Spirits in the Wires

by Charles de Lint

Book Overview

Charles de Lint's Newford novels, loosely linked "tales" with overlapping characters set in an imaginary modern North American city, are tales of magic and myth afoot on today's city streets. But at the center of every de Lint story is the miracle of the human heart.And at the heart of Spirits in the Wires are Saskia Madding and Christiana Tree, both of whom are tied to perennial Newford character, the writer Christy Riddell. Are either Saskia or...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312873980
• ISBN13: 9780312873981
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The Best de Lint Yet!!!

I loved this novel. It is full of the amazing and unique characters that I have come to look for in de Lint's work. The novel is full of danger, magic, and realistic love. It is a love story for the fantasy inclined.

True Magic

The strongest point of de Lint's writing is not the fantasy elements that appeal to so many of his readers. His true strength is in the characters he creates, characters that come alive the reader until we feel we know them like we know a close friend. And unlike some characters in book collections, de Lint is not afraid to take his characters through changem but allows his characters to develop without destroying their basic personas. Spirits in the Wires Revolves around Saskia Madding, the poet born on the Internet, who is sucked back in along with hundreds of other victims who were online when a computer virus struck down the WordWood, an online library with an independent mind (it also happens to be where Saskia came from) The group who travel to save Saskia find that the problem with the Wordwood is much bigger than one handicapped site, while Saskia struggles to stay alive and puzzle out her own origins. Besides devloping Saskia more fully as a character, de Lint also takes this opportunity to explore the character of Christiana Tree, Christie Ridell's shadow person, created from all the parts of himself that he cast off. De Linta has the fantastic ability to create a realistic character out of such a fantastical setting. But perhaps the character development I appreciated most was for what one might consider a Newford "villain"-Aaron, the snooty book editor who hates Saskia and is the ultimate cause of her current misfortune. De Lint shows that even bad people can be fully devloped, human characters, a hard feat for writers to accomplish. I must confess, Saskia's true nature still aludes me. I only borrowed this book from the library, so I didn't have a chance to reread it and really discover what the things Saskia saw meant. (Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!) But this novel conveys to me real magic the de Lint has empowered with the same plausability as his well loved characters. If only someone would start the Wordwood.......

Charming urban fantasy

When a book reviewer blackmails a hacker into sending a computer virus into the wordwood website, things get ugly. Because wordwood left the simple world of computing long before and migrated into the spirit workd. A virus there is a lot more serious, and hundreds of people getting sucked into their computers is just the start of the problems. When his girlfriend is one of those sucked in, Christy Riddell resolves to go after her--even if it means entering into the spirit world. Of course he's never actually been in the spirit world and isn't even sure he believes in it, but he's willing to do whatever it takes to save her. Gathering a group of friends and questionable allies, he sets off. But things have gone downhill in wordwood and its problems are starting to spread even more widely. If he and his band don't succeed, the problems may become a lot more serious than just a few missing persons. Author Charles de Lint brings new life to the concept of merging the computer and fantasy world. The fairy people aren't all involved with computers, but many shadows are given strength by people's belief in them and lots of people believe what computers tell them. de Lint's writing is lyrical, engaging the reader and giving the story a tang of its own. The power of this novel comes not from the conclusions, although there are some charming twists there as well, but from the progression through adventure, from de Lint's descriptions and concepts, and from the way he paints his story rather than simply telling it. SPIRITS IN THE WIRES takes a fairly standard concept and really breaths light into it. de Lint fans will be happy to see many familiar characters return, as well as enjoy meeting some of the new characters and concepts that de Lint brings to the light. It's a charming story. Well done.

Magic on the Internet

I don't generally read fantasy, as most of it tends to fall under the "sword and sorcery" style that does nothing for me. Then I read a few stories Charles de Lint wrote in Tapping the Dream Tree. Two of them in particular struck a chord with me. "Pixel Pixies" and "Embracing the Mystery" both concern magic and computers. This was the kind of "urban fantasy" I was looking for. Not Emma Bull's War for the Oaks that spends half its time in Fairy Land, but de Lint's vision that brings the magic into the modern world, even to the internet. When I could tell that de Lint's new novel Spirits in the Wires was going to build on these two stories, I got excited. Was I finally going to get to immerse myself in a fantasy world that I could enjoy? Spirits in the Wires concerns a Web site called the Wordwood, which is like a search engine but you can ask it any question and it will answer you in a style familiar to you, such as a beloved family member. It also concerns two of the women in the life of writer Christy Riddell: his girlfriend Saskia Madding, who believes she was born from the Wordwood; and his "shadow self," whom he calls "Mystery" but who has given herself the name Christiana Tree (Miss Tree=Mystery). Christiana is made up of aspects of Christy that he threw off himself when he was seven years old, but she has made herself over the years into her own person. When a man spurned by Saskia wants revenge, he has a virus sent into the Wordwood, which causes everyone logged on to the site at that moment to disappear--including Saskia, who disappears right in front of Christy, who is helpless to do anything about it. This leads to a pursuit of those disappeared, a trip into the website, and teamwork from people who variously love and hate each other. Once I got past de Lint's strange naming convention ("Christy" for a man, "Aaran" with no "o," in addition to just an uncommon selection of names in general), I realized that this made it easier to keep characters separated, as opposed to some writers who don't take that into consideration and have characters named Fred and Frank (or Jo and Joy) in the same book. Probably the most interesting aspect of the book is that the characters carry over from other books. I met most of the people in Spirits in the Wires somewhere in Tapping the Dream Tree. So, it's like a series book where you already know the characters and can just get on with the story. But on the other hand, some of the characters I didn't know were introduced fully with the plot so I didn't feel left out. I feel sure that a newcomer could pick up Spirits in the Wires and not feel lost. De Lint has quite a story here to tell and writes with apparent ease. He is familiar with the technology (one aspect of the book that could have been done badly) enough to give enough information to understand the plot, but not bog his audience (already tech-savvy, to judge by his vast internet following) down with unnecessary details. But the details of the l

Another Visit to Newford

In his latest book, Charles de Lint takes readers back to Newford for an adventure featuring a cast of familiar and not-so-familiar characters from earlier stories. Reading previous books and collections is not required, but would add to the enjoyment of this new story. We get to know Saskia much better than in the short story about her in "Moonlight and Vines" and make friends with Christiana, Christy Riddell's "shadow" and the heroine of the tale. Following the pattern of many of de Lint's other stories; "Spirits" connects the world we know to the world of Faerie through the border between the two. In this case, the border holds the presence known as the Wordwood and the place it inhabits, which many of us would call cyberspace. Unlike most books about conflict and resolution, "Spirits" doesn't have an ordinary nemesis. The character, Aaran, who sets the plot in motion is motivated by spite; he wants to get even with Saskia because she is, for want of a better term, classier than he is. Aaran gains advantage over a hacker and forces him to turn a virus loose in the Wordwood. He nor the hacker are not, however, the main antagonists. Neither is the spirit who takes advantage of the Wordwood's disruption. I'll leave it to you to figure out who the "bad guy" is, if there really is one, when you read it. As an unapologetic de Lint fan, I relished the chance to revisit places and friends from earlier stories. According to Christiana's narrative in "Spirits", people in our world have to believe in\remember fictional characters so those characters can keep their existence. Charles de Lint's latest will go a long way toward keeping some of our favorite spirits healthy.