New Age fairy romances are some of the worst examples of fantastic fiction on bookshelves today. Fairy courts, timeless love, spunky characters that have to balance their real lives with mystical crises, blah blah Renaissance Faire blah.

But WIDDERSHINS is different. Strangely enough, all of the above elements figure into the book, and yet it’s good. Charles de Lint has done such an exceptional job with his setting, plotting and characterizations that it smashes preconceptions and puts some old-fashioned wonder and fun into things.

Fairy jokes aside, WIDDERSHINS is – at its most basic – a romance woven into a tale of fairy intrigues and personal demons. Essentially it’s an object lesson in loss and redemption, of sins and forgiveness. There’s nary a nihilistic anti-hero, no absolutely evil force bent on destroying 100 percent pure good heroes. WIDDERSHINS is (dare I say it) a delight. It can be dark and twisted, but de Lint’s book is a fairy tale in the classical sense. It’s not so deconstructed as, say, AMERICAN GODS or JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL, and it’s a little bit shiny-happy, but all things considered, it is a pleasant surprise amid a paperback wastelend. –Ryun Patterson

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