Wolf Moon, by Charles de Lint

[rachelmanija]

Kern Kedrigern is an innocent werewolf being hunted by an evil harper. (Werewolf type: can change at will, and keeps his human mind when he does.) He falls over a cliff and into a river, and washes up at an inn with the obligatory flirty barmaid (Fion) and the gentle manager Ainsley. Kern stays at the inn, works, and falls for Ainsley, knowing that if his secret is ever revealed, they'll all hate him and run him out of town. Then the most wonderful harper anyone's ever heard comes to town...

This little-known early book by de Lint feels a bit slight and minor, but it's an enjoyable read that does a good job with something hard to pull off narratively. That's the seemingly minor character who turns out to be the most important person of all. Fion the barmaid, not Kern the protagonist or Ainsley the love interest, engineers the final confrontation (okay, Kern helps) and strikes the killing blow. It's also, as far as I'm aware, the only time de Lint ever has an evil musician.

Content notes: Violence, mind control, off-page rape through mind control.

Isn't the cover great?

Comments

[sovay]

Never quite figured out why.

I had a lot of trouble finding the there in his work. Nothing ever seemed to have the depth or the edges or the wildness that it should. When I discovered Robert Holdstock and Greer Gilman, it seemed to me that he was trying to occupy the same ecological niche, but nowhere near as successfully. Also he once named a story "The Moon Is Drowning While I Sleep," which is an incredible title, and then it was an almost direct retelling of the folktale in the frame of some of his regular characters, and I who had been haunted by that story since elementary school was done.

[minoanmiss]

... Today I learned that was a folktale and not a story he made up.

I LOVED that story. I loved it so much I photocopied it out of the library book I found it in, and drew a postcard much like this icon to send to him.

...

Well, now I have to find the original folktale!

[sovay]

I LOVED that story. I loved it so much I photocopied it out of the library book I found it in, and drew a postcard much like this icon to send to him.

You are still allowed to love it! I bet your fanart was great.

Well, now I have to find the original folktale!

I remembered it for years as "The Drowned Moon," although I found it again as "The Buried Moon," I believe. It terrified me.

[minoanmiss]

blushes and beams Thank you. :)