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Spirits in the Wires: A Novel of Myth and Magic—On the Streets and On the Net (Newford) Kindle Edition
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 Christiana real? Christy's girlfriend, Saskia, believes she was born in a Web site, while Christiana is Christy's "shadow-self"--all the parts of him that he cast out when he was seven years old.
At a popular Newford on-line research and library Web site called the Wordwood, a mysterious "crash" occurs. Everyone visiting the site at the moment of the crash vanishes from where they were sitting in front of their computers. Saskia disappears right before Christy's eyes, along with countless others.
Now Christy and his companions must journey into Newford's otherworld, where the Wordwood, it transpires, has a physical presence of its own...to rescue their missing friends and loved ones and to set this viral spirit right before it causes further harm.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTor Books
- Publication dateApril 1, 2007
- File size1255 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“De Lint ... handles his concept of technological voodoo with intelligence, verve and wit while introducing fascinating new characters and expanding on old ones.... Will please previous fans and find new ones for this master of the modern fantastic.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Superb characterization and plot development skills.” ―Booklist
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Spirits in the Wires
By De Lint, CharlesTor Books
Copyright © 2004 De Lint, CharlesAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312869717
First Meeting
Don’t make of us
more than we are,
she said.
We hold no great secret…
—SASKIA MADDING,
“Arabesque” (Moths and Wasps, 1997)
Christiana Tree
“I feel as if I should know you,” Saskia Madding says as she approaches my chair.
She’s been darting glances in my direction from across the café for about fifteen minutes now and I was wondering when she’d finally come over.
I saw her when I first came in, sitting to the right of the door at a window table, nursing a tall cup of chai tea. She’d been writing in a small, leather-bound book, fountain pen in one hand, the other holding back the spill of blonde hair that would otherwise fall into her eyes. She looked up when I came in and showed no sign of recognition, but since then she’s been studying me whenever she thinks I’m not paying attention to her.
“You do know me,” I tell her. “I’m pieces of your boyfriend—the ones he didn’t want when he was a kid.”
She gives me a puzzled look, though I can see a kind of understanding start up in the back of those pretty, sea-blue eyes of hers.
“You—are you the woman in his journals?” she asks. “The one he calls Mystery?”
I smile. “That’s me. The shadow of himself.”
“I didn’t… ”
“Know I was real?” I finish for her when her voice trails off.
She shakes her head. “No. I just didn’t expect to ever see you in a place like this.”
“I like coffee.”
“I meant someplace so mundane.”
“Ah. So you’ve made note of all those romantic flights of fancy he puts in those journals of his.” I close my eyes, shuffling through pages of memory until I find one of them. ”‘I can see her standing among the brambles and thorns of some half-forgotten hedgerow in a green bridal dress, her red hair set aflame by the setting sun, her eyes dark with mysteries and stories, a wooden hare’s mask dangling from one languid hand. This is how I always see her. In the hidden and secret places, her business there incomprehensible yet obviously perfectly suited to her curious, evasive nature.’”
I get a smile from Saskia, but I don’t know if it’s from the passage I’ve quoted, or because I’m mimicking Christy’s voice as I repeat the words.
“That’s a new one,” she says. “He hasn’t read it to me yet.”
“You wait for him to read them to you?”
“Of course. I would never go prying…” She pauses and gives me a considering look. “When do you read them?”
I shrug. “Oh, you know. Whenever. I don’t really sleep, so sometimes when I get bored late at night I come by and sit in his study for awhile to read what he’s been thinking about lately.”
“You’re as bad as the crow girls.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Mmm.” She studies me for a moment before adding, “You don’t read my journals do you?”
I muster a properly offended look, though it’s not that I wouldn’t. I just haven’t. Yet.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Of course you wouldn’t. We don’t have the same connection as you and Christy do.”
“Does that connection bother you?”
She shakes her head. “That would be like being bothered by his having Geordie for a brother. You’re more like family—albeit the twin sister who only comes creeping by to visit in the middle of the night when we’re both asleep.”
I shrug, but I don’t apologize.
“I’m only his shadow,” I say.
She studies me again, those sea-blue eyes of hers looking deep into mine.
“I don’t think so,” she says. “You’re real now.”
That makes me smile.
“As real as I am, anyway,” she adds.
My smile fades as I see the troubled look that comes over her. I forget that her own exotic origins are no more than a dream to her most of the time—a dream that makes her uncomfortable, uneasy in her skin. I wish I hadn’t reminded her of it, but she puts it away and brings the conversation back to me.
“Why won’t you tell Christy your name?” she asks.
“Because that would let him put me in a box labeled ‘This is Christiana’ and I don’t want to be locked into who he thinks I am. The way he writes about me is bad enough. If he had a name to go with it he might be able to fix it so that I could never change and grow.”
“He does like his routines,” she says.
I nod. “His picture’s in the dictionary, right beside the word.”
We share a moment’s silence, then she cocks her a head, just a little.
“So your name’s Christiana?” she asks.
“I call myself Christiana Tree.”
That brings back a genuine smile.
“So that would make you Miss Tree,” she says.
I’m impressed at how quickly she got it as I offer her my hand.
“In the flesh,” I tell her. “Pleased to meet you.”
“But that’s only what you call yourself,” she says as she shakes my hand.
“We all have our secrets.”
“Or we wouldn’t be mysteries.”
“That, too.”
She’s been sitting on her haunches beside the easy chair I commandeered as soon as I’d picked up my coffee and sticky-bun from the counter, leaning her arms on one of the chair’s fat arms. There’s another chair nearby, occupied by a boy in his late teens with blue hair and razor-thin features. He’s been listening to his Walkman loud enough for me to identify the music as rap, though I can’t make out any words, and flipping through one of the café’s freebie newspapers while he drinks his coffee. He gets up now and I give a vague wave to the vacant chair with my hand.
“Why don’t you get more comfortable,” I say to Saskia.
She nods. “Just let me get my stuff.”
Some office drone in a tailored business suit, tie loose, top shirt button undone, approaches the chair while Saskia collects her things. I put my scuffed brown leather work boots up on its cushions and give him a sugar and icicle smile—you know, it looks sweet, but there’s a chill in it. He’s like a cat as he casually steers himself off through the tables and takes a hard-back chair at one of the small counters that enclose the café’s various rustic wooden support beams, making it look like that’s what he was aiming for all along.
Saskia returns. She drops her jacket on the back of the chair, puts her knapsack on the floor, and settles down, tea in hand.
“So, what were you writing?” I ask.
She shrugs. “This and that. I just like playing with words. Sometimes they become something—a journal entry, a poem. Sometimes I’m just following words to see where they go.”
“And where do they go?”
“Anyplace and everyplace.”
She pauses for a moment and has a sip of her tea, sets the cup down on the low table between us. Later I realize she was just deciding whether to go on and tell me what she now does.
“You know, we’re like words,” she says. “You and me. We’re like ghost words.”
I have to smile. I’m beginning to understand why Christy cares about her the way he does. She’s a sweet, pretty blonde, but she doesn’ serious to whimsical, or even some combination of the two. I think I just might have a poke through her journals the next time I’m in their apartment and they’re both asleep. I’d like to know more about her—not just what she has to say, but what she thinks when there’s nobody supposed to be listening.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll bite. What are ghost words?”
“They’re words that don’t really exist. They come about through the mistakes of editors and printers and bad proofreaders, and while they seem like they should mean something, they don’t. Like ‘cablin’ for ‘cabin,’ say.”
I see what she means.
“I like that word,” I tell her. “Cablin. Maybe I should appropriate it and give it a meaning.”
Saskia gives a slow nod. “You see? That’s how we’re like ghost words. People can appropriate us and give us meanings, too.”
I know she’s talking about our anomalous origins—how because of them, we could be victim to that sort of thing—but I don’t agree.
“That happens to everybody,” I tell her. “It happens whenever someone decides what someone is like instead of finding out for real.”
“I suppose.”
“You’re thinking about all of this too much.”
“I can’t seem to stop thinking about it.”
I study her for a long moment. It’s worrying her, this whole idea of what’s real and what isn’t, like how you came into this world is more important than what you do once you’re here.
“What’s the first thing you remember?” I ask.
Copyright © 2003 by Charles de Lint;
Continues...
Excerpted from Spirits in the Wires by De Lint, Charles Copyright © 2004 by De Lint, Charles. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B003J4VEOK
- Publisher : Tor Books; First edition (April 1, 2007)
- Publication date : April 1, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 1255 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 450 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #852,858 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,552 in Contemporary Fantasy Fiction
- #1,850 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #2,677 in Contemporary Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Charles de Lint and his wife, MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with their little dog Johnny Cash. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, and The Wind in His Heart have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary mythic fiction. In 2018 he was given a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Saskia is the human embodiment of a search engine that gained sentience and Christiana is a being formed from the cast off unwanted feeling of another person. Along with Christy, who created Christiana and is dating Saskia, they travel from our world to the otherworld where the internet has become a physical place. A virus crashes the Wormwood, the search engine Saskia sprang from and she, along with everyone who was using the site when the virus hit disappear. Christy must work with both the magically knowledgeable and tech savvy to find the woman he loves in an adventure that takes the reader from our world, to the internet, to the magical otherworld and back.
Delint never fails to deliver thoughtful, complex characters that the reader can emphasize with in stories that can get you to think and feel.
Like all of his novels there is a nice wrap up in which all ends well
Top reviews from other countries
Saskia Madding (of "Moonlight & Vines") believes she was born in a website. When a virus hits that website, Saskia, her boyfriend, Christy Riddell, and his "shadow-self" are needed to save it from oblivion.
Featuring characters that De Lint fans will have encountered in the previous Newford stories (compiled in "Memory & Dream", "The Ivory and the Horn", "Moonlight & Vines", and, "Tapping the Dream Tree") this book can definitely be read without any prior knowledge of the characters. On the other hand, Newford fans will be delighted to get to know some previously stay-in-the-background characters much more fully.
The beauty of De Lint's writing is that he weaves magic and spirit into the everyday, and also explores issues of the heart - of growing, and of relating. After reading his books, you start finding wonder in the mundane. If you haven't tried De Lint before, then this book will, without a doubt, get you hooked!