Swan Tower

Since it's annoying to have to page back through archives in search of something, here's an index post for all of my entries in the Diana Wynne Jones Project, alphabetized by title.

Book posts

• Archer's Goon
  
• Believing Is Seeing: Seven Stories
  
• Black Maria
  
• Cart and Cwidder
  
• Castle in the Air
  
• Changeover
  
• Charmed Life
  
• Conrad's Fate
  
• The Crown of Dalemark
  
• Dark Lord of Derkholm
  
• Deep Secret
  
• Dogsbody
  
• Drowned Ammet
  
• Earwig and the Witch
  
• Eight Days of Luke
  
• Enchanted Glass
  
• Fire and Hemlock
  
• The Game
  
• Hexwood
  
• The Homeward Bounders
  
• House of Many Ways
  
• Howl's Moving Castle
  
• The Lives of Christopher Chant
  
• The Magicians of Caprona
  
• The Merlin Conspiracy
  
• Minor Arcana
  
• Mixed Magics
  
• The Ogre Downstairs
  
• The Pinhoe Egg
  
• Power of Three
  
• Puss in Boots
  
• "A Slice of Life"
  
• The Spellcoats
  
• Stopping for a Spell
  
• A Sudden Wild Magic
  
• A Tale of Time City
  
• The Time of the Ghost
  
• Tough Guide to Fantasyland
  
• Unexpected Magic
  
• Warlock at the Wheel
  
• Wild Robert
  
• Wilkin's Tooth (aka Witch's Business)
  
• Witch Week
  
• Year of the Griffin
  
• Yes, Dear
  
• Scattered short stories and The Skiver's Guide
  

Other posts

• The Diana Wynne Jones Project
  
• A Seed of Hemlock
  

Today is the anniversary of Diana Wynne Jones' death. In memory of that, I bring you the final two posts of my re-read, which -- through design on my part -- will cover her first and last published novels.

This, of course, is the first one. It isn't fantasy (or science fiction), and it was written for adults; as such, it definitely feels different from the bulk of her work. (There are not usually any strip-teases in her books.) And yet -- as you would expect -- there are touches that come across as familiar, a voice that will show up again and again in later stories.

The plot is (deliberately) farcical. The British government is preparing to hand over the reins of their soon-to-be-former colony, a fictional African country called Nmkwami. One of the governor's aides, reading out his notes about suggestions to "mark change-over" (that is, to commemorate the handover of power), is misheard; the governor thinks he's said something about a man named Mark Changeover. The "who's on first" conversation that ensues leaves the governor with the distinct impression that some kind of rabble-rouser or terrorist is on the loose in Nmkwami. And, because nobody in the bureaucracy wants to admit they haven't heard anything about such an important problem, the confusion snowballs, until all of Nmwkami, British and local alike, is turned out to hunt the Anarchist-Communist-Imperialist revolutionary Mark Changeover.

I'll go ahead and put the rest behind a cut, though given how difficult it is to find this book, you guys may or may not care about spoilers. (Many thanks to katfeete for loaning me her copy, thus saving me about ninety dollars buying a used copy online.)


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On the whole, this was a lot more fun than I expected, given that I don't read a lot of "realistic" fiction, nor a lot of farce. And while it doesn't have the richness and depth of her fantasy, it's pretty good for what it sets out to be. I'll be curious to see if anybody reprints it again, so that it will become easier to find.

I noticed, when I made my post for Unexpected Magic, that there were (as near as I could tell) three short stories not collected elsewhere, plus a nonfiction humour book, and one poem. (Info taken from here.) That last will, dammit, not be arriving at my house in time to meet my self-imposed deadline of tomorrow -- which is the anniversary of her death -- but I've managed to get all the others.

(Confidential to the Internet: if you have a copy of Now We Are Sick, and the poem is short enough for you to type it up and send it to me, please do. Just so I can finish everything in time.)

The first short story, "Mela Worms," made me nervous. It's contained in Arrows of Eros, which is an anthology of erotic science fiction. When you have been reading a certain author since you were nine, and that author writes almost exclusively for children and young adults, it is kind of brain-breaking to contemplate her writing anything in that vein. Fortunately for my sanity, her story is much more on the "speculative" side rather than the "erotic" one, as the titular mela worms, which are necessary for the reproduction of an alien species, get loose on an overcrowded spaceship and wreak havoc. It isn't the most memorable story of hers ever, but it's also far from the worst.

The second (and I'm putting these in the order I read them) was "Samantha's Diary," in Stories: All New Tales (which may hold the record for most utterly bland anthology title ever). This one is definitely on the weak side; it's near-future science fiction in which somebody begins sending the narrator Samantha gifts, which the reader will quickly figure out are the gifts named in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Too much of the story, alas, is spent on Samantha being surprised by the day's deliveries, and trying to figure out where to put all the birds. It eventually diverges from that path, and gets better when it does, but on the whole, this one is skippable. (Unless you're being ridiculously completist. Not that we know anybody like that.)

The third story, "I'll Give You My Word," is probably the best of the lot. It takes place in a version of this world where magic is common, and concerns a pair of children, the younger of whom mostly speaks in nonsensical combinations of SAT-type words. Exactly how his ability ties in with a certain magical threat isn't as well-established as I'd like, but it's a very DWJ-ish story, and reasonably fun.

Finally, The Skiver's Guide is a humorous how-to book on the topic of skiving (or "slacking off," if you're not familiar with that word). It wasn't as funny as I'd been hoping, but that's largely because it's a very good anatomy of a personality type I kind of want to punch in the face. So, y'know, props to it for that.


Two more books and posts to go -- but if you can get me the poem in time, please do . . . .

Last of the collections, both in terms of my (totally random) reading order, and publication date. It's also the largest, and contains a number of stories not found in the others; on the other hand, it reprints a lot of the weakest stories from Warlock at the Wheel, and I have no idea why.

Things that are new:

"The Girl Jones" -- non-fantasy story about a girl who ends up looking after a bunch of younger children, and screws it up in a way that ensures nobody will ask her to do that again. Not much to this one, and I'm really not sure why it was chosen to open the collection.

"The Green Stone" -- sort of proto-Derkholm, from the perspective of the "recording cleric" for a Quest that's about to begin. Unfortunately, because the cleric doesn't know much about what's going on, the plot kind of comes out of nowhere, and doesn't get fleshed out very well.

"The Fat Wizard" -- an iteration of the "unpleasant person gets their just desserts" trope. Better-written than most of the iterations in Warlock at the Wheel or Stopping for a Spell, but still not all that great, and (as the title suggests) it's likely to bother people offended by her treatment of weight issues.

"Little Dot" -- this, however, is fabulous. (And I don't just say that because it involves cats.) I want, as I usually do, more background for the threat, but this story excellently displays one of Jones' great talents, which is characterization. Henry's six cats -- sorry, let me correct that; the six cats that own Henry -- all have highly vivid personalities, from the brave and resourceful Dot to the gorgeous and deeply stupid Madame Dalrymple. Watching them go to town on the woman who invades Henry's house is a thing of horrifying beauty. :-)

The main reason to own this book, though, is for Everard's Ride, which was published by NESFA Press in 1995, but is almost impossible to find for a reasonable price.

The thing that fascinates me about it that to the best of my knowledge, it's actually the earliest thing of Jones' that has been published. Changeover came out in 1970, but the publication notes at the end of this collection say that Everard's Ride was written in 1966. fjm said in the comments on Witch's Business that her first couple of novels were meddled with by editorial influence, and reading this makes that quite apparent. Granted, I don't know how much (if at all) Jones revised Everard's Ride before its publication, but this feels far more like her style than her first couple of published fantasy novels do.

And there's enough meat to it that I need a spoiler-cut.

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Looking back over the collections, it turns out you can get almost all of her short fiction if you buy this and Mixed Magics. The stories in Stopping for a Spell aren't worth it, Warlock at the Wheel and Believing Is Seeing are all duplicated in one or the other of these two, and Minor Arcana has only The True State of Affairs that isn't included elsewhere. So if you want to be more efficient about this than I've been, that's how to do it. <g>

(Me, what I really want is a leaner, meaner version of this book to go with Mixed Magics: something with "Dragon Reserve, Home Eight," "Little Dot," "Enna Hittims," "What the Cat Told Me," "The Girl Who Loved the Sun," and then both Everard's Ride and The True State of Affairs, if you want to go ahead and have it be a big collection. Maybe a couple more, like "Nad and Dan adn Quaffy," that I'm not so fond of, but other readers are. Anyway, just her good work, and not the weaker stuff.)

Three books left: her first, her last, and the one that's half-autobiography. And -- crap, I meant to check this sooner -- a couple of short stories NOT in the collections I discussed above. Ack! Must get those, stat!

I'm way behind on posting, so expect a couple more of these soon.

This book, more than any other, illustrates how idiosyncratic my divide is between my first-tier favorites and the second tier. Power of Three is in the latter category, not because of any flaw in the story -- it's excellent, probably one of her best -- but simply because it never quite got into my imaginative foundations the way some of her others did. I don't know what made some books do that, and others not; all I know is that it isn't a question of quality. This is a wonderful book.

From the back cover copy, because my brain is too lazy to come up with its own plot summary:

Something is horribly wrong on the Moor. Gair and his people are surrounded by enemies -- the menacing Giants and the devious, cruel Dorig. For centuries the three races have lived side by side, but now suspicion and hatred have drawn them all into a spiral of destruction.

With the existence of his people threatened, Gair realizes that evil forces are at work. For the Moor is blighted by a curse of ancient and terrifying power . . .

A good summary, except that the final bit is quite wrong. I know it sounds more fantastical to talk about ancient curses, but one of the things I like about this novel is that the curse isn't ancient. It was placed within living memory -- it's the first thing that occurs in the book -- and is the simple, horrifying consequence of somebody being greedy and foolish and violent. And, as in The Magicians of Caprona, it's at least in part up to the younger generation to undo it. (Not entirely up to them, though. One of the other things I like is the role played by Gest and Adara, and Mr. Masterfield and Mr. Claybury, and at the center of it all, Hathil.)

There are lots of other things to like, too. The little grace notes in the worldbuilding, like the respect Gair's people pay to bees, and the customs of the Dorig. The perspective on what constitutes magic. The very believable relationships: not only are there lots of great sibling setups throughout this, but once again, as with Caprona, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and a few other books, we get imperfect-but-strong families, instead of abusive parents and neglected children. And the ending is a lovely balance of the mythic and the personal, which is one of the things I have always loved Jones for.

That's a lot of what I wanted to say, but a few more bits do involve spoilers.

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I think I had a few other, smaller things to say, but I've forgotten them. That's what I get for not posting as soon as I finished reading the book, I suppose. :-P Anyway, look for more posts soon!

This, like Wild Robert, is a shorter piece published on its own; I'd guess it's a novella, in terms of length. Hayley, having disgraced herself to the grandparents who raised her, is sent to live with her numerous cousins, who play an unnamed and very odd game involving a realm known as the mythosphere.

. . . and I really can't say much more than that without giving spoilers, because the story itself is so short.

I like The Game; I just wish -- as I often do with DWJ's pieces in this range -- that it were longer. It doesn't partake of the flaws that tend to weaken her actual short stories, but it also doesn't have room to fully leverage the virtues of her novels. The concept of the mythosphere is nifty, but I want a whole novel exploring it; the brief glimpses we get here only make me wish for more.

And now, the spoilers!
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Archer's Goon is next! (I've actually finished reading it already; I'm just behind on posting.)

There's only one story in this collection I haven't read already, but I still feel justified in counting it as a book read, because the story in question is The True State of Affairs, which eats up about half of the pages. I don't have a word count for it, but it is probably squarely in novella territory, if not edging toward short novel. Either way, it's certainly longer than some of the DWJ stories that have been published independently (like Wild Robert).

It's fortuitous timing that I chose to read it now. I started it months ago, but kept not getting into it; now, reading it through, I realize it is apparently a verrrrrrry peripheral Dalemark story. (As in, it had sort of a Dalemark-ish feel early on, and then there's one place where it uses that name directly.) It's hard to tell where it's supposed to fit into Dalemark chronology, though. They have steam engines, though not for practical use, which suggests it can't be too long before the "present" day of that series (i.e. Mitt and Moril's time), because that's when Alk is about to set off an industrial revolution. Also, there is no king, which means it has to be before Amil the Great, because Dalemark is a monarchy from his time up through Maewen's, where everything is modern. But I don't recall hearing any of these people referenced in the novels -- or even the places, though there I may just be overlooking things -- so it's hard to slot into position.

Look away if you don't want spoilers.

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Third book in the Dalemark Quartet, which steps way back in history for the founding of the kingdom, when an invading army and an evil mage threaten the land.

A lot of people have cited this as their favorite book of the series, and I can see why. Tanaqui and her siblings are a great DWJ family; they don't all get along, but they're deeply loyal to one another, and all contribute in their individual ways. And the worldbuilding for this novel is especially rich: the Undying, the weaving of the rugcoats, the mages binding their spirits with their gowns, and all the rest of it. The setting we see is very plausibly an earlier society than the Dalemark of the "present-day" books (the ones with Moril and Mitt), and yet some of the things that happen along the way aren't the obvious -- because Jones is good at making things more complex than you expect at first glance.

( Everything else is spoilers. )

Well, I've got <checks watch> about twenty-six hours to make that last post, to finish out this series before the end of the year. Expect that later tonight!

This is the first book of the Dalemark Quartet, which I know I read many years ago, but out of order and sufficiently spaced out that I don't think I realized at the time the books made up a set.

In part, this is because -- although I've afterwards thought of them as a Proper Series -- these books are no more closely linked than, say, Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Air. They take place in the same setting, and maybe once I get further on (I'm in the process of re-reading Drowned Ammet right now) there will be more immediate linkages, but so far there's no sense in which any of these books is a direct sequel to one before. (The exception may come in The Crown of Dalemark, which I want to say builds on all three of its predecessors. Then again, I haven't read the thing in probably twenty years, so my instinct is not what you'd call reliable.)

The other reason I didn't notice, the first (and I think only) time I read these books, that they belonged together, was because . . . they never really made an impression on me. I know some people love the Dalemark series; there are a number of Yuletide requests for it this year. Glancing at them, though, they all seem to be for later books: I didn't see a single one for Cart and Cwidder, though I might have overlooked it. I think it's entirely possible I'll like the later ones better -- Drowned Ammet is already off to a better start -- but yeah, this one didn't do a lot for me. It's one of the earlier books, published in 1975, and it feels like it never quite hit its stride.

Before I get to unpacking that, though, a plot summary. The title refers to the fact that the protagonist, Moril, belongs to a family of traveling singers; they travel in a cart, and he and his father both play the cwidder, which is (as near as I can tell) a made-up stringed instrument, or maybe just a made-up name for a stringed instrument. ("Cwidder" is a reasonably plausible morph of "guitar," to my eye, though the image on my book cover looks more like a lute.) They're traveling in the South Dales, which suffer under a repressive set of earls, and trying to make their way to the North Dales, where Moril and the other children were born, and people can live free.

Now we can move on to the spoilers.

( And the LJ-cut to hide them. )

. . . I can tell I'm starting to tire out on this project; it's been eight months and thirty-one books, and I still have a little way to go. But I'm near enough to the end that I want to finish by the anniversary of her death. I'll do the rest of Dalemark this month, and then there will be only ten more books left (eight novels and the remainder of two short story collections). And I've saved a few of my second-tier favorites for nearly last. :-)

I've fallen behind on these, I'm afraid -- the posting more than the reading. So, without further ado:

Dark Lord of Derkholm is the playing-out of the ideas treated encyclopedically in Tough Guide to Fantasyland. Derk and his family live in a fantasy world that has, for the last forty years or so, been playing host to Tours from another dimension, sending them hither and yon across the landscape in quest of clues to overthrow the Dark Lord. But the Tours are bankrupting their world; they're sacking cities, trampling crops, laying waste to the countryside, and forcing everybody to fulfill the expectations (read: conform to the stereotypes) of these otherworldly visitors. The people in charge of setting things up for the Tours want to bring them to an end once and for all, so they appoint a wizard named Derk to play the role of this year's Dark Lord, and his untrained, fourteen-year-old son Blade to be the Wizard Guide for the final Tour.

This is a fairly sprawling book. At 517 pages in my (mass-market) edition, it may well be her longest; I think only A Sudden Wild Magic comes close to challenging that. Dark Lord reminds me of that one a bit, just in terms of narrative scope. There's a lot of stuff going on in here, as Querida, the High Chancellor of the wizard's college, tries to manipulate things into going badly enough to end the Tours, and Derk and Blade (along with the rest of their family) run themselves to the point of ragged and beyond trying to do their jobs right.

I think my favorite stuff in here involves Derk's family. There are so many neglected and abused children in her books, it's refreshing to get something like this or the Montanas in The Magicians of Caprona, where there are a lot of people who may squabble, but ultimately love each other quite a lot. I did want to smack Derk sometimes; his tendency to retreat from unpleasant things into fantasies of new creatures reminded me a bit of Erg in "Four Grannies," though he had much better reason for it. But I like his kids a lot, both the human ones and the griffins.

I suppose I should put the rest of this behind a cut.

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On the whole, while I enjoy this one, I like Year of the Griffin a bit more. Look for that post soon.