DREAMS UNDERFOOT

Nineteen associated tales, 1987-93, from the author of Spiritwalk (1992), etc., two previously unpublished, the remainder deriving from magazines, small presses, and minor anthologies. Newford, with its harbor, lost subterranean Old City, Chinatown, skid row, and so forth, is de Lint's all-purpose American city; his theme is Urban Faeries, wherein the creatures and beings of magic and folklore become real and tangible to those that believe in them. Though Newford's population leans heavily toward twentysomething New Agers, characters like author Christy (his stories are often related or read by the other characters), Professor Bramley Dapple of Butler U., and the ubiquitous, good- hearted Jilly Coppercorn, weave in and out of the stories. The ideas, too, display an entertaining diversity: magic birds, stone drums, ghosts in various guises, animated bicycles, Bigfoot, gypsy magic, psychic vampires, spirits of place, Frankenstein's monster, a conjuror and a Tree of Tales, a catalyst for bad luck, dreams, orphans and angels, night people, bridges and possibilities, music and mermaids, and spirits of the city. Tidy tales, with tingling openings, mundane middles, and limp or elusive endings: initially appealing but far from memorable.