Swan Tower

This book is single-handedly responsible for a 900% reduction in the frequency of stew in fantasy novels.

(True fact: there used to be stew in the doppelganger books. I took it out because of Diana Wynne Jones.)

It is not, in the normal way of things, a book really meant to be read cover-to-cover. It isn't a novel; it's an encyclopedia, mocking the tropes and formulas of quest fantasy, from Adept ("one who has taken what amouts to the Postgraduate Course in MAGIC") to Zombies ("these are just the UNDEAD, except nastier, more pitiable, and generally easier to kill"). Oh, sorry -- you don't start with Adept, you always, always start with THE MAP. ("It will be there. No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one.")

I decided to read it cover-to-cover anyway, because if I'm going to do a completist read-through of her work, then dammit, I'm going to be thorough about it. And it's still entertaining; it just takes a while, compared to a novel of similar length. It also forms useful, though not completely necessary, background for Dark Lord of Derkholm, which takes the idea of the quest-fantasy protagonist being a Tourist and runs for the end zone. But for that, you'll have to wait for another post.

I remember picking this book up when it hit the shelves, and being delighted when I saw that it was a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle.

I also remember being really, really confused as to how it could possibly be a sequel. For more than half the book, the only visible connection is a couple of passing references to Ingary. (There's much more than that going on, of course, but it doesn't become obvious until fairly late.)

For that first half or so, the real connection is more a matter of style. Just as Howl's Moving Castle played around a bit with fairy-tale tropes -- eldest of three, setting out to seek one's fortune, etc -- Castle in the Air plays around with tropes from the Arabian Nights. Abdullah is a very different character from Sophie, and his conflict is likewise different; the story is more centrally about him solving his problem (and dealing with a larger one in the process), rather than Sophie solving a larger problem (and getting her own resolved in the process). But there's a similar feel to the two stories, and I'm quite fond of Castle in the Air, if not so fond as I am of the original.

On to the spoilers!

( Read more... )

House of Many Ways next, to finish off the Howl-related stuff.

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 . . . .

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

The hidden leaders of magical society on Earth discover that a neighboring universe is using our world as an experimental laboratory: siccing problems (like global warming) on us with the intent of seeing how we cope with them. They mount an expedition to put an end to the problem.

My recollection is that when I was a kid, most of Diana Wynne Jones' work was shelved in the children's department; this book, however, was in the nascent Young Adult section. It's certainly aimed at an older readership. The only work of Jones' I can think of that's comparable is Deep Secret, a later (and more successful) book. This one doesn't seem to be anybody's favorite -- though I could be wrong -- and a great many people don't like it at all. So bear that in mind when you decide whether to read the spoilers that follow.

( I'm not sure what to make of this. )

Re-reading Hexwood now, which I remember not at all. I think I read it once, but I might not even be right about that. We'll see.

Another slight entry. (I almost combined it with the post on Yes, Dear, but decided to keep all the books in separate posts, for the sake of organization.)

This is a straight-up retelling of the "Puss in Boots" tale, with no particular alteration that I could spot. My copy, which I think was produced for World Book Day, has some nice running illustrated borders at the top and bottom, and small images of the characters scattered throughout. It's moderately attractive, and so if you want to own a copy of this story, and prefer Diana Wynne Jones' style to Perrault's (which, really, why wouldn't you), then it's worth having.

Last of the Chrestomanci books.

Marianne Pinhoe comes from one of several "dwimmer" families, who practice a kind of magic that they keep hidden from Chrestomanci and his establishment. Doing that gets harder, though, when Gammer -- the old woman who rules the Pinhoes -- loses her wits, and a war ensues between the Pinhoes and the neighboring Farleighs. Marianne also gives Cat Chant a strange egg from Gammer's attic, which leads to further trouble.

I quite like this one, though not to the degree that I like the ones I read as a kid. It's . . . pleasantly comfortable, if that makes sense. I enjoy seeing Cat now that he's found his feet, and Marianne is fun, too, especially since she's got the "large, boisterous family" thing going on that we saw in The Magicians of Caprona.

As for the spoilers . . . .

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I think after this I'll tackle a bunch of the stand-alone novels -- but that will have to wait until after I get back from Japan.

In Verona Caprona, the families of the Montagues Montanas and Capulets Petrocchis have been feuding since, well, forever. To make matters worse, although they're the most powerful spell-making families in Caprona, the virtue seems to be going out of their work; their spells are failing, right when an alliance of Florence, Pisa, and Siena is threatening Caprona's borders. As with Romeo and Juliet, it's up to the kids to bridge the rift their parents won't cross -- though in this case it involves less death, more Punch and Judy shows.

This book takes place in the same world as The Lives of Christopher Chant and Charmed Life (the same specific world -- Twelve-A), but is more like Witch Week or Conrad's Fate in that it uses Chrestomanci for a side character. This one is generally happier than either of those; among other things, it goes the opposite direction from the usual pattern of neglected or abused children, and puts our characters into huge, boisterous, occasionally contentious but entirely loving families. I especially love the way that fantasy gets integrated into the family dynamic in an understated way: aunts and cousins popping out of the woodwork to help or interfere with things isn't a coincidence, it's a function of the magic that underlies them all.

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to the spoilers we go.

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I really do love this one, though I often forget it under the shadow of my first-tier favorites.

One more Chrestomanci novel and a short story collection to go!

The people up at Stallery Manor keep "pulling the probabilities" -- manipulating chance to change the world into one that's more favorable to them. The problem is, this causes all kinds of spillover changes, most of which go unnoticed by people elsewhere in the world (things have always been that way, right?), but which are readily apparent to people living in the town of Stallchester. Conrad, a boy of twelve, gets sent up there to become a servant and sniff around for the cause of these problems . . . and also to kill somebody. You see, Conrad has an evil fate: some kind of bad karma hanging around from a past life, when he failed to take out somebody he was supposed to. If he doesn't make good on that now, he'll die before the year is out.

And then things get more complicated when an older boy named Christopher shows up, from another world, looking for his missing friend Millie.

Yes, this is another Chrestomanci book (and I think the only other story that shows us Christopher in his pre-Chrestomanci days). I bore it a bit of a grudge the first time I read it because I wanted MOAR CHRISTOPHER DANGIT, and that isn't this book; I liked it better now that I was reading the book it actually was. Really, what it is could be described as "the Chrestomanci series meets Gosford Park / Downton Abbey;" a lot of the story revolves around the servants-eye view of a grand household, first as vast amounts of effort are spent on keeping three people in style, then as a bunch of guests show up.

The rest of the details go behind the cut.

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Next up, probably Witch Week.

Another short-story collection, and more successful than Stopping for a Spell -- but that's largely because it includes a few stories I think are better than anything in that collection; some of the others here are just as forgettable. In other words, the quality is very uneven.

"A Plague of Peacocks," "The Fluffy Pink Toadstool," and "Auntie Bea's Day Out" all feel a lot like the pieces in Stopping for a Spell, being of the "person is unreasonably awful and then gets their comeuppance via magic" type that I really just don't enjoy. I wasn't much of a fan of "Carruthers" either, which feels much the same even though its structure is different, and "No One" was a less-than-confident foray into science fiction.

The three I liked better:

"Warlock at the Wheel" is (loosely) a Chrestomanci story, and benefits from that by having more plot momentum than the ones I mentioned above. After Charmed Life he goes on the lam, but very incompetently, and hijinks ensue. It isn't up to the standards of her novels, and Jemima Jane is rather like the Izzies in The Merlin Conspiracy (by which I mean she sets my teeth on edge), but it did entertain me by confirming the speculation I made when I posted about The Homeward Bounders: Chrestomanci's agent Kathusa has a Kathayack Demon Dog, which is either a hell of a naming coincidence or a direct pointer toward Joris' Home world.

"Dragon Reserve, Home Eight" was the best of the lot for me. It sets up far more complete of a world than any of the others, and ditto characters; in fact, it almost feels like it's connected to something else, but to the best of my knowledge that isn't the case. (Please do mention in comments if I'm wrong.) I would definitely have read more about Siglin and the Dragonate and the Thrallers and the whole heg business.

"The Sage of Theare" is also good, and also a Chrestomanci story. It's more conceptually complicated than "Dragon Reserve, Home Eight," but less successful for me on a character and worldbuilding front (which is why I prefer the other). If it could have married its philosophical ideas about questioning and doubt and order and chaos to a firmer narrative framework, I would love it.


I think I'll do the Dalemark Quartet next, but I'm still open for requests for things people would like to see me tackle sooner rather than later.

I was about to read The Merlin Conspiracy when I remembered that it's technically part of a series, of which this book is first. I have no idea whether it's necessary to take them in order -- I've only read The Merlin Conspiracy once, years ago -- but I figured I might as well.

Deep Secret is the first of two Magid books, which take place in a multiverse setting that isn't the Chrestomanci one (though you could probably find a way to graft them together). The worlds exist in a Mobius loop/infinity symbol configuration, one half of which is "Ayewards" and magically positive, the other half of which is "Naywards" and magically negative. In the middle is the Koryfonic Empire, straddling eleven worlds and going downhill fast. The entire thing is supervised in a fashion by Magids, who serve a collection of entities referred to as the Upper Room, who are sort of godlike, to the extent that their nature is ever made clear.

Rupert Venables, the most junior Magid, is having to deal with two problems at once. First, he has to find a replacement for a more senior Magid who just died (though Stan hangs around as a disembodied voice to help him out). Second, as junior Magid he's in charge of the Koryfonic Empire, even though he lives on Earth, and the Empire is having some rather serious problems. His efforts to pick a replacement keep being interrupted as he gets dragged away from Earth to deal with problems on Koryfon -- but, as the laws of narrative efficiency would lead you to expect, it turns out those two problems aren't as unrelated as they seem.

Much of the pleasure of this book comes from its setting. You see, Rupert decides to simplify his Magid search by pulling all his candidates together in one place. The requirements of a magical node, the balancing of fatelines, and a mundane excuse to lure the people there mean that everybody winds up at a science fiction convention in Wantchester. And so the book is filled with lovingly-observed details about con culture: all the weirdness and friendliness and administrative drama that such events bring. (I seem to recall hearing once that the hotel -- where, thanks to magical disturbances, one can make endless right-angle turns without ever coming back around to the elevator -- was inspired by an actual hotel used by some con in Britain, probably one DWJ had been to. All I can say is, we've got one of those here in the States, too.)

I also quite like both Rupert and Maree Mallory, the other major protagonist in the story. Rupert takes a while to warm up -- the first few pages aren't as immediately engaging as in most of DWJ's books -- but Maree has a strong narrative voice. And this is a more adult book than most of hers; I think Rupert is twenty-six and Maree is twenty, and certainly there's more in the way of swearing, sexual overtones, and explicit violence than I recall in the others. (Certainly it's on the long side, compared to most.) All in all, I quite like it.

But I do have a couple of quibbles, plus some more spoilery things I like, which will go behind the cut.

( Spoilers ahoy! )

Okay, I mean it this time. The Merlin Conspiracy is next.