Before I get into Spirits in the Wires, I just have to say: one thing I generally love about De Lint books are the lady characters. I hate the phrase ~manic pixie dream girl~ in light of the derogatory way it's generally employed, but it still comes to mind — more in the sense that De Lint has a gift for creating manic pixie dream worlds, and then populating them with quirky boys and girls who are mutually drawn to weirdness and inbetweens; who in finding their own stories, find one another.I guess that feeling came to mind because Spirits in the Wires is filled with so many Newford characters, old and new, and a lot of them are women, and all of them are awesome. As a general rule of thumb, the local heroes and heroines are creative, compassionate, and cool. They are people who prefer to exist at the edges of things — some who've made careers out of what they love, some who've been dealt a bad turn but still have it in them to be brave and kind. They believe in uncanny happenings, and the ones who don't are willing to listen and reconsider. And when some sort of voodoo cyberspace spirit is infected with a virus and hundreds of people disappear into the sentient Wordwood website, they are the ones with the opportunity to step forward and do something about it.Starting out, I felt like this book would be a pretty typical ATTACK OF THE SENTIENT TECHNOLOGY plot, something kinda done to death in comics and sci-fi, but given the author I figured it would definitely have some different aspects and that I would probably like it. And I did! It was really more about the characters — and kindness, and understanding, and accepting the parts of yourself you'd rather cast away — than the actual spirits in the actual wires. (Although those were pretty cool too! I mean, a living website that's also a forest made of words and layers of code, can't go wrong with that.)I do get the feeling that I would have enjoyed this book more if I made an effort to go through Newford in its chronological entirety. There were a lot of throwbacks to characters and their backstories, and if I'd encountered them before, I probably would have been excited about seeing them again rather than being bewildered by all the introductory exposition — which sometimes felt bulky, and at other times vague. I recognized Christy, Meran, Jilly and a few others, but most of the returning characters were new to me, or else I read about them so long ago that I forgot them. (I apologize to those particular Eader!)I was also dragged down by a lot of my own skepticism throughout the book. Funnily enough, this wasn't about any of the magical things, but about the humans. In general, most De Lint characters are so optimistic and willing to reach out to eachother, something that constantly had me going "Is this realistic? Are these people???" Isn't that so weird — that I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for faeries and spirits and people being swallowed up by their computers, but unconditional human kindness is the part that's hard to believe in? It's just that, for all the gritty grimness of Newford, there always seems to be good underneath absolutely everything. Whether the problem is with the book's overly optimistic tones or my own rampant negativity, the fact remains that it was hard for me to connect to some of those sentiments.That said, I'm definitely on board with the sentiment that everyone has a story, and all our stories connect in myriad ways. That's a big De Lint thing, and I always enjoy seeing that theme explored in a new way, or with a new cast!As I was wondering how to end this review, I got an error message. "Firefox can't find the server at goodreads.com"? Uh oh, I've seen this shit happen before. I swear, if I see a black dot start to grow out of my screen, I will take a cue from the hobgoblin and smash my monitor to bits. You're not getting me this time, technology.