaps my favorite Charles de Lint book, and is definitely one of my favorite books of all time. I've read Greenmantle three times since I discovered it in 1997. I can't go into the woods now without looking for Mystery, secrets, and secret villages where the Old Traditions live. If you want a book that will make you believe in magic, read Greenmantle.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Glad to see its return...
Review: This novel has two parallel story lines, and one of those story lines holds a lot of good stuff: the Horned God, an adolescent girl and her quest, Celtic magic, mischievous elf girls, and a sinister Hunt made up of evil, ghostly Christian monks. The other story line, however, follows a Mafia-hitman type story. Nothing wrong with that except that, since The Godfather, that type of story can seem very timeworn and cliche...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not quite what it could have been
Review: This novel has two parallel story lines, and one of those story lines holds a lot of good stuff: the Horned God, an adolescent girl and her quest, Celtic magic, mischievous elf girls, and a sinister Hunt made up of evil, ghostly Christian monks. The other story line, however, follows a Mafia-hitman type story. Nothing wrong with that except that, since The Godfather, that type of story can seem very timeworn and cliche...


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