The DWJ Project: Hexwood

I said at the end of my last post that I wasn't sure if I'd ever read Hexwood before. I can say now that I'm 99% I hadn't -- because surely I would have remembered The One Where Diana Wynne Jones Wrote an Episode of Doctor Who.

Seriously, how else am I supposed to describe a book that has dragons, robots, medieval knights, evil galactic overlords, a girl with four not-so-imaginary voices in her head, and a simulation device that might end up assimilating the entire planet Earth? Plus a story that doesn't quite go according to normal linear chronology. I pity the poor soul who had to write cover copy for this thing. Here's what my edition has:

Strange things happen at Hexwood Farm. From her window, Ann Staveley watches person after person disappear through the farm's gate -- and never come out again. Later, in the woods nearby, she meets a tormented sorcerer, who seems to have arisen from a centuries-long sleep. But Ann knows she saw him enter the farm just that morning. Meanwhile, time keeps shifting in the woods, where a small boy -- or perhaps a teenager -- has encountered a robot and a dragon. Long before the end of their adventure, the strangeness of Hexwood has spread from Earth right out to the center of the galaxy.

Me, I would say that the story concerns a device called a Bannus, which was designed to aid in decision-making: given suitable starting parameters, it simulates every possible set of outcomes. It was built by a race of people called the Reigners, five of whom are now basically the aforementioned evil galactic overlords; when a Bannus left on Earth gets out of control, they rush to try and shut it down, but instead the Bannus keeps trapping everything within its simulation.

Does that make any sense? I can't tell. This book is extremely hard to summarize, and moderately confusing to read, too. I did enjoy it, but you've got to be willing to let go of linearity, and be okay with the fact that many of the characters spend most of the book being totally adrift as to who anybody is and what order they're encountering each other in.

( Maybe spoilers will help. Then again, maybe not. )

I suspect this book would repay re-reading, now that I have (kind of) sorted out what the hell is going on. But that will have to wait; with this, I cross the halfway mark in the DWJ Project, and since I'd like to finish the whole thing before the one-year anniversary of her death, I can't really spare the time to backtrack.

The project is becoming a bit of a slog at this point, I must admit; middles are like that. Getting through nearly fifty books by a single author in a single year is kind of a marathon undertaking anyway. But I've deliberately saved a few of my second-tier favorites for the latter half of the project; I'm nearly done with the stuff I don't remember very well or never read before, and so it should be pretty clear sailing after this. As always, if you have any specific requests you'd like me to address sooner rather than later, just let me know.

The DWJ Project: Wild Robert

Heather, a girl whose parents are curators for a "British Trust" (i.e. National Trust) estate, accidentally calls forth a Jacobean-era man known as Wild Robert, who runs around wreaking havoc with magic.

This book is short enough that I suspect in technical terms it's only a novelette -- no more than fifteen thousand words, and probably less. It could easily have been included in one of DWJ's collections of short fiction, rather than being published independently. But it's a pleasant enough story; I found it much nicer than the stories compiled in Stopping for a Spell, which were also put out as individual books.

As for spoilers . . . .

( Read more... )

Next, I think it's time for another short story collection.