Trader

Rating:
Summary: De Lint gets better and better
Review: Charles De Lint has become one of my favorite authors, although I only discovered him a year or so ago. Trader drew me in and made me care about the characters, and it also gave me something to think about. Revisiting Newford, and meeting more more of its inhabitants (while styaing in touch with old friends) makes reading De Lint's stories more like receiving a wonderful, long letter from a friend.

Rating:
Summary: Don't miss a chance to live De Lint's magic.
Review: Ever since I opened Moonheart, I have loved Charles De Lint's characters. His ideas, the joy he finds in everyday things and people, and the magic he creates underfoot and around each corner is enchanting. I was happy to get a chance to meet up with old friends from Newford. They all feel so real to me, I've missed them in the months since I read his last book. I agonized with the homelessness, hopelessness, and misery that Trader faced. His ability to use what he found within him to create a new life and to deal with his misfortune gave him an ability to grow in ways he never knew he was missing. A recent brush with misfortune of my own reminds me why I enjoy De Lint's truths so much. There are always lessons left to learn in life. I hope to face them with as much courage, imagination, hope and integrity as De Lints's characters do

Rating:
Summary: Too much angst and melodrama...
Review: I almost put this book down three times in the first 100 pages. It was only the appearance of "Bones" and the Coyote subthread that finally kept my attention. Well, that and the fact that I've enjoyed others from De Lint's library of stories. His strength lies in his inherent story telling abilities. His weakness is wallowing in excess inner angst. Ultimately, I liked this story, but it did not merit four hundred plus pages. It could have been told in half those.

Rating:
Summary: Too much angst and melodrama...
Review: I almost put this book down three times in the first 100 pages. It was only the appearance of "Bones" and the Coyote subthread that finally kept my attention. Well, that and the fact that I've enjoyed others from De Lint's library of stories. His strength lies in his inherent story telling abilities. His weakness is wallowing in excess inner angst. Ultimately, I liked this story, but it did not merit four hundred plus pages. It could have been told in half those.

Rating:
Summary: Too much angst and melodrama...
Review: I almost put this book down three times in the first 100 pages. It was only the appearance of "Bones" and the Coyote subthread that finally kept my attention. Well, that and the fact that I've enjoyed others from De Lint's library of stories. His strength lies in his inherent story telling abilities. His weakness is wallowing in excess inner angst. Ultimately, I liked this story, but it did not merit four hundred plus pages. It could have been told in half those.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfull premise badly executed.
Review: I bought Trader almost entirely on the strengh of its premise, an idea that I still find fascinating. However, I found the book's execution lacking in the extreme. The narrative is flat and unimaginative. The characters are interchangable (there were several switches between Zeffy and Nia in the spiritworld that I felt were completely unnecessary since they were both thinking the same thing). But all this takes a back seat to the book's unabashed preachiness. It's always good when an author tries to do more than tell a story, but the constant hammering of De Lint's (true) ideas about how life should be lived gets old before the story is even into its first 100 pages. Trader shines (and shine it does) only when the characters are allowed to be themselves instead of mouthpieces for some philosophy, such as when Max reminisces about Janossy, or when Zeffy plays her guitar. Finally, and this is really my personal preference, I have a problem with what for lack of a better word I'm going to call the science of Trader. The magic is unexplained, and even after it is named and described it remains a sort of ephemeral "if you wish it, it will come" sort of attitude that is really no more than a new-age deus ex machina. Maybe this is just me being a Scully, but even if I'm going to accept the existance of magic and the paranormal, I would like some internal logic to that fantasy, and I didn't find it in Trader.

After all this you're probably wondering why I gave this book 3 stars, but the fact is I read the entire book and didn't suffer through it, it was quite readable, but not remarkable. In short, this was a 'nice' book. What's really sad is that it had a great premise, and carries within it the thwarted promise of a great book.

Rating:
Summary: Liked it with a reservation or two; great wisdom at the end
Review: I found this book a little overlong and rambling, but the culmination of Trader's NDE makes the book worth reading. There were also original explorations/treatments of old ideas: the Kafkaesque concept of waking in a stranger's body and mortals visiting Faerie, a.k.a. Tir-na-Og. I have sometimes felt critical of de Lint because I felt that he romanticized the homeless and other marginal members of society; IMO he is making that mistake less and less often as time goes on. That showed in this book. I also like the continuity of the characters that have appeared in other books.

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I have had mixed opinions about Mr. De Lint's short stories - some are wonderful and touching, some very forgettable. None seem like they would be of as much value if stretched out into a longer telling. In this fine tome, though, De Lint proves himself capable of writing a wonderful story and more importantly keeping it up for over 400 pages. The end is a bit "happy" for my tastes, especially when looking at the hard realism De Lint often uses, but the book as a whole is a winner. I wish we had gotten to view the world more from Johnny's viewpoint, since every other character's eyes and feelings are used numerous times in telling the story, but the one look we get from Johnny's perspective explains his character perfectly. As always with Mr. De Lint's writing, the prose is wonderful, even if you disagree with some of his philosophy. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Pleasing as always...
Review: I like De Lint's work. It's always fresh and fun. The ideas are well handled and the characters (usually just a couple of them) are well honed. Like so many of his other books, this one is set in the semi-Faeriefied "urban folklore" style he's known for. This book is sometimes tedious, but there's so little like it that you'll enjoy yourself (especially if you enjoyed any of his past works).

Rating:
Summary: Another good de Lint story
Review: I thought Trader was a very well done story about finding out what is truly important and what is truly *you* when everything is stripped away. De Lint does a wonderful job of telling the story from several different viewpoints (Max, Zeffy, Tanya, Nia...and so on) and maintains a consistent, individual voice for each, sometimes relating the same events from more than one person's perspective so you get an idea of what's happening *around* the other players.

I especially liked the fact that de Lint didn't "chicken out" and find some way to give Max back his "original" body. Max's lessons were hard-learned and the ending, I think, was much more true to the self-knowledge he had attained during his tenure in Johnny's body. If he *had* been able to take up his life once more, he would have eventually forgotten the lessons (and so would we) about living large - just *living* - and not merely existing through your life and being complacent. Max may always experience some discomfort with looking in the mirror and not seeing what his mind's eye informs him that he'll see, but the lesson will always be there in front of him, living in him, and forcing him to attempt to live that lesson each day of his life.