โ Scribed by Charles de Lint
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
{ June 2022 - Verified ebook for complete book description, cover image, table of contents, separation of book (front/ back matter, parts, and chapters), and epub format error checking. }
Hardcover, 352 pages
Published: 1997
Source: Tor Books (1997)
Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature (1998) Nominee
A novel of loss, identity, and, in the strangest of places, hope.
Leonard Trader is a luthier, a maker of guitars. Johnny Devlin is chronically unemployed. Leonard is solitary, quiet, responsible. Johnny is a lady-killer, a drunk, a charming loser.
When they inexplicably wake up in each other's bodies, Johnny gleefully moves into Leonard's comfortable and stable existence, leaving Leonard to pick up the pieces of a life he had no part in breaking.
Penniless, friendless, homeless, Leonard begins a journey that will take him beyond the streets of the city to an otherworld of dreams and spirits, where he must confront both the unscrupulous Johnny Devlin and his own deepest fears.
When a mischievous spirit grants loser Johnny Devlin's wish for someone else's life, luthier Max Trader wakes up in Johnny's body, surrounded by the emotionally vacant shambles Johnny has left behind, bankrupt and farther down in the world than he has ever imagined being. Jarred from his complacent, self-contained path, Max has only his inner resources for both emotional and financial support. He wants his life back, but, as he struggles for it, he realizes that he will no longer be satisfied with things as they were. Fans of de Lint's previous work will enjoy this gently didactic story set in the fictional town of Newford's thirtysomethingish community of arty waifs and folk musicians.
A master of urban fantasy returns with one of his finest works. One morning, a quiet, responsible luthier (guitar-maker), Leonard Trader, wakes up in the body of charming ne'er-do-well Johnny Devlin. At the same time, Devlin takes over Trader's body. Devlin starts cutting a swathe through the money, women and liquor in Trader's circle, while Trader has to struggle for survival on the mean streets while trying to figure out what happened to him and what he can do about it. This quest takes him (as such quests have taken many of de Lint's characters) into what is in, in effect, a marvelously wrought land of Faerie. De Lint (Memory and Dream, etc.) builds his story from a succession of well-chosen and well-expressed details. He eschews herding his lead characters into some grand, eternal arena; nothing is at stake here except their personal fates. Devlin and Trader are made so sympathetic in de Lint's seasoned hands, however, that the lack of a cosmic stage for their drama doesn't detract one bit from their wholly engaging adventures.
(Note: A series of urban fantasy/mythic Fiction books set in the fictional North American city of Newford. Newford is not a sequential series--each novel or story stands alone as a complete tale. Though some characters show up in one another's tales, the books can be enjoyed independently..)
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A novel of loss, identity, and, in the strangest of places, hope. Leonard Trader is a luthier, a maker of guitars. Johnny Devlin is chronically unemployed. Leonard is solitary, quiet, responsible. Johnny is a lady-killer, a drunk, a charming loser. When they inexplicably wake up in each other's bo
What is truly important, and what is truly you, when everything is stripped away? In this evocative novel, we meet Max Trader, a renowned guitar-maker living a solitary, quiet life; and Johnny Devlin, a small-time con man out to scam anyone, including his girlfriend. When they inexplicably wake up i