Someplace to Be Flying

Lily is a photojournalist in search of the "animal people" who supposedly haunt the city's darkest slums. Hank is a slumdweller who knows the bad streets all too well. One night, in a brutal incident, their two lives collide--uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in the secret drama of the city's oldest inhabitants. For the animal people walk among us. Native Americans call them the First People, but they have never left, and they claim the city for their own. Not only have Hank and Lily stumbled onto a secret, they've stumbled into a war. And in this battle for the city's soul, nothing is quite as it appears. Amazon.com Review Nobody does urban fantasy better than Charles de Lint. He has a gift for creating engaging, fully realized characters, totally believable dialogue, and a feeling that magic is just around the corner. Someplace to Be Flying is set in Newford, a town familiar to readers of de Lint. (He set two prior novels ( Memory and Dream and Trader ) and two anthologies ( Dreams Underfoot and The Ivory and the Horn ) in Newford.) One late night, as Hank drives his gypsy cab, his reliable though perilous city is transformed. He encounters the mythical "animal people," and the experience leaves him--and the reader--questioning accepted reality. "Hank just wanted away from here. He'd sampled some hallucinogens when he was a kid and the feeling he had now was a lot like coming down from an acid high. Everything slightly askew, illogical things that somehow made sense, everything too sharp and clear when you looked at it but fading fast in your peripheral vision, blurred, like it didn't really exist." Fans of Emma Bull and Terri Windling (as both an editor and an author) will enjoy de Lint. He can make you believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast." --Nona Vero From Library Journal A cab driver and a freelance photographer come together in the town of Newford to explore the existence of the mythical "animal people" and discover the hidden world that lurks just outside their normal perceptions. The author of Trader (LJ 12/96) specializes in a unique brand of crossover fantasy that combines elements of magical realism with multicultural myths to illuminate the lives of his characters?the misfits and orphans of the modern world. De Lint's elegant prose and effective storytelling continue to transform the mundane into the magical at every turn. Highly recommended. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. A woman photojournalist investigates reports of "animal people" in her town. She finds them after being attacked in a slum and saved by a taxi driver who is one of the people. He introduces her to the world of shape-shifting individuals with animal blood and magical powers who live on the edge of society.