Medicine Road is a desert fairy tale, and is my last book for the Once Upon a Time V challenge. If you enjoyed my reviews for the challenge, be sure to check out the other great bloggers who contributed similarly themed posts.
In this novel, Coyote Woman encounters a red dog pursuing a jackalope. Feeling that it was wrong for two such magical creatures to be chasing each other as predator and prey, she transforms them into humans, with the condition that they find true love within a hundred years if they wish to keep their human forms.
Alice, the jackalope, has already fallen in love with a painter. Jim, however, never found the person who was right for him and spent most of the hundred years wandering and sleeping around. When there are two weeks left in the bargain, Jim meets Bess, a musician, and they begin to develop a relationship.
This is the first Charles de Lint book that I’ve read that has been illustrated, and I think that the illustrations are well done and add a certain feel to the story. I love the descriptions of the desert and of the different spirits, who, like Olympian gods, tend to interfere in the lives of ordinary people and have their own quarrels amongst themselves.
Charles de Lint is one of those authors that gets better the more of his books one reads. I know I’ve reviewed a lot of them already, but his writing makes me keep wanting to read more. Each of his novels and stories can stand alone, but the characters show up in other books and are interconnected. For example, Bettina from Forests of the Heart makes a brief appearance in this novel as a side character. I highly recommend this and any of de Lint’s books.
Books Without Any Pictures 
I’ll have to try this author. I love finding a writer who keeps me wanting more!