The DWJ Project: The Ogre Downstairs

Caspar, Johnny, and Gwinny are none too happy with their mother having remarried, to a man they think of as the Ogre. The Ogre's sons, Douglas and Malcolm, aren't very happy with it either. Then the Ogre buys Johnny and Malcolm chemistry sets, and wacky hijinks ensue when some of the chemicals turn out to be magic.

This, like Witch's Business (aka Wilkins' Tooth), is in the camp of "books I read once and never went back to." It's not hard to see why. This isn't a bad novel; it may bear a strong resemblance to the stories in Stopping for a Spell, but it's far better than any of those, probably because it's longer and therefore has more time to develop its ideas. But there's no deeper, more fantastical layer -- not even the hint of one you get in Witch's Business. The chemicals that drive the plot never get explained, and their source vanishes at the end of the book, without ever having made more than a cameo appearance in the tale. So basically, this feels more like standard-issue children's fantasy, less like Diana Wynne Jones.

There are a few characteristic touches, though, discussion of which I'll put behind the cut.

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I think I'll try to finish out the month with Eight Days of Luke, which is the favorite I haven't gotten to yet, and another of her early books. Then I'll probably skip down the timeline for The Merlin Conspiracy, which has been requested. Onward!

update on parallelsfic

I went ahead and put in some nominations for parallelsfic, with a specific eye toward variety: one Hong Kong source (The Bride with White Hair, an awesome old-school kung fu fantasy flick), one Korean (The Good, the Bad, the Weird, a crazy 1930s Western), one Indian (the Ramayana, because it's a more manageable epic than the Mahabharata), and one Japanese (K-20: The Fiend With Twenty Faces, aka the alternate-history Art-Deco-punk superhero movie I keep meaning to make a post about). In general I tried to go with the theme of "crazy fun;" the only reason I nominated the Ramayana instead of Om Shanti Om was that somebody had already beaten me to the latter. :-)

Anyway, I still don't know for sure if I'll be participating; you're required to offer four sources, and so far -- apart from my own nominations -- there's only barely enough things listed that I feel I know well enough to write. But nominating isn't a commitment to participate, so I figured why not.

Nominations are open until the 25th.