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This is a book to crow about (groan). De Lint takes a turn more towards overt magic in this book. Previous books in the Newford series emphasized urban/social concerns through a slight magic/fantasy lens - which I did enjoy. In fact in some books, the uncanny doesn't make an entrance for about a hundred pages!

Not in "Someplace to be Flying". I think the magic happens in the first page, when we are introduced to the "Crow Girls" who intervene in a mugging/assault. De Lint's conceit in this book is that there are primordial beings that existed before all other beings, the corbae (corvids, or the crow family) and now are shapeshifting into human shape at will. But they keep their crow behavior.

Other animal families soon came after - most notably the fox/coyote/cuckoos who are the other main magical elements in this book - and they are either hostile or just wary towards each other. And because when they are human these animal spirits can breed, then we get a slew of half/quarter/eighth/miniscule breeds where the being only has a trace of bird or fox blood and has forgotten their "genetic" background.

Anyway, the book is both a quest and turf-war kind of fantasy, with humans/spirits/spirit-humans all mixed in together but aligning towards their animal characteristics. The only problem I had with it was that there were two many prominent secondary characters - you had to know their human side, but also their animal traits and I always got confused in remembering whether this guy was a raven or a fox or what. De Lint was mostly admirably subtle, but I think it got in his way!