Chronicles of Nowhere

"Vasil's temper improved for the best after he died...." That's how this book starts; like 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this book treats the chronology of a family over the generations. The family are a (true to life) nomadic group of wanderers in central Europe, from the middle of the 1700s through the modern day. It's a book in which magic is still alive, in a mysterious region called Mirror Lake. The magic fades, against the onslaught of modernity, but never dies. It's a magic which can make "peaceful" zombies and portable holes. And it's a family that sticks together, through wars, and emigrations to America. It's a book whose people still live in the era of folklore, even in modern times; it's a book of spiritual people who believe in saints you've likely never heard of. And, as always, it features the devil, though his powers wane too, as all magic wanes....