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A review by jimbowen0306
Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection by Charles de Lint
1.0
On a scale of 1 to 1 trillion, words cannot describe how highly I would score the pretentiousness of this book. It's so pretentious I have no idea where to start with my criticism of its' over serious pomposity.
So... where to start? Well, I'd start with the damn introduction, an introduction that has the... (I don't want to say gall, so I'll say...) confidence to claim that de Lint is an author of the quality of Isabel Allende (at least in terms related to magical realism), and that the only reason de Lint isn't recognised is because he writes genre fiction.
Now I wouldn't mind if the short stories were actually any good, but they weren't. Most are 20-odd pages of all build up and no closure. An example is a story about a kid who thinks that bicycles have a mind of their own, and breaks locks to set them free. As this is the fantasy genre we can as, is he crazy, or...? Well, who knows. We don't even get to a position where we can have a good argument about it (within the confines of the story -I don't actually think bikes have souls). There isn't even the chance to think about the continuity of belief systems and the shared nature of some delusions, because the narrator is as bemused by the kid at the end of the story as she is at the beginning.
And it's like that all the way through. He sets up story after story where there is the potential for these discussions to be had, but with no follow through.
The second thing is I know there's a division between those who are Star Trek and those who are Star Wars. The technical vs. the mystical. And I know I'm very much Star Trek, rather than Star Wars, but part of me feels even die hard Star Wars fans would struggle with the complete lack of explanation of fantastical beliefs in this book, and the condescension with which believers hold non-believers. Maybe I lived in Texas too long, but I found that resonated with some of the experiences I had, and one or two of the people I met there too much.
Another thing is the repeated use of the word punker to describe a certain type of character in the book. I can't work out really why it grated to much, but it certainly made me feel the book had dated, and not in a particularly good way.
My final grumble is that it reminded too much of the final series of the British tv show A League of Gentlemen, where a final scene to the series is built to throughout the series, effectively answering how did the focus of the episode got there. The only problem is this book isn't funny (which is a relief, as it isn't meant to be), and there isn't the payoff at the end, which is a shame, because it was alluded to in that pretentious introduction again, and had me wondering (at least a little) how all this tut ties together.
So all in, I'm not impressed. I won't be reading that again, or any other de Lint book for that matter.
So... where to start? Well, I'd start with the damn introduction, an introduction that has the... (I don't want to say gall, so I'll say...) confidence to claim that de Lint is an author of the quality of Isabel Allende (at least in terms related to magical realism), and that the only reason de Lint isn't recognised is because he writes genre fiction.
Now I wouldn't mind if the short stories were actually any good, but they weren't. Most are 20-odd pages of all build up and no closure. An example is a story about a kid who thinks that bicycles have a mind of their own, and breaks locks to set them free. As this is the fantasy genre we can as, is he crazy, or...? Well, who knows. We don't even get to a position where we can have a good argument about it (within the confines of the story -I don't actually think bikes have souls). There isn't even the chance to think about the continuity of belief systems and the shared nature of some delusions, because the narrator is as bemused by the kid at the end of the story as she is at the beginning.
And it's like that all the way through. He sets up story after story where there is the potential for these discussions to be had, but with no follow through.
The second thing is I know there's a division between those who are Star Trek and those who are Star Wars. The technical vs. the mystical. And I know I'm very much Star Trek, rather than Star Wars, but part of me feels even die hard Star Wars fans would struggle with the complete lack of explanation of fantastical beliefs in this book, and the condescension with which believers hold non-believers. Maybe I lived in Texas too long, but I found that resonated with some of the experiences I had, and one or two of the people I met there too much.
Another thing is the repeated use of the word punker to describe a certain type of character in the book. I can't work out really why it grated to much, but it certainly made me feel the book had dated, and not in a particularly good way.
My final grumble is that it reminded too much of the final series of the British tv show A League of Gentlemen, where a final scene to the series is built to throughout the series, effectively answering how did the focus of the episode got there. The only problem is this book isn't funny (which is a relief, as it isn't meant to be), and there isn't the payoff at the end, which is a shame, because it was alluded to in that pretentious introduction again, and had me wondering (at least a little) how all this tut ties together.
So all in, I'm not impressed. I won't be reading that again, or any other de Lint book for that matter.