#dianawynnejones — Public Fediverse posts

Hopping into some much needed wholesomeness - Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. It was highly recommended by people in the Ghibli subreddit, so I decided to give it a try. Starting chapter 2 and enjoying it very much ☺️

(I'm told it's for young adults - well, as Mr EntangledPear says, I'm young at heart 😄)

#books #reading #HowlsMovingCastle #DianaWynneJones

#fantasy #DianaWynneJones Autorin Diana Wynne Jones wurde am heutigen Tag, dem 16. August, im Jahr 1934 geboren.

I like it when they make #books pretty!
#DianaWynneJones

Fantasyland

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
by Diana Wynne Jones.
Gollancz, 2004 (1996).

Dark Lord (dread lord). There is always one of these in the background of every Tour, attempting to ruin everything and take over the world. He will be so sinister that he will be seen by you only once or twice, probably near the end of the Tour. Generally he will attack you through MINIONS (forces of Terror, bound to his will), of which he will have large numbers. When you do get to see him at last, you will not be surprised to find he is black […] and shadowy and probably not wholly human. He will make you feel very cold and small. […]

In The Tough Guide to Fantasyland Diana Wynne Jones created an imaginary tourist’s guidebook to a generic world where magic is a given — in fact the kind of world conjured up for almost any example of the epic fantasy genre you can name. Think Middle Earth, Narnia, Earthsea or, less familiarly, the Old Kingdom, Prydain, Zimiamvia or Pellinor. Jones imagines them all perhaps as aspects of Fantasyland, though it’s clear that the Disney version is not really what she has in mind. As pretty much all fantasy is predicated on conflict leading to some sort of resolution the nemesis of each world is thus nearly always some incarnation of a Dark Lord. It’s hard to think of any dread adversary who doesn’t conform in some way to Jones’ description, their motivations exactly those of Milton’s Satan:

One who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

But a Dark Lord alone does not a Fantasyland make.

Jones’ Tough Guide, like any genuine Rough Guide to our world, lists places as well as people, concepts as well as concrete (and not so concrete) objects. Open any page at random and you will find no end of examples of fantasy tropes and clichés: from prophecy (“used by the Management to make sure that no Tourist is unduly surprised by events, and by GODDESSES AND GODS to make sure that people do as the deity wants. All Prophecies come true. This is a Rule…”) to inns (they “exist in TOWNS and CITIES, but seldom outside them, except at crossroads that are miles from anywhere”), from dwell (“used throughout the Tour meaning to live somewhere. The inhabitants are always Dwellers“) to sex (“obligatory at some stage in the Tour. The Rules differ according to whether you are male or female…”). All entries are recognisable to a greater or lesser extent, and for any fantasy writer worth their salt they can be a useful corrective to lazy writing, should they choose to aim at original plots, characters and situations.

Then there is the MAP. All guidebooks have them, and this one is no exception. “No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one.” The Tough Guide‘s map is weird and wonderful, until you realise that it’s our outline map of Europe — with north at the bottom. This is the author’s way of saying that most epic fantasy is basically a topsy-turvy version of life in medieval Europe. The map is peppered with ‘unpronounceable’ names or barely disguised familiar placenames, usually with ominous descriptions. Some versions of this map are based on the first Vista paperback, but the Gollancz edition has both additional and alternative names on its map, redrawn by Dave Senior. An assiduous reader will have fun winkling out the original source of these aberrations.

But rely on the map at your peril. Nothing is as it seems, and where there is nothing on the map it seems there is inevitably something unexpected. Not only is this evident in the maps one sees as a frontispiece in most epic fantasies, DWJ is very specific about their failings: some placenames “may be names of countries, but since most of the Map is bare it is hard to tell […] there is no scale of miles and no way of telling how long you might take on the way to see these places.” Her conclusion? “The Map is useless, but you are advised to keep consulting it, because it is the only one you will get.”

As soon as she was embarked on the Tough Guide Diana must have been thinking of writing narratives set in this landscape. But how to incorporate a spoof born of familiarity and no little affection in stories which, while mocking the conventions of the genre, also reflected her sense of responsibility towards her audience? Two years after the original Tough Guide she produced Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998), and two years after that came Year of the Griffin (2000). In these — to put it bluntly — she excoriated those who wielded power and extracted profit from the general population or who showed a narrow-mindedness where education and creativity are concerned. Don’t expect Victorian morality tales, however; these are subtle fairytales in which, while magic is normal, fine though flawed individuals learn life lessons, most wrongs are eventually righted and a devastated world starts on the road to rebuilding and some kind of happily-ever-after.

But the Tough Guide harboured the germs of a slightly darker vision under its breezy exterior. In an earlier review of the 1996 paperback I gave the impression that this was principally a tongue-in-cheek spoof, and indeed this was the general assessment (Terry Pratchett called it “an indispensable guide for anyone stuck in the realms of fantasy without a magic sword to call their own”). Nevertheless DWJ had always been aware of the fantasy writer’s propensity to play God in their created universe — though she would have argued that it’s actually humans who attribute human creativity to their various deities — and to order characters, situations and events according to their arbitrary will. In Dark Lord she portrays the sinister offworlder Roland Chesney (perhaps a denizen of our own world) fashioning Fantasyland into a giant theme park for earth-based package tourists. Here he forces the unwilling local inhabitants to act out epic fantasy roles such as wizard guides, mercenaries, bards, thieves, starving villagers, enchantresses and so on. After four decades, the strain on Fantasyland and its peoples is proving not only hugely burdensome but also unsustainable, not to forget immoral.

We all know the Roland Chesneys of our world. Whether they are on the more benign end of the spectrum (perhaps DWJ was thinking of Walt Disney and his own Fantasyland) or, less benign, like the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, they peddle entertainment on a global scale while seeking to maximise profits and to acquire the greatest monopoly the law allows. Their rapacious greed outweighs any true concern for the common man, and they may well choose to devastate a planet rather than relinquish any power. These days they may, indeed, govern countries.

For some readers of the Tough Guide in its various manifestations such sombre thoughts mayn’t cast any shadows: this is about magic, isn’t it, make-believe, and we all know that it doesn’t exist, don’t we? This Gollancz hardback includes — instead of the occasional antique illustrations of the Vista paperback — rather more jokey line drawings by Douglas Carrel. Fine in themselves, they remind me a little of the cartoons, by the likes of the UK’s Josh Kirby, of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. But then, we all know by now that underneath the veneer of Pratchett’s sense of the ridiculous there lurked a lot of suppressed anger and subversive polemic. As with Pratchett’s writings, if you scratch the surface of Jones’ writing you’re likely to find rather more than you bargained for.

First posted 2nd June 2017 with this note: “This is the last of a short series of posts on Diana Wynne Jones: the first was by Tamar Lindsay on Fantasyland’s Dark Lord, and the second was a repost of a review of a collection of that author’s non-fiction writings. DWJ (born 16 August 1934, died 26 March 2011) was an intelligent as well as prolific writer of mainly fantasy for readers of all ages.” Now reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Mocking conventions from an armchair

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones.
Vista, 1996.

Discover the laws
governing fantasy worlds.
Beware tongues in cheeks.

Helpful tips for travellers to Fantasyland by the late great Diana Wynne Jones, from which I draw a number of conclusions:

(1) Get immunised by reading a wide range of fantasy, both good and bad: you never know what bugs you will be exposed to in Fantasyland.
(2) Remember to have an up-to-date passport: you’ll need either your own unread fantasy novel (preferably with your own bookplate stuck in the front) or a library book with plenty of entry/exit stamps from previous travellers’ visits.
(3) Obtain a visa (a credit card receipt for a fantasy book from your local bookseller will do).
(4) Have the correct currency ready (any bronze, silver or gold coins will do, so long as it makes a nice clinking sound in your purse).
(5) Finally, don’t forget to pack the Tough Guide: you’ll be lost without it. The author has travelled widely in Fantasyland, knows the terrain intimately and generously shares her insights into its attractions, peculiarities, geography and distinct cultures.

Oh, and don’t speak to any strangers down dark alleyways…

The Tough Guide is a lovely send-up of both the swords-and-sorcery genre and the Rough Guide series of travel books, gently mocking the conventions of the fantasy tome with its maps and symbol-filled book margins along with the places, personages and magic objects that fill the pages of many a Tolkien-inspired title or Dungeons-and-Dragons handbook. Full of truisms that hit you with the shock of recognition, you may find it hard to ever look at a fantasy book the same way again. The Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin, though not sequels as such, follow on from the premise of this book, even to the extent of including one or two geographical sites featured on the map, such as Gna’ash and the Dark Lord’s Citadel.

Not a book to read in one go (it would certainly give me indigestion), the Tough Guide is wonderful to dip into if you’re in need of a grin, a chuckle or even the occasional guffaw, safe in the confines your own armchair.

First published 22nd November 2012, now reposted for #MarchMagics2026. A review of a newer edition appears next.

Snapshots of the author

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins, 2008.

Many of the pieces in Reflections, the collection of writings by and about Diana Wynne Jones, address the question authors often get asked: Where do you get your ideas? And of course there is no single simple answer. She does however offer this suggestion, in an item entitled ‘Some Hints on Writing’:

When I start writing a book, I know the beginning and what probably happens in the end, plus a tiny but extremely bright picture of something going on in the middle. Often this tiny picture is so different from the beginning that I get really excited trying to think how they got from the start to there. This is the way to get a story moving, because I can’t wait to find out.

With House of Many Ways I found it hard to force a plan onto a review, so adopting Jones’ modus operandi for this commentary seemed an appropriate way to go about it. The beginning has been taken care of, and the conclusion is virtually foregone, and now it’s time to move to the images that arise almost unbidden from a second reading of this fantasy. Many of them involve snapshots of the author herself.

Diana was both dyslexic and left-handed, and both these issues come out in the story. One protagonist finds distinguishing left from right a problem and so ties coloured threads to his fingers, a strategy that doesn’t always work out. Another protagonist is shown plans of the different ways in the house but the first is “the most confusing map I ever saw in my life!” while the second, with “swirling lines on the piece of paper … seemed easier”. It struck me that drawing a mindmap with swirly lines or even collaging a mental scrapbook page of the themes and memes in House of Many Ways might be a good key to making sense of the very varied ideas she presents and help with trying to explain them (see the photomontage above).

Let’s start with the main protagonists. One is the young Charmain Baker (whose father is, naturally, a baker). Throughout the book she is constantly being called ‘Miss Charming’ — which is rather sweet, except that she isn’t always diplomatic or even sweet-tempered. Before we assume that this is a totally misplaced epithet we discover that she has natural magic ability, at last rendering ‘charming’ rather appropriate rather than a misnomer.

The other main protagonist (the one with directional issues) is Peter Regis, a wouldbe apprentice wizard with whom Charmain is determined not to get on. Charmain resents Peter’s intrusion into her new life at Great Uncle William’s cottage which she has been expected to house-sit, however weird a place it is. And she is determined not to let Peter get in the way of her new occupation of sorting through old documents for Adolphus X, the King of High Norland, in the library of the Royal Mansion.

You’ll have gathered that this is a world similar to but not the same as ours. The action takes place in place called High Norland, with neighbouring states called Montalbino, Strangia and Ingary. The latter country — with a name at once reminiscent of both Hungary and England — is south of High Norland and has given its name to a series featuring a wizard called Howl: previous titles in the trilogy were Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air. Strangia suggests both somewhere strange and the region straddling Austria and Slovenia called Styria, in which John Ruskin’s literary fairytale The King of the Golden River was set. Finally, Montalbino (“white mountain”) while contrasting with our own Montenegro also reminds us of the snowy Alps, particularly Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco in Italy). We’re firmly in a region that is both Anglophone and yet central Europe, and High Norland brings to mind Switzerland, particularly when we have gnome-like creatures constructing a cuckoo-clock on one point in the story.

Charmain’s Great Uncle William is Wizard Norland. At the start of the tale he is due to disappear from the narrative: his bossy niece Sempronia tells us “He has a growth, you know, on his insides, and only the elves can help him. They have to carry him off to cure him…” (Less than two years after this novel appeared it was announced that Jones had lung cancer, from which she was to die in March 2011, and this detail in House of Many Ways is either very prescient or Jones knew early on that something was badly amiss.) 

William’s illness has meant that Charmain is called upon to be his house-sitter, and she soon finds out that this dilapidated single-storey cottage surrounded by hydrangeas is not what it seems. The title of the book has a very biblical or Taoist ring to it, but it exactly describes what to expect: as with Dr Who’s Tardis time and space are distorted within it. As one exits a door, turning in a different direction or walking backwards through the portal leads to different passages, rooms or even the past. Labyrinthine scarcely begins to describe the House, and even with Peter’s coloured threads as clews (the name given to the ball of thread Ariadne gives to Theseus to follow out of the Minotaur’s maze) Charmain and Peter are always in danger of losing their way in the magical labyrinth.

Another theme that runs through the book is food — how to get it and how to deal with it. Charmain at first gets pastries and pasties from her parents before it turns out the house provides meals when asked, though not always in the form one expects. Later, hot buttered crumpets and cakes feature, heaven for the child in many of us.

Charmain enjoys her comfort food almost as much as she enjoys reading, another link back to Jones’ own childhood where she was literally starved of books, surviving on shared literary rations with her sisters and coping by making up her own stories. Reading matter in the wizard’s house includes spell books such as The Boke of Palimpsests (‘palimpsest’ describes a manuscript where previous writing has been erased to allow new text to be inserted). It is this Boke that leads Charmain into real trouble and precipitates much of the action of the tale.

The Lubbock is perhaps one of Jones’ most frightening creations. What to call it? An insect humanoid? A human insectoid? It’s almost as terrifying as the creature in David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and made more abhorrent by its ability to produce offspring called lubbockins via human hosts. The lubbockins are exploitative, a human characteristic that for Jones was a real bête noir. 

Luckily, lighter relief is provided by kobolds, the traditional gnomes of Central European folklore, who mostly live underground and here make wooden objects (including the aforementioned cuckoo-clock and a sled which is later used by Matilda, the Witch of Montalbino — rather like the sleigh that Jadis, the White Witch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, travels around in like the Snow Queen).

The final animal that Jones introduces into her story is “an extremely small and ragged white dog” called Waif. This dog, as we are told by Jones’ son Colin, is modelled on his own dog: Jones, herself a dog-lover, liked to feature them in many of her books, beginning with her early fantasy Dogsbody (1975). But Waif is more than just a dumb creature — she is magical, almost elemental, rather like a cross between the cat Mogget and the Disreputable Dog of Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series (with which Jones was probably familiar). As Colin Burrows  says, “My old dog Lily is effectively the hero of House of Many Ways,” and there is more to her than meets the eye.

We come now to the figures that link all these Ingary books, namely Wizard Howl Pendragon, Sophie Hatter and the fire demon Calcifer. Howl originally came from Wales (Jones’ own father was Welsh) where he was known as Howell Jenkins; but then, travelling through a magic portal, he became a wizard in Ingary, where he met Sophie Hatter. By the time of House of Many Ways Howl is nowhere in evidence (to the dismay of many young female fans) but a lisping and annoying child Twinkle is, along with Howl and Sophie’s noisy toddler Morgan.

Happily, Sophie is still the lovely bumptious individual we know from before — she “says a bad word” at some point, to which Twinkle says, “Naughty-naughty!” — chivvying her charges and fussing around, because somebody has to. And, of course, we have the famous perambulating Castle, powered by the fire demon, which unlike the marvellous creation of the Miyazaki film is black, foursquare and slightly sinister.

Jones is known for her endings, which are often criticised for being a little pat and where time appears to stand still while the principal players get to their positions. In Reflections Charlie Butler points to “the The Importance of Being Earnest-style multiple revelations of identity and relationship that feature in several of her final chapters” in which all is explained and loose ends firmly tied. Here I’m also reminded of the denouement of, say, a classic detective novel where the perpetrators are publicly confronted with their wickedness; and in fact before the chase arrives in the hall of the Royal Mansion somebody shouts “Not in the library!” and everyone veers away from the traditional venue where the detective unmasks the villain.

I started off by mentioning how Jones got inspiration from tiny, bright pictures which begged to be linked somehow to the opening and conclusion of a book, and I hope to have thrown some light on this process in House of Many Ways. Now may be a good point to mention the line drawings of Tim Stevens that adorn several of her fantasies and which appear here as chapter headings. Not everyone is good at imagining characters and settings, and Stevens’ illustrations help remedy that deficit with what appear to me as faithful and sympathetic interpretations. They have a classic look to them which perfectly captures the traditional character of many of Jones’ fantasies.

Repost of the October 2013 review, first 12 September 2014, now for #MarchMagics2026.

A magic carpet ride

Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollinsChildrensBooks, 2000 (1990).

This, the sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, begins in an Arabian Nights fashion, which seems light years away from the European land of Ingary.

Genies in bottles and flying carpets have nothing to do with a Welsh wizard and a fire demon called Calcifer powering the moving castle, surely? And many of the other distinctive characters in that famous first instalment must be unrelated to the eastern city of Zanzib in the Sultanates of Rashpuht, mustn’t they?

But appearances are deceiving in this parallel world where magic can and does happen.

The impecunious young carpet-seller Abdullah, so much given to flowery flattery that it becomes mildly irritating, sets his heart on the almost unobtainable Flower-in-the-Night, thereby seemingly setting in motion a series of events that changes his life forever. Unbeknown to him (and to us, as readers) those events have already been kickstarted before the story opens, meaning that the commonplaces of Eastern romances are interwoven with Jones’ verbal comedy and confused identities to create a fabric whose intricate overall pattern is only revealed at the end when we can stand back and admire the whole.

And just at the point where we’ve forgotten that this is a story in a series about the wizard Howl and Sophie, they and their castle turn up in the most unexpected way.

At first I was uncomfortable with the effusive language used by Abdullah, and of course we are sensitive to cultural stereotypes, so is there a sense that Jones’ novel can be regarded as somehow racist or pandering to religious prejudice? No, I think not. What Jones is sending up is the language and stereotypes of the Arabian Nights which, certainly in the form of those early translations (whether original or modulated through the early 18th-century French translation) has its own charm or idiosyncrasies, depending on how you look at it. And, remember, this is an alternate world fantasy, with no mention at all of religion and therefore in no more inciting religious bigotry.

Not as famous and well-loved as the first of the series, I was won over by the clever plotting which expertly tied up all the loose ends in the final pages. Unlike some of Jones’ more ‘difficult’ novels where the storyline is obscure and the ending seems fudged, Castle in the Air draws you along like a needle pulling thread to its final satisfying conclusion.

This must have been as much fun to write as it is to read, while Tim Stevens’ accomplished line drawings heading each chapter in this edition clarified and complemented the author’s text perfectly. And, just as this sequel, while sharing some characters with its predecessor, still manages to cover very different themes, so does the final volume in this sequence, House of Many Ways.

Review first published November 2012, revised and with additions 11th September 2014, and now reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Of shreds and patches

Howl’s Moving Castle
by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2009 (1986).

At the southern edge of the Black Mountains in Wales, high above the market town of Crickhowell, sits a hillock called Crug Hywel or Table Mountain. Geologically it is an example of a translational slide, a piece of the Black Mountains that has slipped downhill towards the River Usk before coming to a halt.

On top of Crug Hywel’s plateau sits an Iron Age hillfort, named after some forgotten historical or legendary figure called Howell or Hywel.

The feature is, in effect, Howl’s Moving Castle.

I don’t for a moment believe that the author had this ancient hillfort as a model for the titular castle, nor do I even suggest she was aware of the coincidence of name, only that I’m sure she would’ve been delighted with this parallel. Because, as the Q&A extra at the end of this edition shows, the genesis and composition of a novel such as Howl’s Moving Castle is made up of bits and pieces of her own family life, chance encounters, unconscious jokes, past memories, and so on. As Nanki-Poo in The Mikado sings,

A wandering minstrel I, | A thing of shreds and patches, | Of ballads, songs and snatches, | And dreamy lullaby…

Shreds and patches typify the make-up of this fantasy, and of many of the characters in it (in particular the Howl of the title); but what holds it all together — as in all good stories — is heart, both literally and metaphorically. And though some of the stitching is evident in the writing we forgive the imperfections because the whole is just so enchanting.

As was the case with the author herself, Sophie Hatter is the eldest of three girls, and lives in a little market town in the country of Ingary. Her father has just died, and she is in the charge of her stepmother. All the signs point to this being another literary fairytale, but Jones is never one to stick to the conventional path, despite references to seven-league boots, for example, and affectionate parodies of other literary fairytales.

As an example of the latter I’d like to cite The Wizard of Oz. Jones includes a scarecrow, a dog, a wizard, kind witches and even Wicked Witch of the Waste, all nods towards Baum’s hugely influential fantasy (there is even a hint of the quests for brains, heart and courage, if one looks hard enough). But Jones subverts all these tropes: the moving castle is described as black while the Emerald City appears green only because viewed through tinted spectacles; the Wizard Howl is not a fraud where the ability to work magic is concerned, whereas the magic of the Wizard of Oz is all humbug; Sophie is cursed to become a grumpy old woman where Dorothy remains a young girl throughout; and so on.

Jones was in her fifties when the first Howl book was published, and I suspect that she must have felt like Sophie, with a young mind in an ageing body. Sophie is cursed — by mistake, it turns out — by the Wicked Witch of the Waste who only knows that one of the Hatter girls is somehow a threat to her: the curse being that Sophie is not able to tell anyone that she has been turned into a crone. She hobbles off from the hat shop she is in charge of, towards the hills where a black four-turreted castle is ranging about, supposedly inhabited by a Bluebeard-like wizard called by the sinister name of Howl.

Along the way Sophie encounters a scarecrow in a hedge, then somehow manages to enter the perambulating fortress where she meets the wizard’s apprentice, Michael, and eventually the, frankly terrifying, Howl himself.

Howl is terrifying because he mopes around like a lumpen teenager. If Sophie is an aspect of the author herself, Howl is a mix of the author’s husband and sons (as she admits in an interview at the end of this edition and in her posthumous memoir Reflections). Howl apparently turns out to be many a young girl’s dream boyfriend, whether they want to mother him or change him through the love of a good woman I’m not in a position to say; but, irritated as I am by Howl, I admit that I am more attracted by old Sophie who expresses her frustration with everything in general grumpiness and displacement activity, an attitude I am totally in tune with!

Howl’s Moving Castle is a fun but complex tale, too complex to discuss here without giving out unforgivable spoilers, but it’s worth noting a few more points. First is the fire-demon Calcifer, a counterpart of Howl in character and literally the driving force behind the castle. Just as the word focus originally referred to the heart of the home — the hearth — in ancient times, so Calcifer is where the main characters always repair to when they need comfort and solidity. But not all fire-demons are the same…

“Write about what you know,” is the advice often given to aspiring writers. How does this apply to fantasy which, one could argue, is about things unreal and beyond our everyday experiences? We’ve already seen how the author drew on family for her protagonists, a dangerous ploy but one which adds verisimilitude to character traits and motivations. She also drew on what was familiar to her from her life and from environments she had lived in.

Thus she constantly alluded to the synchronicities that occurred between her writing and real life, which in a way is a kind of magic. Also she included places that she knew as elements in her plots: for example, the appearance of Howl’s residence in Ingary was as a black castle, which I’m half convinced Jones based on the Victorian folly called Arno’s Castle in Brislington, Bristol, which she would have regularly seen on her way from Central Bristol to nearby Bath.

I must also mention Wales, which is where Howl (as Howell Jenkins)* originally hailed from. During the war Jones was evacuated to her father’s relatives outside Swansea in South Wales, and the hilly streets, typically lined with small terraced houses, must have lodged strongly in her memory for this is where Howl (when he isn’t lovelorn or stricken with man-flu) takes her to the family home, where love is in short supply.

And speaking of love, let’s return to The Mikado with some more lines from Nanki-Poo which almost equally apply to Howl who — with the guitar he can’t play and the sighs he utters — could have had this as his theme song, if it weren’t for the fact that another popular song and a metaphysical poem will dominate his fate lines.

Are you in sentimental mood?
I’ll sigh with you
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
On maiden’s coldness do you brood?
I’ll do so, too —

I’ll charm your willing ears
With songs of lovers’ fears
While sympathetic tears
My cheeks bedew —

* The archaic surname Jenkins is variously interpreted as ‘little John’ or ‘son of John’. I’ve little doubt that the author was playing on her own surname as Jones was the usual anglicised version of ap Siôn meaning ‘son of Siôn‘ (the Welsh equivalent of ‘John’).

I previously published a review in 2012 of this novel here, but revisited it 26th March 2019 as part of two blog events, the Wales Readathon and March Magics(also known respectively as Dewithon and DWJ March). Now reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

An overview, preparatory to a planned read, of 'Changeover', the 1970 novel by #DianaWynneJones that reflected Britain's relinquishing of Empire in the 1960s as well as her own mischievous wit and humour.
#MarchMagics2026 #Bookstodon https://wp.me/sezD85-never

Repost of a review of 'Howl’s Moving Castle' (1986) by #DianaWynneJones.
#MarchMagics2026 #Bookstodon https://wp.me/s2oNj1-howl

Intimations of mortality

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2009 (1986).

At first sight it might seem strange that of all Diana Wynne Jones’ books (a) this should be chosen to make a film of, and (b) perhaps because of (a) this should be one of her best known titles.

Why does this story, which she notes was inspired by a chance request by a young fan for a story about a castle that moves, strike such a chord with not just younger readers but also adults?

Putting aside the liberties that particularly the second half of the film takes with the story, I think a key to this book’s fascination is the heroine’s premature ageing.

Jones specialised in the young adult fantasy genre despite being no spring chicken herself, and so the apparent way in which the fairytale motif of the youthful protagonist becomes seemingly permanently subverted by the sudden onset of years and the attendant aches and pains must strike a warning chord with older readers too.

You are as old as you feel, the conventional saying goes, along with the belief that youth is wasted on the young. In Howl’s Moving Castle these themes are developed. Sophie (whose name means Wisdom) finds her bright young mind trapped in a decrepit body (a fear many middle-aged individuals feel as old age beckons). How she deals with that, when the fairytale convention says most heroes and heroines must be robustly proactive, is that she uses her wits, her understanding and her innate skills (such as empathy) rather than mere physicality to overcome the obstacles that stand in her way.

While ostensibly about Howl and his mobile dwelling, this book is really (I suspect) about DWJ as Sophie, but with the consolation of a fairytale ending. And while the animated film takes on additional themes that reflect some of its maker’s obsessions, it does at least capture the perennial essence of each human being’s intimations of mortality and built-in obsolescence.

A final note: like all Diana Wynne Jones books (and books by a great many other authors, of course!) the choice of names is often significant. I like the name of Ingary, home to Sophie and her family: reminiscent of Hungary, it must be a closet reference to a parallel England, pronounced Inglund. And Sophie Hatter herself, no Mad Hatter (though she must have felt she was going mad) but a Wise Hatter.

The first of a trio of tales featuring Howl, his moving castle and Sophie. This review was first published July 2012, and again 10th September 2014; reviews of the second and the third will be republished on successive days. If you haven’t seen the film, then this trailer will give you a flavour. In a letter to me in November 2005, Diana told me that the animated film was “well worth seeing, although it is only a little like the book.” The first of two different reviews of this title reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

#gamemastersbookclub Explores the Genres! - Comic Fantasy #fantasy #comicfantasy #tjklune #dianawynnejones #books
The Lightning Struck Heart - TJ Klune
Another Fine Myth - Robert Asprin
Bubba the Monster Hunter - John G. Hartness
Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones
Villains by Necessity - Eve Forward

#gamemastersbookclub Explores the Genres! - Comic Fantasy #fantasy #comicfantasy #tjklune #dianawynnejones #books
The Lightning Struck Heart - TJ Klune
Another Fine Myth - Robert Asprin
Bubba the Monster Hunter - John G. Hartness
Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones
Villains by Necessity - Eve Forward

Return to Dalemark

The Crown Of Dalemark
by Diana Wynne Jones
in the Dalemark Quartet.
Oxford University Press, 2003 (1993).

Finale volume
where past and present meet and,
maybe, all’s resolved.

Young Mitt is from South Dalemark, but when he escapes its politics and intrigues he finds that the North is equally dangerous because he is manoeuvred into an assassination attempt on a pretender to the crown of Dalemark.

This novel’s plot also turns on a present-day girl, Maewen, who gets propelled into Dalemark’s past to play a role not of her own choosing, in a narrative that’s reminiscent of the premise in Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper or Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda.

And the Crown (which is more of a circlet than a fancy coronet)? That turns out to be not just a metaphor for gaining a throne but also part of a theme that mingles together motifs from modern Tarot imagery, the medieval quest for the Grail, and the curse of immortality.

As in the previous titles of the series the reader is here treated to extensive exploration of the troubled realm of Dalemark, particularly the northwestern corner between Adenmouth and Kernsburgh; I loved the chance to further explore the geography of Dalemark and to relate the present-day state of the region with the Late Medieval / Early Modern feel of the chronologically intermediate novels, two centuries before the ‘present day’ – a modern Dalemark which is both familiar and more magical compared to our own world. Above all there is a strong sense of a Northern European milieu, from the mix of Scandinavian- and Celtic-influenced names to the physical features of the polities and emerging industrial innovations.

Characters from The Spellcoats, Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet re-emerge to play crucial parts in the unfolding story. Along with the tying-together of some unresolved threads curiosity grows concerning how characters such as Mitt and Moril, whom we learnt to sympathise with in the intermediate books, will interact with Maewen especially now that they growing from adolescence into adulthood, and whether they will retain our sympathy.

I savoured Jones’ usual little wordgames and puns; typical of these is the entity Kankredin (wonderfully but chillingly conjured up in the novel and reminiscent of a malevolent djinn from The Arabian Nights) whose name has echoes of ‘canker’, a malign growth. Key themes also re-emerge in this novel, such as journeys undertaken with a sense of urgency with danger in pursuit: previously it was on a river in flood, along roads followed by a travelling show, and a desperate journey by sea, but now it’s a quest to find regal objects – ring, cup, sword and crown – where characters’ motivations are always in doubt.

As with so many of Jones’ young adult fantasies there at first appear to be a few apparent inconsistencies, blemishes or loose ends perhaps, that mar her superb story-telling skills: her endings are so often confusing, as when the final resolution involves obscure verbal logic that even several re-readings rarely make clear. She also frequently hints at things without being explicit so that you are left to fill in the gaps without ever being sure that your gut feelings ultimately are correct. This comes largely from her using familiar folk- and fairy-tale types and motifs which raise our expectations, only to have them dashed or circumvented when she subverts the conventional tropes.

And yet, on revisiting all the series in close succession, pretty much all that confusion fades away in the final scenes of this volume; Jones ensures that her early teen heroine has a clear relationship with the Undying – the immortals in this series – to look forward to. As the author said before this novel was published, because “the hero, the protagonist, is the story” she’d had for the previous decade difficulties in completing the series quartet since “the end of [each] book is the end of the important things I have to say about the central character.” Until she’d decided on a new character – Maewen – characters in the previous novels who’d had unfinished stories “several thousand years apart” had to wait to put in their appearance.

I must say I really enjoyed The Crown of Dalemark on several levels. I engaged with the main protagonists, Maewen, Mitt and Moril, all three with their very human strengths and failings, as well with most of the rest of the cast of characters, some of whom we have met previously and whose personalities have evolved (not always for the better). The convoluted plot always draws the reader on – providing of course that they play close attention to what they’re being told and don’t blink at inopportune times. As a finale it’s as engaging as each of its predecessors, and you can’t ask for much more than that.

The quotes are from ‘A Whirlwind Tour of Australia’ (1992) included in Reflections (Greenwillow Books 2012). First read July 2011. Repost of review first published here 7th May 2013, now revised and expanded after a reread for Wyrd and Wonder on 24th May 2022, and reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Holand to Holy Island

Drowned Ammet (1977)
by Diana Wynne Jones,
in The Dalemark Quartet, Vol 1.
Greenwillow / Eos 2005.

‘People may wonder how Mitt came to join in the Holand Sea Festival, carrying a bomb, and what he thought he was doing. Mitt wondered himself by the end.’

Chapter 1.

With this dramatic opening paragraph Diana Wynne Jones began the second book of what became known as the Dalemark Quartet – even though the last book wasn’t published till 1993 and, appearing fourteen years after The Spellcoats, evidently an afterthought.

As with many of her series – Chrestomanci, Howl, or Fantasyland for example – she steadfastly avoided repeating herself, studiously refusing to conform to expectations that a sequel would merely be more of the same.

Here the events of the first Dalemark novel, Cart and Cwidder, are merely distant rumours, with none of those protagonists referred to by name even though the action is more or less contemporaneous in both. This means that Drowned Ammet can be treated on its own merits even though set in the same world – and that’s how I propose to deal with it now, almost as if it’s a standalone novel.

As Cart and Cwidder is structured round a journey (by cart, of course) from the south of the subcontinent of Dalemark to the north, so Drowned Ammet finds young Mitt also travelling in the same general direction, but this time by sea. He has had dreamlike inklings of a land somewhere northwards from a young age, and feels drawn towards it though he has no knowledge of it. That dream land is in stark contrast to his life in South Dalemark where warring earls and crippling taxes force his parents, one after another, to travel to Holand [sic] to eke out a living.

When his father is presumed dead following a failed revolutionary coup and his mother marries a gunsmith, Mitt determines to become a revolutionary himself and thus avenging his father’s death on whoever betrayed him. Instead he finds himself on the run with two siblings from one of the hated noble families, sailing into the unknown after his own failed attempt at assassination. And what begins as a familiar tale of realism becomes touched with intimations of divine influences.

In a similar way to Moril’s experience in Cart and Cwidder, Mitt’s long and dangerous physical voyage is shadowed by an inner journey as he comes to terms with who he is, what he stands for, where he is coming from and how he stands in relationship to friends, family, acquaintances, enemies and the demiurges that shape his world. Though we hear distant news of Moril’s achievements and wonder if the paths of both Mitt and Moril may be destined to cross in a future book, the author will disdain to stoop to predictable outcomes; as with many of her fantasies Jones is concerned with realistic human relationships and individual dilemmas, and that often leads to the kinds of messy outcomes we find in daily life.

When I first read the first two Dalemark tales it was certainly delightful to read them back to back and to live the experiences of these two protagonists through their eyes, as it were. While the geography and physics of this world may seem strange to us, and the technology veer from high medieval to early modern, there is no doubting that they are about real human beings recognisable from our own world, and with and for whom we can feel affinity and affection, and occasionally antagonism. I also think that Mitt’s parents – along with Hildy and Ynen, the two companion runaways he frequently squabbles with – owe much to the author’s own emotionally distant parents and her two lively sisters: it may be significant that Drowned Ammet was dedicated to her mother.

And this being fantasy, there is of course an element of magic and the supernatural: the title refers to a corn dolly figure which, along with another composed of fruits, is ritually consigned to the sea at Holand but which manifests differently the closer the young protagonists get to the Holy Islands. I constantly marvel at how the author was able to render the fantastic believable and immanent in certain of her characters, whether in epic fantasies like this or more domestic situations.

Here may be a good place to mention the useful map prepared by David Cuzic that appeared in the Greenwillow omnibus edition and which provides a rudimentary but indispensible counterpart to the clues contained in the text.

Revised and expanded from a review of Drowned Ammet with Cart and Cwidder in Volume One of The Dalemark Quartet, published by Eos / Greenwillow Books (1995), and first posted 30th April 2013. Posted as part of Wyrd and Wonder’s annual celebration of the fantastic, 17th May 2022, and reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Repost of a review of 'Cart and Cwidder' (1975), high fantasy by #DianaWynneJones in The Dalemark Quartet, for #MarchMagics2026. #Bookstodon https://wp.me/s2oNj1-dalemark

Music, magic, maturity

Cart and Cwidder (1975)
by Diana Wynne Jones,
in The Dalemark Quartet, Vol 1.
Greenwillow / Eos 2005.

There is sometimes an assumption that if a novel’s protagonists are youngsters then the novel can only be for other youngsters to read. This is not always the case, and for me many of Diana Wynne Jones’ ‘young adult’ stories can and ought to be enjoyed by youngsters of all ages.

It is also sometimes assumed that fantasy is a lesser genre than more mainstream novels. I don’t accept that needs to be so, and the author herself has made clear that to dismiss fantasy as escapist is a mistaken attitude. The best fantasy has as much to say about the human condition as more literary examples, and Jones’ fantasy mostly falls into this category. Add to that the fact that Jones attended lectures by Tolkien at Oxford (he mumbled a lot, apparently) as well as C S Lewis and then this series of four related fantasy novels deserves to be given more consideration.

The first three of the Dalemark Quartet were published in the 1970s, with the first two published in North America as Volume 1 nearly thirty years later. As Cart and Cwidder happens more or less contemporaneously with Drowned Ammet it made sense to have the two titles combined in one, as the publishers Greenwillow did back in 2005 (though just the former title is considered here). The action takes place in a land wracked by civil war between north and south, in which Jones’ young heroes and heroines must make their precarious way.

In a lecture on ‘Heroes’ delivered in Australia in 1992, Diana Wynne Jones makes it quite clear that she sees her heroes (and heroines) as flawed beings in whom we, the spectators, seek to invest our sympathy. And so it is with the young travelling musician Moril in this tale, an apparent dreamer who inherits a stringed instrument called a cwidder. He is expected to shoulder a lot of responsibility, despite his age, and how he responds is the mainspring of the story. And his response involves exactly that dreaminess that many other creative people have, in concert with the latent magical powers of the cwidder.

Cwidder by the way seems to be a made-up word. It’s based on a family of stringed instruments, from Ancient Greek kithara and zither, through the crwth or bowed lyre of medieval Wales to the modern guitar and sitar, though cover illustrations seem to show a cross between a Renaissance lute and a mandolin. A great many stories of magic, both old and new, involve the power of sound, from Orpheus’ singing to his lyre to the necromantic bells of Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series, from the musical instruments in Alison Croggon’s Pellinor tales to the traditional use of terms like ‘spell’, ‘enchantment’ (from French chanter), ‘grimoire’ and ‘glamour’ (from ‘grammar’). These refer to both spoken and sung words as well as sounds notated and played, and this Dalemark story follows in the same tradition.

The thirteen chapters mostly seem to settle on towns and villages visited by Moril’s family — Derwent, Crady, Fledden, Markind, Cindow, Neathdale — and average around sixteen pages each in my edition, suggesting Jones knew how to structure and pace her story. The general air of suspicion — between North and South, from wary villagers to shuttered houses — helps to keep the reader on guard so that any stranger, or indeed acquaintance or family member, is a possible suspect.

Yet I liked the way there are no absolute goodies or baddies for most of the time. Moral ambiguity within the family is matched by the attitude of court officials at Neathdale, the reluctant recruits to the tyrant Tholian’s army and the “murmuring gentleman” who gently accosts Moril’s mother Lenina at the family’s various stops. I liked that this character, Ganner, turns out to be neither black nor white: as someone who makes compromises because he’s aware that his position and power may be in jeopardy if he crosses Tholian, he’s still clearly sweet on Lenina and will do his best by her.

Incidentally, I’m quite clear on the difference between a villain and an antagonist: a villain is someone with corrupt morals, while an antagonist is simply someone who opposes the protagonist (agon is Greek for contest or conflict). With the antagonist (and protagonist) there may be moral ambiguity — neither being wholly right or wrong — they may question themselves, lack a sense of self-esteem, or simply be confused. A villain however could be a sociopath, psychopath, narcissist, liar, manipulator, abuser, a power-hungry CEO or politician with few or no redeeming features despite surface charm or other dissembling habits.

As we see pretty much everything through Moril’s eyes perhaps it’s unsurprising that Tholian is two-dimensional, with Moril seeing him responsible for all the South’s ills. Mind you, Tholian deserves all the opprobrium he gets; and as this is a kind of bildungsroman (albeit over a very short period) Moril is going to have to develop a more mature attitude, and it will be a painful process with loss of family members and unexpected responsibilities.

For an epic fantasy this has precious little magic for most of the time, though hints of that grow throughout. It fits different moulds at various times — alternative world or paracosm, even steampunk towards the end with the giant musical organ. And the historical setting is confusing, medieval at times, Thirty Years War at others (the armour and the guns suggest that). 17th-century Europe seems to me to be Jones’s main inspiration here: not only the murderous Thirty Years War and the English Civil War but also the obsession with spying, political intrigue and, crucially, mysticism (along the lines of Rosicrucianism) with suspicions of witchcraft. The lute (the equivalent of the cwidder) reached its height of popularity at this time; also this century saw a fashion for automata and similar mechanical toys, especially in France. I see Cart and Cwidder being set in this kind of period.

Yet there is certainly magic, and there are magicians. My first instinct was to think of magic-users as thaumaturges, but that term suggests a seasoned practitioner of the art. Even ‘charmer’ (as in ‘someone using a charm or magical object’) implies someone who knows what they’re doing. Perhaps ‘a sensitive’ might be be the best description of people like Moril. Even animals, such as the troupe’s horse Olob, are an aspect of this world’s magic; he reminds me of Falada, the talking horse in the Grimm fairytale The Goose Girl.

The names used here also intrigue me, many of them modelled on Northern European exemplars: Mendakersson and Thornsdaughter reminiscent of Icelandic patronymic and matronymic customs, Konian and Kialan very Medieval Welsh, Fledden and Medmore almost Scottish. There are also Tolkienian echoes: Lenina’s father Thorn (for Thorin?), Markwood (Mirkwood?). There are distinctions between Northerners and Southerners, as when Kialan is dubbed ‘Collen’ at some stage to disguise the fact he’s from the North. Collen was not just an ancient Welsh name meaning “hazel” but also, I suspect, a closet reference to the author’s son, Professor Colin Burrow, who has complained that she’d ‘borrowed’ him for characters in her novels, such as in Fire and Hemlock.

I kept being reminded of the phrase in Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” except here it’s the state of Dalemark. That sense of malaise and malevolence which is present here is all-pervasive in Drowned Ammet too. Does it match up with what Jones observed in 1974, the year she would have been writing this novel? It was a year of unrest in Britain, certainly: a compulsory three-day working week, minority governments, two general elections, a state of emergency in Northern Ireland, an IRA bombing campaign on ‘mainland’ Britain, a politician sacked for an inflammatory anti-immigration speech predicting “rivers of blood”, and much more. And that was just the UK. That sense of a malevolent ruling spirit is only resolved in the final novel, The Crown of Dalemark, completed many years later. Reflecting the prevailing zeitgeist is not uncommon in fiction.

Closely related to fictional reflections on zeitgeist are foreshadowings. These foreshadowings, and also closet remarks, seem typical of Jones’s writing, a technique she will have come across in Tolkien’s fiction. In fact, Clennen’s gnomic utterances remind me a lot of Gandalf’s advice to the hobbits, and looks forward to Albus Dumbledore’s sage sayings to Harry Potter.

I’ve said more than enough to indicate how complex and rich this novel is, and yet I’ve given precious little attention to a synopsis of the novel, to its characters and to the atmosphere created. The best way to appreciate these is of course to read the novel itself; but I hope that armed with the foregoing remarks the reader may approach a first or subsequent read with deeper insights into the powerful storytelling that makes this so effective a fantasy.

This now expanded review was first published 30th April 2013, and was originally dusted off in anticipation of Witch Week 2019, in which the readalong was Cart and Cwidder. The other two titles in the Dalemark series are The Spellcoats and The Crown of Dalemark (the links are to my reviews). It re-appeared 28th March 2022, and is now reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Deserving more fantasy fans

The Spellcoats
in the Dalemark Quartet
by Diana Wynne Jones.
Oxford University Press, 2005 (1979).

A young girl, who has little idea that she has a talent for weaving magical spells into garments, has to abandon home along with her orphan siblings when they are all suspected of colluding with invaders with whom they happen to share physical characteristics. Thus begins a journey down a river in flood to the sea and then back again up to its source before the causes of the conflict can start to be addressed.

The Spellcoats has a markedly different feel compared to the middle two Dalemark tales. As well as being set in an earlier period, this story is recounted by the young weaver Tanaqui (an approach unlike that in the other three books which are third-person narratives). We also find that the story is being told through her weaving of the tale into the titular Spellcoats, a wonderful metaphor for how stories are often described as being told.

We finally discover (in both an epilogue and in the helpful glossary that is supplied at the end of the book) that the boundaries between myth and factual truth are not as clear-cut as at first seems, a fascinating exercise in the layering of meaning and reality. It’s what might be called metafiction — which, as you all know, is defined as fiction about fiction, or ‘fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself’ — a term which had only been coined in 1970, nine years before The Spellcoats was first published.

Some of the threads are picked up in Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet (published before The Spellcoats) as well as apparently resolved in the concluding The Crown of Dalemark; but don’t take that for granted. It’s typical of the author that the climax of the story is all smoke-and-mirrors: does it happen the way Tanaqui’s narrative implies, or is it all an illusion, a trick of the light flashing across the material of the Spellcoat? This is not a cop-out, as some might see it, but rather the mark of a writer who knows that magic should be experienced instead of explained away rationally.

This book comes satisfyingly close to the feeling of a good fable, and stands comparison with some of Ursula Le Guin’s similar fantasy writing. In large measure this is down to a general vagueness in geography, with the River running from the mountains in the south to the sea in the north, in contrast with the detailed map that can be (and has been) drawn for the other three titles set in later historical times.

Nevertheless, all four novels involve travel for the protagonists in the lands of Dalemark — another metaphor, this time for the personal journeys they are all called on to make. Also there is a well thought-through (if at times confusing) theogony of the Undying and their relationships with humankind, matched by an attention to the etymology of names in the author’s created world of Dalemark; in this The Spellcoats shares the almost anthropological approach that Ursula Le Guin brings to her created worlds.

For me The Spellcoats is very much a tale that works on different levels, potentially appealing to both a young adult and an older readership. This, as much as other three titles, deserves to be better known by fantasy fans, especially those who love epic fantasy: Dalemark is as clearly imagined as, say, Middle Earth is, yet with characters perhaps more rounded than Tolkien’s and a chronology that, beginning in the mists of mythical time, stretches out to end in the last of the quartet with a modern Dalemark not too unlike our own world.

A few additional thoughts occurred to me after a recent reread. One is the realistic sibling squabbling that goes on between the five youngsters named variously for birds or, in Tanaqui’s case, after the scented rushes that can be woven like wool or plaited into utilitarian objects; as The Spellcoats was dedicated to one of the author’s sisters, Ursula — herself a storyteller — no doubt the bickering echoed the relationships the three real-life sisters had at times while growing up.

A second point concerns how, even in this fiction set in a fantasy world in mythical times, Jones was wont to include aspects of her final home in the West Country city of Bristol. The muddy silt-laden River Avon that flowed through Bristol does seem to be echoed in the Aden river that dominates much of the story; and the tidal effects such as the surge wave or tidal ‘bore’ that affects the lower reaches of the book’s River is reminiscent of the equivalent phenomenon of the bore on the estuary of River Severn into which the Avon flows. Ebb and flow thus parallel how so many narratives, including this one, are offered for our inspection.

Finally, epic or high fantasy is sometimes derided as too often presenting a polarised and perhaps simplistic narrative of Good versus Evil, such as with the siblings here in conflict with the malign power that is Kankredin. Because, some critics would argue, the real world is never simply about some Dark Lord trying to attain self-aggrandisement through inhumanity and conquest: such a black-and-white situation would never happen in modern times, would it now? I’m not so sure that’s the case, though.

Review first published May 2013, slightly revised 8th August 2013, and now, after rereading the novel, expanded and reposted for March Magics for the eleventh anniversary of the author’s death on 26th March 2011. Reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

When magic’s misused

The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2007 (2006).

The last of the Chrestomanci books written by Diana Wynne Jones, The Pinhoe Egg was also the longest and, arguably, the most complicated in terms of plot. Unlike some of the novels preceding it Chrestomanci doesn’t just have a walk-on part at the end but takes on the most integrated role in proceedings since Charmed Life, the very first Chrestomanci story of all.

The story actually centres on young Eric ‘Cat’ Chant, who lives at Chrestomanci Castle near Helm St Mary, and his contemporary Marianne Pinhoe, who lives about ten miles away in Ulverscote. Marianne’s grandmother appears to lose her mind in a blast of magic — did I mention this is a fantasy? — and poor Marianne’s long-anticipated summer holidays start to disappear over the horizon as her extended family gets drawn into a feud with a neighbouring village.

Not only this but her family also fear the attention of Chrestomanci, the ‘Big Man’ at the Castle, whose job is to monitor any misuse of magic. And it turns out a whole lot of misuse of magic is going on.

As well as the last of the Chrestomanci books this was the first of the series where I felt you could draw a detailed map of the localities and how they related to each other; which, in fact, is just what I did. This gave the characters a landscape in which to work and interact, and helped to make the story more grounded, as it were, than some of the others in the series. This was, for me, also one of the richest and most satisfactory of the stories, as well as one of the longest, and helped to further enrich the sequence as a whole.

True, some readers have been overwhelmed by what seems a cast of thousands — at a conservative estimate six ‘family’ members at the Castle , their staff of over two dozen, at least forty named villagers (a thousand appear in the final battle) and a handful of assorted non-humans. But rather than being a turn-off surely such complexity, requiring close attention to and engagement with the text, is something to celebrate rather than criticise? There is certainly no let-up in the expected drive of her story-telling.

The joint fulcrums on which the story turns are personified in both Marianne and Cat, the latter a nine-lifed enchanter who is likely to become the next Chrestomanci. The general assumption that children should be seen and not heard is not one that Diana Wynne Jones subscribed to, and so both youngsters have to struggle against not being believed by adults by becoming more brave and assertive. Being gifted magically they recognise each other’s innate abilities, and by working in tandem have the opportunity to avert the dangerous situation that all and sundry find themselves in.

Things are particularly hard because there seem to be outside forces operating that prevent the truth from being investigated, let alone revealed. Is that truth being hidden by dwimmery, a state brought about by an Old English word implying an illusion brought about by sleight or magic?

The Pinhoe Egg is a novel that reveals more the more you enquire. The author explains in a note that she could only get started on the book by imaginatively exploring the countryside around Chrestomanci Castle and the villagers who lived there. Many of the names of villages and families are genuine, and Jones clearly delved around in her memories and her extensive learning to retrieve them. The Pinhoes for example live in a village called Ulverscote. There is in fact a real village called Pinhoe on the outskirts of Exeter, where a great battle was fought by Danish Vikings and King Ethelred’s army in the 11th century; the settlement, in hilly country, has a name probably derived from Celtic pen and Old English hoe, meaning ‘top of the hill’.

As it happens, the village inhabited by Jones’ Pinhoes is called Ulverscote, close by Ulverscote Wood and situated on an eminence. The ‘cote’ element could denote ‘cottage’ or Welsh coed (‘wood’), while the first element seems to imply a personal name like Ulf, an old Scandinavian name meaning ‘Wolf’. Is it beyond the bounds of reason to suggest that ‘Ulverscote’ was concocted partly from a memory of the real Wolvercote, on the outskirts of Oxford? After all, Jones went to Oxford University, where she attended lectures by Tolkien, and the man himself was buried in Wolvercote cemetery. Yes, Wolvercote was before the 12th century originally the cottage of a certain Woolgar, not Ulf, but I am also mindful that in Charmed Life Cat’s home town is noted as … Wolvercote.

In a lively and creative mind like Diana’s all these associations could easily have been tangled together, partly consciously, partly subconsciously; as a reader it is not necessary to know that these associations are possible but it certainly adds to one’s appreciation if historic events, etymologies and personal experiences are woven together in an artful and satisfying way.

With exactly 400 pages in the paperback edition it’s neither possible nor desirable to give a detailed plot description, so instead I’ll draw attention to a few other aspects that struck me in this reread. Fot example, Jones slyly alludes to the fairytale trope of seven sons, but despite Marianne’s father being one of these boys she herself is no seventh son of a seventh son; instead, she is the only girl amongst thirteen cousins — a fact which helps cement her unique magical status.

Another theme that Jones harps on about is bigotry. Though there is a church and a Reverend Pinhoe in evidence, we are never anywhere told the precise religion of this fantasy world; however that doesn’t stop the rival Farleigh family, equally witches and magic-users, from inveighing against “ungodly abominations”, an all too familiar rant in our own world. There’s a confusing backstory of an orthodox religion but this seems to predate ‘the Romans’; whether these are ‘our’ Romans or a closet reference to Roman Catholics is unclear, and may be the sort of typical obfuscation that Jones tends to throw into her novels from time to time.

The final aspect I want to explore is the place The Pinhoe Egg has in the series’ chronology. Luckily Jones gives us some clues. It’s been almost a year since the moment in Charmed Life when Cat accepted he was a nine-lifed enchanter. So we have a fairly tight timeline between the 1977 title and this last in the series published nearly three decades later, all linked by the character of Cat (and Chrestomanci, of course). Since I’ve reviewed all these at some time or another I won’t give full details, but the sequence is Charmed Life (when we first meet Cat) followed by the short story ‘The Sage of Theare’ (where Cat puts in a brief appearance). The young Italian Tonino (who appears in The Magicians of Caprona) meets up with Cat in another short story ‘Stealer of Souls’, and both feature again in ‘Caroline Oneir’s Hundredth Dream’. This last short story ends with the Chrestomanci ‘family’ on holiday in the South of France, from which they return in time for the start of The Pinhoe Egg. As always, most of these tales can be read as standalones, but those readers wanting continuity in their series reading could do worse than read the stories in this order.

You will by now be wondering what the egg of the title is. This appears as a result of “a promise I made to my sister” (Ursula, perhaps) “that I would write more about such things”. What this spotted mauve egg contains is a surprise I leave to the reader to discover for themselves, but it is a creature that traditionally guards gold. And while I feel the egg itself is a bit of a McGuffin I suppose the story itself, in a way, is the gold.

The Pinhoe Egg completes the Chrestomanci sequence of novels. There will sadly be no more as Diana died in March 2011. Since then DWJ fans have nominated every March as DWJ month, reading or rereading and discussing aspects of all her novels. In a follow-up post (in what’s left of this month) I hope to expand a little on the series and the world she has created. Aficionados may be interested in a Wiki site which concisely cross-references many of the places and personages in the novels.

First published 21st March 2015, this review now reposted for #MarchMagics2026 as part of a sequence looking at the Chrestomanci series.

Repost of my review of 'Mixed Magics', a collection of short stories in the #Chrestomanci series by #DianaWynneJones for #MarchMagics2026.
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Fun is a serious business

Mixed Magics
by Diana Wynne Jones.
Collins, 2000.

Publishers and booksellers think they know their market when it comes to the fantasy novels of Diana Wynne Jones and her ilk: young readers aged 9 to 12 or, at a pinch, young adult or teens for her more ‘difficult’ novels.

This despite the fact that her fans range upwards in age to other adult fantasy writers, filmmakers, academics (and not just in the literary field — I knew a professor of sociology who rated her highly as a writer) and, of course, bloggers of all ages.

Those who treat books merely as commodities — and there’s no denying that the publishing business exists to be commercially successful — often fail to recognise the reach of an author’s readership except when (as, say, with Philip Pullman and J K Rowling) it becomes as plain as the noses on their faces; they then respond with ‘adult’ editions, which sport less garish covers to go on genre shelves — or even under General Fiction — and receive notices in the review sections of broadsheet newspapers.

This long preamble (and it gets longer, I’m afraid) is a prelude to lauding this collection of light fiction, short stories related by Jones and also related to each other by common themes. These themes include the premise that magic works but must be regulated, as all power must surely be, by a government-appointed ombudsman with the authority to intervene when that power is misused. (No faceless bureaucrat this, by the way, but an eccentric yet efficient enchanter with the title of Chrestomanci.) Another theme, touched on by a couple of stories, is that moving to another place will rarely be a solution to your problems if you don’t fundamentally change yourself.

A third overarching theme is the act of creation — is what the artist conceives or the thinker imagines purely abstract, or does it ever exist in any concrete sense? Powerful thoughts, these, to exercise any mind let alone the young minds of the predetermined market. And there is now another conundrum to consider before the review proper begins.

There are two main modes of thought regarding reading a sequence of novels where dates of publication and internal chronology don’t coincide. One is to read them by date of publication, which can lead to confusion, the other is to adhere to chronological order, which can ruin later plot surprises and character revelations. (Famously The Chronicles of Narnia, the C S Lewis’ fantasy books published in one volume, has been criticised by fans for adopting the timeline approach.) Or you can read them in an order of your own choosing, or according to whenever you manage to acquire individual titles.

The same dilemma can apply to the late Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci series. As books were successively published the time frames shifted so that fans might initially be confused, whereas newcomers might accept each title as a puzzling standalone. One solution to the dilemma could be to read them all first in publication order, and then re-read them in chronological order for pleasure (or for review, as I’m doing now). Another reader might devise an entirely different re-reading sequence according to personal preference, and Jones herself suggested a reading order with only two titles stipulated at the beginning.

All of the books are linked by the figure of Chrestomanci, who may be a main focus of the story, make a fleeting appearance or function as a deus ex machina, setting things to rights. (Imagine him as a tall, dark and handsome Sherlock Holmes in dressing gown and top hat.) I’ve already looked at five novels, beginning with The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988) and Conrad’s Fate (2005), both set in Chrestomanci’s youth. Next came Charmed Life (1977), when he appeared as his idiosyncratic adult self, followed by The Magicians of Caprona (1980) and, probably, Witch Week (1982).

The next volume I’d like to look at is Mixed Magics, and here we immediately run into a problem which will upset both parties intent on their particular order of reading. Mixed Magics is in fact a collection of short stories, some verging on novellas, published at different times over a period of nearly two decades. ‘The Sage of Theare’ was first published in 1982, and then re-appeared with ‘Warlock at the Wheel’ in 1984 before its 2000 outing here in Mixed Magics. ‘Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream’ was first published in 1986, while ‘Stealer of Souls’ re-appeared as a standalone for World Book Day 2002, two years after this collection. With this convoluted timeline of inter-related stories newcomers to the Chrestomanci series might experience slight confusion on occasion, but as with much of Diana Wynne Jones’ output my advice would be to go with the flow. Here I deal with the stories in published order rather than in the order presented in Mixed Magics, with comments on how they fit in with the series’ timeline.

The Sage of Theare (1982)

‘The Sage of Theare’ started because I remembered, or thought I remembered, a story by Borges being read on the radio, in which a scholar arduously tracked down a learned man but never quite found him. I started having dreams about it — strange circular dreams in a strange city where gods took a hand — and the dream person never found the wise man he was looking for. In order to exorcise the dreams, I wrote the story.

This is quite the strangest of the Chrestomanci stories. It involves “a world called Theare in which Heaven was very well organised”, with a pantheon very reminiscent of Ancient Greek goddesses and gods. Many years ago I wrote the music for a school musical called Thera, where an updated Greek pantheon interacted with mortals. Quite obviously I chose this name because there was an actual island called Thera (modern Santorini) which, devastated three thousand years ago by a volcanic explosion, may have inspired aspects of the Atlantis story. I also chose it because it was an anagram of Earth, underlying the satirical nature of much of the production.

This reasoning may also partly account for Jones’ Theare, where she indulges in some philosophical musings of a satirical nature: for example, the young protagonist, Thasper, has a eureka moment looking into a shaving mirror: The gods need human beings in order to be gods! Would they exist if people didn’t believe in them? Would the world dissolve into nothingness if the gods twinkled out of existence? The volcanic island of Thera may also be referenced by Jones in the recurring images of buildings in flames and mentions of water-dragons, the two elements of fire and water that suggest the contradictory nature of Theare itself.

Thasper’s search for the Sage of Dissolution is very Borgesian. The process is very much the looking for geographical patterns, as in ‘Death and the Compass’; the circular images (the sphere Thasper is contained in, the Half Moon Inn, the pattern made by house fire locations) also hint at Borges’ obsession with labyrinths (as in ‘The Circular Ruins’); while the unknown Borges story which inspired Jones in the first place must surely be ‘The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim’. In this fiction an Islamic student traipses across India searching for a mystic known as Al-Mu’tasim who he hopes will have the answers to his questions. Unlike the student, Thasper can’t achieve enlightenment without help; he needs Chrestomanci because the gods are clumsily trying to circumvent their own prophecy concerning the young man, which may end in the destruction of their world.

Warlock at the Wheel (1984)

‘The Sage of Theare’ spreads over a period of some twenty-two years, its denouement taking place no earlier than the events in Charmed Life since it involves the brief appearance of Eric ‘Cat’ Chant. ‘Warlock at the Wheel’ is also set after the same novel, the climax of which involved many magic users losing their magic powers. Here Jones is in humorous mood, with the Willing Warlock (who appeared in Charmed Life) desperately trying to regain his magic by reverting to his criminal ways. Crime, as we are always told, doesn’t pay, no more so than in the Warlock’s case, and his fruitless search for money and motorcars on his own world and in one resembling ours is told with a light touch and even some malicious glee. A lively child and a rather large dog feature, as does Kathusa, Chrestomanci’s agent on our world.

Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream (1986)

Jones must have had an obsession with travelling fairs. They appear at the climaxes of Eight Days of Luke (1975) and Fire and Hemlock (1985), and one appears here too. As well as the obvious excitements and experiences of the fairground she must have relished the elements of make-believe and illusion that they incorporate, elements that story-telling epitomises. But Jones again uses a sense of fun to make serious points in this tale.

Carol’s father knew Chrestomanci when they were boys at school, and calls in on Chrestomanci on holiday in the South of France to solve a problem with his daughter. The little madam has been hugely profiting, with the aid of her ambitious mother, from her ability to not only dream to order but to make those dreams manifest in saleable products (precursors of the memory-retaining Pensieve familiar from the Harry Potter universe). The problem is that she is unable to produce her hundredth dream so now Chrestomanci is expected to find a solution. Curiously, he discovers that it’s a question of industrial relations, the revelation taking place in that fairground setting. As with the gods that humans create in their own image, are the figures we conjure up out of our dreams incorporeal or do they exist in reality? Do they have free will and can they act independently? In this metafiction Jones uses dream narratives to comment on the nature of the storytelling process and whether the teller tells the tales or tales issue unbidden from us.

I always wondered about Carol’s surname. It looked vaguely Irish, almost like O’Neil, and I’ve seen commentaries that even present it as though it was Irish. Of course it’s Jones playing with words again: from a Greek root, the surname appears as an element in the Oneirocritica, a treatise on the interpretation of dreams by the 2nd-century author Artemidorus.

Stealer of Souls (2000)

A young Italian, Tonino Montana, makes a brief appearance at the end of ‘Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream’. We first met him in The Magicians of Caprona, and the last we heard of him he was coming to be a pupil at Chrestomanci Castle somewhere in southern England. We now hear what happened when he was first introduced to Chrestomanci’s extended family after the events in Caprona, just before Carol Oneir comes into the picture. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances Chrestomanci’s nephew Cat is put in charge of looking after Tonino, and it’s clear he’s unhappy about no longer being the youngest in the entourage. Cat’s despatched with Tonino to the aged Gabriel de Witt, previous holder of the Chrestomanci office. Gabriel is also a nine-lifed enchanter, but his lives are leaving him one by one, and he’s fearful of one Neville Spiderman. (I’m sure Jones conjured this name from Neville Spearman, publishers of books on reincarnation and spiritualism as well as flying saucers and the occult in general.) He is right to be fearful of Spiderman because when Tonino and Cat set off on their return journey they are kidnapped and locked in a cellar full of junk and cobwebs.

What has happened to Gabriel’s ‘lives’ or souls and what have they to do with Neville Spiderman? Will it involve reincarnation of a sort and the occult? We soon find out as horror and humour succeed one another. I liked the way those lost souls were depicted — very dreamlike in a way — and I was amused to find that Jones ended the story with the promise of a villa holiday in the South of France, which is just where ‘Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream’ ends and which itself ends the collection.

* * *

I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of space on what appear to be slight and amusing children’s stories, but I make no apology for it. As I understand it, Johan Huizinga postulated in Homo Ludens that ‘play’ preceded and produced culture rather than that play is a function of culture. You might think that the fun and games Jones exhibits in her books are a frothy by-product of our culture; I would argue instead that the ideas she so entertainingly plays around with — about greed, antisocial behaviours, a lust for absolute power, the capacity to believe that our creations are our masters — are what help to sustain our human culture. Fun, in other words, is a serious business. And it’s not just for kids.

Review first published September 2013, again 21st February 2015, now reposted for #MarchMagics2026 as part of a sequence looking at the Chrestomanci series.

Repost of my review of 'Witch Week' by #DianaWynneJones in the #Chrestomanci series for #MarchMagics2026. https://wp.me/s2oNj1-week

School for sorcery

Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, 2000 (1982).

a parallel world | where they persecute witches | and children aren’t safe

Witch Week was the first Chrestomanci books to focus solely on a female protagonist’s point of view, and is much the better for that. It feels as though Diana Wynne Jones has included a lot of autobiographical material in her treatment of Nan, an orphan witch girl who is at Larwood House, a boarding school in Hertfordshire. Nan is much more of a rounded character than the young male leads in previous books in the sequence, Christopher, Cat and Conrad, who sometimes come across as pleasant wimps or clueless actors in the unfolding story.

True, Nan is largely pleasant and clueless in her attempt to discover the truth about the magic that is happening around her, but I get more of a sense of a real person here than the ciphers that are Christopher, Cat and Conrad.

The premise of the story is that Nan and her classmates exist in a world where witchcraft is punishable by death but where magic undeniably exists.

When it is suggested around Halloween that someone in class 2Y is a witch, the ball starts rolling that inevitably leads to a literal witch-hunt, in which not only Nan but several other students are put under suspicion. Add to that the tedium of lessons, the institutionalised bullying and the sense of control slipping away, and we have the inevitable conflicts that drive the story forward towards its denouement and final resolution. Along the way we have Jones’ confident handling of themes, personalities and atmosphere that makes her writing such a joy to read, not to mention the puns and other examples of humour that contrast with the fear that grips the heart when witch-burnings are mentioned.

I’m going to mention the dreaded P word, only because so many readers seem to latch on to the very superficial similarities with the Harry Potter books. But Larwood House is the antithesis of Hogwarts (as well as significantly predating the appearance of Rowling’s books): magic is discouraged rather than encouraged. Interestingly, there is the similar-sounding and equally unpleasant Lowood House in Jane Eyre which many commentators point to as an influence, but I’ve also found out that there is a Larwood School, founded in 1971, in Stevenage, Hertfordshire (the county where Witch Week is set); however, this is a modern building, purpose-built for primary schoolchildren with special needs, and though witches could be said to have special needs in this Series 12 world I don’t think that was what Jones had in mind when this novel appeared in 1982.

I loved the final resolution, though I was still left with the logical confusion familiar from other DWJ books. If that world split off from our own world (12B is it?) in 1605 when Parliament was blown up, why was it necessary to merge the two worlds again when it wasn’t necessary to do the same with others in Series 12? But, since Chrestomanci is involved, there will be a rationale of sorts involved. One hopes.

Finally, I see that in North American books the pupils are in class 6B, which makes them sixth grade and therefore 11 years old, going on 12. In the UK the pupils are in 2Y which, in the old system before the National Curriculum was established in the late eighties, would have made them a year older, 12 going on 13. The UK version seems to me to render the children more believable — more mature, more bolshie, less awkward than if they had just moved from primary school.

Review first published March 2013, reposted 15th February 2015, now reposted for #MarchMagics2026 as part of a sequence looking at the Chrestomanci series.

My review of 'Wild Robert' by #DianaWynneJones for #MarchMagics2026.
https://wp.me/sezD85-wrob

Repost of my review of the #Chrestomanci story 'The Magicians of Caprona' by #DianaWynneJones for #MarchMagics2026.

https://wp.me/s2oNj1-caprona

Repost of my review of 'Conrad’s Fate' by #DianaWynneJones for #MarchMagics2026.
#Chrestomanci
https://wp.me/s2oNj1-fate

#beatthebacklist - Day 16 - Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - #classicreads #fantasyreads #romantasy #fantasybooks #fairytale #dianawynnejones #howlsmovingcastle #bookstagram #booktok #booksky #calcifer #howlandsophie #miyazaki #ttrpgpodcast #gamemastersbookclub https://www.k-squareproductions.com/gmbc

Review of 'Earwig and the Witch' by #DianaWynneJones, for #MarchMagics2025 https://wp.me/sezD85-earwig

‘Everard’s Ride’ (1995), a novella first written in 1966 by #DianaWynneJones, reviewed for #MarchMagics2025
https://wp.me/sezD85-everard

#lukuvuoksi2025 jatkuu. 7/2025 on Diana Wynne Jonesin Kyylän kyydissä (suom. Anna-Maija Viitanen).

Ihana seikkailu ja aikamatka omaan lapsuuteen. Jos luin kirjan heti sen suomennoksen ilmestyttyä kotikunnan kirjastoon, olin ehkä 11 tai 12.

Kyylän kyydissä on kirja sisaruudesta. Esikoisena, jolla on kolme nuorempaa sisarusta (yksi nykyään ikuisesti 38v), tiedän asiasta jotain. Se on myös kirja elämänhallinnan mahdottomuudesta, eikö vaan?

Muistin viemärit, muistin turbaanin ja kuoropojat, muistin Fifin. En muistanut kirjailijan ammatille irvailemista, en Shinea, en avaruusalusten piirtelyä. En todellakaan muistanut Fifin tarinan kaarta.

Keho muisti, miten totisen taianomaisesti suhtauduin kirjoihin silloin, ehkä noin kolmekymmentäviisi vuotta sitten. Tunsin ne. Parhaat luetut menevät edelleen kehoon.

#kirjamastodon #lukeminen #dianawynnejones #kyylänkyydissä

muoks: suomentaja lisätty

A delightful listen. Looking forward to re-watching the #Miyazaki interpretation, and reading some more #DianaWynneJones

(comment on Howl's Moving Castle (Howl's Moving Castle, #1))

'A youngster's reading list': some indication of the childhood and student reading matter of #DianaWynneJones, from her novel 'Fire and Hemlock'. #Bookstodon
https://wp.me/s2oNj1-dwj

Aktualności:
»90 rocznica urodzin Diana Wynne Jones«

Diana Wynne Jones, angielska pisarka i poetka, a także krytyczka literacka, przyszła na świat 16 sierpnia 1934 roku w Londynie.
https://www.fahrenheit.net.pl/aktualnosci/90-rocznica-urodzin-diana-wynne-jones/

#Fahrenheit_zin #DianaWynneJones #Changeover #ZaczarowaneŻycie #TydzieńCzarów #MagowiezCaprony #DziewięćŻywotówChristopheraChanta #MagicznaMieszanka #LosKonrada #ThePinhoeEgg #RuchomyZamekHauru #ZamekwChmurach #HouseofManyWays #Chrestomanci

#MarchMagics2024 wrap-up: what have you read of #DianaWynneJones' and #TerryPratchett's work this month? #bookstodon
https://wp.me/s2oNj1-24mm

More random prompt rendering. Well, it was supposed to be a random mage, but I spent a *lot* of time in #DianaWynneJones books as a kid, and he seems to have somehow become Howl. In my defense, that's a very Howl thing to do.

Seem to be getting about one of these done a week. Huh. Fingers crossed this'll trick my brain into play with comic-related stuff again sometime soon....

#3d #Art #daz3d

5 gange antikapitalistisk superlitteratur

Det er Ayn Rands fødselsdag – og eftersom det er for besværligt at komme til at pisse på hendes grav, synes jeg i stedet, at vi skal fejre den med lidt boganbefalinger: fem styks bøger med gode, antikapitalistiske budskaber, der er at finde på dansk.
Og en bonustitel, fordi min kone sagde det – og hende lytter jeg til.

1. Kulturen

“Spilleren” og “Lejesoldaten” har vi fået på dansk – et godt sted at starte på Iain Banks’ Kulturen-serie – space opera, hvor mægtige maskinintelligenser styrer alting, mens mennesker (og andre racer) gør det, de nu engang gør. Altsammen uden penge, for hvad skal man bruge dem til i et udviklet samfund? Så gode er de, at selv kapitalister elsker dem – https://bloodknife.com/culture-war-iain-m-banks-jeff-bezos/

2. En socialistisk utopi

Ursula K. Le Guins “De udstødte” toner rent flag i sin undertitel (som man kan se herover). Le Guin kunne sikkert levere flere titler til listen, men gør det ret tydeligt her: to planeter står overfor hinanden – den ene kapitalistisk, den anden anarkistisk. En bog med et budskab, men også en roman, der står distancen – den vandt både Hugo, Locus og Nebula for bedste roman.

3. Humoristisk fantasy

Indrømmet, jeg har aldrig læst Diana Wynne Jones’ “Derk – den uduelige fyrste” – men jeg voksede op med hende, og efter at være stødt på flere omtaler af den tror jeg, at den skal på min liste. Indbyggere fra Jorden tager på turistrejser til en fantasyverden – hvilket naturligvis går ud over indbyggerne der, for en rigtig fantasyverden må jo have en mørk fyrste, og så skal det søreme også ligne, at man lever under sådan et regime.

4. År 2000

Ja, jeg har heller aldrig fået læst Edward Bellamys “Tilbageblik Aar 2000” – men den er med på China Mievilles liste over 50 romaner, som enhver socialist bør læse. Og når nu noget af Mievilles rigtigt saftige fiktion ikke er oversat til dansk, må den her komme med i stedet. En utopisk roman udgivet i 1888.
https://portside.org/2017-11-18/50-sci-fi-fantasy-works-every-socialist-should-read

5. Cyberpunk

Ja, William Gibsons “Neuromantiker” er den grundlæggende cyberpunk-tekst, og man tænker teknologi på gadeplan, tekno-ninjaer, noir og hacking – men noget af det, som megen efterfølgende cyberpunk synes at glemme, er, at Gibson skriver ret så dystopisk om den kapitalismesuppe, handlingen udspiller sig i. Det føles lidt, som om hans bøger er det værste eksempel på “Lad os bygge Torment Nexus”.

BONUS

“Du bliver nødt til at have “Penge på lommen” med,” sagde min kone og mente Asta Olivia Nordenhofs første del i Scandiavian Star-serien. “Den er så skarp og begavet – hun fortæller noget, så man pludselig forstår kapitalismen. Den er så tynd, men hun får foldet så meget ud, så man tænker “Vi brænder lortet ned”-agtigt!”

#antikapitalisme #AstaOliviaNordenhof #cyberpunk #DianaWynneJones #EdwardBellamy #fantasy #IainBanks #scienceFiction #socialisme #UrsulaKLeGuin #Utopia #WilliamGibson

https://superkultur.dk/2024/02/02/5-gange-antikapitalistisk-superlitteratur/

Deep Secret (1997)- #DianaWynneJones

> Then they went swaying off – they both had shiny black boots on with six-inch heels. I wondered how they could walk at all, in those tight black leather skirts as well.
>
> Nick said, “I know one of them has to be a man! Can you tell which?”
>
> “Darned if I know!” I said. “They’re both so beautiful. But that baby’s surely having a weird upbringing!”
>
> Nick said, in a vague way, “All upbringings are weird.”

#OlisQuoteFile

Another review at Shiny New Books, this time of the new Folio Society edition of Charmed Life by the great #DianaWynneJones.
Here's hoping more Chrestomanci is in store ...

https://enterenchanted.com/worldview-shapers-the-sixth-extinction/

#book #review #fantasy #classic #ChildrensBooks #MG

@bookstodon

#LeoAutorasOct #LeoAutorasOctubre

Por ahora

#AnnRadcliffe Los Misterios de Udolfo
#MCBeaton aka #MarionChesney Down the Hatch (pero no cuenta porque no sabía que Marion Chesney había fallecido y es su sustituto quien escribió éste bajo el mismo pseudónimo)
#LouisaMayAlcott Mujercitas (edición americana, es decir, Little Women, antes de la elipsis)
#DianaWynneJones Hexwood

Y ahora
#AnneRice La Hora de las Brujas

The instant I saw that there was an OFMD instance, I had to move to it. So hello, it's me, Chocolatepot.

If we're here, we're all #OFMD fans so it seems unnecessary to tag it, but! Tis the custom in intro posts. Also #GoodOmens, #WWDITS, #MDZS, #TGCF, #Moshang, #LesbianBlackbonnet (#gentlebend I will make this happen), #sapphic, #musicaltheater ... I'm just tagging random things I like now. #FashionHistory. #BobaTea. #DianaWynneJones. Oh, and #bookbinding!

#DianaWynneJones could write #Fantasy in "the language of dreams" without it crossing the boundaries into pretentiousness. I don't know if this out of context line does anything for anybody who hasn't the book #Spellcoats but here it is anyway.

>It is that same wool I am using now to weave our story.

#OlisQuoteFile

There are layers upon layers in A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones). There are complex storylines that you can only see if you pay attention to chapters that are thousands of pages apart.

Some things are completely obvious but still takes me years to get.

Howland Reed is Lord of Greywater Watch which is famous for shifting locations in the swamp.

You could call it Howl(and)'s Moving Castle.

#ASOIAF #GRRM #HowlsMovingCastle #DianaWynneJones

Things you can always talk to me about:
#books : #speculativefiction #classicfiction #goldenagemysteries #genredefyingfic #gothicliterature #MarchMagics (my #TerryPratchett and #DianaWynneJones event) and the #PeculiarBookClub
#music : #synthpop #britpop #dreampop #shoegaze
#animals : #marineinvertebrates #seaotters #orcas #trailcamphotos