Promises to Keep

Promises to Keep (2007) Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint said he wasn’t going to write about Jilly any longer–he’d already done plenty to her in The Onion Girl, and resolved things for her in Widdershins, but in Promises to Keep we get to go back to Jilly’s past. Not the terrible past, but the time when she was pulling her life together.

She does talk somewhat about the horror of her past, which is still hard reading even if we only get a glimpse rather than the details, but the focus of the story is of Jilly’s recovery and how she came out of her shell her first year at the University.

It’s also how she deals with her past come back to haunt her.

I love Charles de Lint’s writing. Whenever I get a new book I always put off reading it for awhile, for whatever reason. Then when I break down and finally read the book I wonder why on earth I waited so long.

Well, in this case it was knowing Jilly’s past, and not being sure if I wanted to revisit any part of it. Although her past is difficult, this book is not as heavy and dark as The Onion Girl, which was very good, but also very dark. We see instead Jilly overcoming the horrors of her past instead of reliving her past.

Can you read Promises to Keep without having read about Jilly previously? Yes. Of course, the it’s a different feeling about the resolution. Having read about Jilly in the future, the question is not what happens, but how does it happen. Someone who has never read about Jilly previously might take the story quite differently.

Regarding the book itself, I got the Subterrean Press hardcover, which is a beautiful version. It’s not a large book–it’s a novella not a novel, but the cover is wonderful, and I love the embossed paper inside the cover. It feels like Jilly deserves it.

If you’ve never read Charles de Lint, you could easily start here. If you’re a Charles de Lint fan, you probably read this when it first came out, and I’m behind the times.
Rating: 7/10

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