What do You think about Greenmantle (1998)?
This is a fun novel that had excellent pacing. It reads like a television show, with viewpoints switching between characters just as their individual story has reached a sort of climax in order to evoke suspense for when their story picks back up again. The things I didn't like about they book are explained by it being written a while ago when the elements in it weren't so overused. The main character is a fourteen year old girl who's a bookworm who longs for adventure and is brave...like every protagonist in every book about a child now. And it really hits you over the head with it's feminist message. The message itself that women should be independent of men and that there's no real significant difference aside from the physical makeup of their body is talked about, but then in the action the women in the novel are still damsels in distress while mafia people have cowboy shootouts around them. Once the 14 year old is rescued by a weird magic girl who keeps stealing people's shit, so there's that. And I liked the similarities displayed between Christ and Paganism, particularly the mystery religion about Pan, but to me its arguments didn't really seem that interesting because this was written 20 or so years ago when I think they were pretty new. And as a Christian I kind of felt weird that the main villains of the book were evil ghost monks who try to kill Pan(or greenmantle or whatever) and forcibly convert the teenage girl to their religion. But that's just my bias, it didn't really detract from the story itself, and the scene was really dramatic so I liked it. THanks Ms. Williams for recommending this author to me.
—Alex Long
Meh. A bunch of different characters like a former mafia hitman, a divorced wife and her bright daughter, a bunch of neopagan villagers, and a mysterious wild girl all live in the wilds of Canada. They all are touched by a gigantic stag as the past of several of them come to a violent head.It starts out well, but then drags on. I'm sure for the time the neo-paganism was groundbreaking, but it feels really tired and cliche here, especially the typical "Christianity is bad m'kay" vibe. I'm not against the idea of functioning paganism in fantasy, but a good book doesn't greenwash it: it acknowledges that the deity itself is not perfect. A good example in modern film is Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke, with the wolf-goddess Moro. She is wild, pagan, capricious, but tender and long-lived. This just felt very one-sided a book to me, especially when they revealed the dogs chasing the stag.The plot is okay, but after awhile I was just wishing they'd get to the resolution. The pagan aspect was straightforwards and displayed early, so it's just a lot of waiting for Earl vs Tony or what have you. Surprisingly I found myself differing from the reviewers here, and I would have loved it just being a story about Tony, Frankie, and Ali discovering a wild pagan god in their forest. The rest of the characters or subplots honestly felt redundant, and those characters to me were the only ones that mattered. The neopagan village especially was a dumb idea, as it robbed a lot of the mystery of the book. I'll still try later books, but this one isn't really selling me on the author.
—D.M. Dutcher
I chose Greenmantle solely because I read that it was a good start to reading anything by de Lint. His style of Urban Fantasy is unique because it combines both the aspects of traditional fiction with aspects of fantasy. This undoubtedly gets many true Fantasy aficionados upset that his work should be considered Fantasy at all but I now tend to disagree with these beliefs since reading this novel.Greenmantle on the whole is just a simple, yet good, story. There's nothing in the way of true discussion upon society or politics. His development of friendship between adults and children was very good I thought and his style of writing is very peaceful and easy to follow. This novel is easily just as accessible for teenagers as it is for adults and I would recommend this novel to anyone looking for a good novel to read. It is especially adequate for those who dislike reading true Fantasy novels because of their inherent 'far out' nature but who still wish to read a novel with a bit of the mystic and mysterious.
—Brian Darvell
