Flint and Mirror

by John Crowley

Overview

"Crowley is generous, obsessed, fascinating, gripping. Really, I think Crowley is so good that he has left everybody else in the dust."—Peter Straub

From award-winning author John Crowley comes a novel that masterfully blends history and magic in Flint and Mirror.

As ancient Irish clans fought to preserve their lands and their way of life, the Queen and her generals fought to tame the wild land and make it English.

Hugh O'Neill, lord of the North, dubbed Earl of Tyrone by the Queen, is a divided man: the Queen gives to Hugh her love, and her commandments, through a little mirror of obsidian which he can never discard; and the ancient peoples of Ireland arise from their underworld to make Hugh their champion, the token of their vow a chip of flint.

From the masterful author of Little, Big comes an exquisite fantasy of heartbreaking proportion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250817525
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,086,642
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

John Crowley published his first novel The Deep in 1975, and his twelfth novel, Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, in 2017. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 2006 he was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. He has been nominated for the American Book Award and is the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant. He taught creative writing at Yale University from 1993 until his retirement in 2018.

Editorial Reviews

★ 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.)

Publishers Weekly

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

From the Publisher

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

Library Journal