Publishers Weekly
★ 02/14/2022
Crowley (the Aegypt tetralogy) triumphs with this beautiful, subtle fantasy, set in a 17th-century Ireland subject to both the desires of Queen Elizabeth and a host of magical forces. Crowley introduces his protagonist, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, as an adult in Rome, where he lives in fear despite residing in apartments provided by the pope himself; his past actions mean that he must sleep with a sword within arm’s reach because “on any night he might be murdered by agents of one or another of the powers he had striven with, or betrayed, or failed.” Having hooked his audience, Crowley flashes back to previous chapters in O’Neill’s life, starting with his childhood, to explain how he came to be at odds with both the English and Spanish Crowns, and his own Irish clan. Rich, evocative prose (“The ship she had watched could still be seen, dis-masted now and smashed in the rocks like unswallowed fragments in a mastiff’s mouth”), one of Crowley’s hallmarks, elevate this above similar works. Fans of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell will be mesmerized. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Flint and Mirror:
“Crowley triumphs with this beautiful, subtle fantasy...Fans of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell will be mesmerized.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[An] enthralling secret history of the last great rebellion against the Tudor conquest of Ireland...Crowley deftly handles the balance between history and fiction without ever lowering the quality of his excellent prose.”
— Booklist (starred review)
Praise for John Crowley:
"Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everybody else in the dust."
— Peter Straub
"Like a magus, John Crowley shares his secrets generously, allowing us to believe that his book is revealing the true and glorious nature of the world and the reader's own place within it."
— Village Voice
"[Crowley] transforms the lead of daily life into seriously dazzling artistic gold."
— Newsday
"Crowley writes so magnificently that only a handful of living writers in English can equal him as a stylist, and most of them are poets...Little, Big seems to me as miraculous as Shakespeare or Lewis Carroll: it is as if the book had always been there, the way Falstaff and Humpty Dumpty were there from the start, and Shakespeare and Carroll found them."
— Harold Bloom
Library Journal
04/01/2022
Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, holds the titular flint and mirror and stands in the crossroads of history, trying to reconcile his love for both England and his native Ireland. Hugh is caught between the forces of the uncanny sidhe (who gave him the flint and try their best to manage the destiny of Ireland) and the alchemical knowledge of John Dee (sorcerer to Queen Elizabeth I, who gifted him with the mirror). With these magical objects, Hugh will be able to keep Ireland free for at least another century—instead he hesitates, and recorded history takes over. VERDICT Readers searching for the high magic of epic fantasy may be disappointed, but those looking for small magics within a broad scope of history (in a similar vein to the work of Guy Gavriel Kay) will be enthralled by Crowley's ("The Ægypt Cycle") alchemy of uncanny magic, ancient science, and tragic history.—Marlene Harris
