The Lives of Christopher Chant
(A Chrestomanci book)
Diana Wynne Jones
Beech Tree
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: Young Christopher Chant is the child of a stern father and distant, society-obsessed mother in a world where magic is taught alongside spelling and arithmetic. Despite the powers of his parents and the insistence of his father, the boy displays no overt signs of magic himself, except in his dreams. Here, he can slip into many different worlds, and even bring back items if he's careful about it. Soon enough, his abilities are revealed, and his destiny as the next Chrestomanci, master of magic in this and other worlds, seems assured. Only a nine-lifed enchanter can assume such a powerful role, as it's his multiple lives that make between-world travel so easy for him. But Christopher doesn't want to be the Chrestomanci. He just wants to continue his explorations of the Almost Anywheres of his dreams.... if he doesn't run out of lives first.
REVIEW: This was written as a prequel to a series of Chrestomanci books, wherein Christopher is an adult, which the local bookstores seem reluctant to stock for
whatever reason. Maybe that's one of the problems I had with it. I was reading the series out of the order in which it was written. What really bugged me about this story
was how intolerably dumb Chant was, especially when faced with all the same glaring red-flag clues and information that we readers knew. About a fourth of the way from the end,
he finally begins to wise up - a little - but by then I found it very difficult to sympathize with such a selfish little numbskull. The premise was moderately interesting, but
it was hard to stay focused on such things when the main character, our gateway to understanding and exploring this universe, was so willfully ignorant. After this book, I no
longer have any desire to track down the remaining Chrestomanci stories.
(I've seen the Chrestomanci books repackaged and sold in the "grown-up" Fantasy section. If this book's any indication, I can't for the life of me figure out why...)
You might also enjoy:
Dream a Little Dream (Piers Anthony and Julie Brady, Fiction - When the world created by human dreams is threatened, a hero travels to the real world to find his creator)
The Everworld series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Four Chicago teens are pulled into a world where elder gods and magic reign)
Dragons Wild (Robert Asprin, Fiction - When a slacker college grad learns he is a dragon, possibly named in a prophecy, he tries to run away from his destiny in New Orleans)
Bright Shadow (Avi, YA Fiction - A dying wizard's gift grants a humble servant girl powers she doesn't want, but which the kingdom needs)
The Lost Years of Merlin (T. A. Barron, YA Fiction - A reluctant young mage must learn to control his wild, dangerous powers)
The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, YA Fiction - A tornado drops a Kansas girl into a world of magic)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - Discovering a faerie prince in the garden sends a boy on a cross-dimensional journey and into great danger)
Dragon Companion (Don Callander, Fiction - A laywer finds himself inexplicably transported into a world of elves and dragons)
The Best of Lewis Carroll (Lewis Carroll, YA Fiction - Includes Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, about the original girl whose dreams led to strange other worlds)
The Wiz Biz books (Rich Cook, Fiction - A Silicon Valley programmer is transported to a magical world, where writing code and crafting spells aren't all that different)
The Dragon and the George (George R. Dickson, Fiction - Seeking his missing wife, a man finds himself in a medieval world of magical wizards and talking dragons)
Hatching Magic and The Dragon of Never-Was(Ann Downer, YA Fiction - A modern Boston girl encounters a medieval wizard's wyvern, waking latent powers that she doesn't know how to deal with)
The Inkheart trilogy (Cornelia Funke, YA Fiction - The ability to read characters out of books, and real people into them, puts a bookbinder and his daughter in mortal peril)
Coraline (Neil Gaiman, YA Fiction - Feeling neglected by her parents, a girl finds a doorway to a mirror version of her flat and a strange "Other Mother," whose boundless attention comes with a terrible price)
Beyond the Open Door (Andrew Lansdown, YA Fiction - A strange knife found in the potato patch lets a boy cut windows into another world)
The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis, YA Fiction - Children from our world visit the magical realm of the Lion Aslan)
Eccentric Circles (Rebecca Lickiss, Fiction - A woman finds a fairy world through the back door of her inherited cottage)
The Pendragon series (D. J. MacHale, YA Fiction - A boy's odd uncle leads him through a wormhole to another dimension to fight an evil force)
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica (James A. Owen, YA Fiction - United by a strange atlas, three soon-to-be-famed authors visit the Archipelago of Dreams, inspiration of myth and story since the beginning of time)
The Transall Saga (Gary Paulsen, YA Fiction - A boy faces the ultimate survival challenge when he finds himself transported to a hostile alien world)
The Diadem series (John Peel, YA Fiction - A strange messenger plucks three children from their native worlds and leads them on a dangerous quest to find their true destinies)
The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman, YA? Fiction - A girl in an alternate London discovers a church-led conspiracy and evidence of other worlds)
The Percy Jackson & the Olympians series (Rick Riordan, YA Fiction - A boy discovers that his father is a Greek god, monsters of out myth want him dead, and that he may be named in a prophecy that will decide the fates of gods and men)
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (James Rollins, YA Fiction - An ancient artifact pulls two siblings into a dangerous lost world)
The Harry Potter series (J. K. Rowling, YA Fiction - An orphaned boy learns of the hidden Wizarding world, and the truth about what happened to his parents, when he receives an invitation to a magical school)
The High House (James Stoddard, Fiction - An immense house contains entire worlds, and touches on many more)
The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Michael Swanwick, Fiction - Abducted into the fairy world as a child, a slave in an iron dragon factory plots her escape with one of the great war machines)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man travels to the realm of the faeries, where magic parallels technology and a war with humanity is on the horizon)
The 100 Cupboards trilogy (N. D. Wilson, YA Fiction - A boy finds strange magical cupboards that lead him to other worlds, and his own peculiar destiny)
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Dark Lord of Derkholm
Diana Wynne Jones
Greenwillow
Fiction, YA Fantasy
*****
DESCRIPTION: For forty years, King Luther’s magical lands have been virtually enslaved by a man named Mr. Chesney, who hails from a world not unlike our own. His
Pilgrim Tours take residents of his home world through the fantastic realms for a series of staged adventures, from Bandit raids through Leathery Winged Avian attacks, all
leading up to the defeat of the Dark Lord. Though the kingdom’s residents are paid for putting up with and arranging these events, it is a tremendous drain on local energy,
time and money, and Mr. Chesney always seems to make out with a much better deal than anyone else. Nobody likes the despicable man, but he has a powerful demon enslaved to
do his bidding, and even the gods won’t stand up to him or his agents. This year, the Wizard’s University has finally had enough. A delegation travels to the Oracles to learn
how to rid their lands of Chesney once and for all. On oracular advice, they appoint the first person they see to the position of this year’s Dark Lord, and the second person
as the Wizard Guide for the final Tour of the year. Unfortunately, the first person they see is the wizard Derk, and the second his son Blade. Derk is a good but peaceful
wizard, more than happy to stay at his home in Derkholm and create new animals like his sentient griffins, flying pigs, and invisible cats. Blade, his fourteen-year-old son,
is gifted, but entirely untrained in the wizardly arts. Even the Council knows the appointments aren't ideal in the least, but the Oracles have spoken, and they're desperate
enough to listen.
Almost as soon as Derk and Blade learn of their new assignments, things start to go wrong. Soon, all Derk's children – human and griffin – are forced to help out in a Tour
season the likes of which the land has never seen before. In addition to his own problems, Derk faces mutinous armies, angered dragons, local protests, the seeming desertion
of his wife Mara (assigned to be the Glamorous Enchantress for the year), and the possibility of a traitor in their midst.
REVIEW: Long ago, I read and thoroughly enjoyed The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by the same author (pitched at a somewhat older audience than this story.) This book is actually based on the ideas presented in that volume, and I must say that my liking of this story was greatly augmented by memories of the Guide. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s necessary to read the Guide first, though – the tale stands up well on its own. In addition to the humor of the situations presented, Jones offers interesting characters for us to follow in a plot that I didn’t find predictable in the least. This is a very amusing book, and it reads quickly.
You might also enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams, Fiction - The irreverent galactic adventures of the Earthman Arthur Dent, who survives the planet's destruction by hitching a ride on a passing spaceship)
GalaxyQuest (Terry Bisson, Fiction - The washed-up cast of an old sci-fi series meets aliens who believe it was all real)
Collinsfort Village (Joe Ekaitis, YA Fiction - A friendly griffin and his grizzly companion live in an American suburban town)
Heroics for Beginners (John Moore, Fiction - A prince sets out to win the hand of his princess girlfriend with the help of a handbook on practical heroics)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - Sick of being a proper princess, a girl in a fairy-tale kingdom runs away to live with dragons)
Forever After (Roger Zelazny, Fiction - After Good conquers Evil, four heroes must set out on a "reverse quest" to scatter the powerful magical artifacts that won the day)
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Year of the Griffin
(Sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm)
Diana Wynne Jones
Greenwillow
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: It has been eight years since Mr. Chesney's offworld tours were effectively terminated, but the land is still feeling the loss. On the plus side, all the needless slaughter and energy diversion has been ended. On the other hand, many places discovered that their economy was largely dependent on the Tours; returning to self- sufficiency is harder than they'd imagined. One of the places feeling the pinch the hardest is the Wizard's University. The former chancellor and most of the staff retired out of sheer exhaustion after turning out countless half-trained, semi-competent wizards to serve as Guides for Chesney's offworlders. Sadly, the replacement staff was all trained during those years, throwing the University into a stagnant state that mirrors its sagging funds. The new chancellor, Corkoran, is far more interested in his plans for space exploration than his students, but realizes that both the University and his moonshot need money desperately. This year's new students should give him some funds - all are from prestigious and high-born backgrounds, from the dwarf Ruskin (dwarves are famous for their gold craftsmanship) to Elda, daughter of the famed wizard Derk (who isn't as human as he was led to believe.) Surely their illustrious parents will be willing to pay a little extra... but it's not quite that easy. Most of these new students comes with problems of their own, and it is inevitable that all these problems will, sooner or later, find their way to the ancient University itself.
REVIEW: I was going to cut this book a little slack on the assumption that there may be a third story in the series and this one's suffering from classic middle-volume syndrome, but, the more I thought about it, the less content I was with it. Jones presents some wonderful ideas and interesting characters, but then she doesn't seem to know what to do with them, and the story suffers as a consequence. The plotlines become too scattered and hard to track, as do her characters. Much is brought up and not resolved to my satisfaction, hence my hopes that there is another volume in the works. Some characters needed to grow or learn a lesson but never were allowed to do either, instead being shunted into far less adequate conclusions that squandered the possibilities presented earlier. The ending felt forced and illogical, with at least one unnecessary event coming from out of nowhere when a far better solution existed with what we already had to work with. It read fast and was somewhat enjoyable, but it could've been even better with a rewrite or two. Considering how much I loved Dark Lord of Derkholm, this sequel just felt sad and unnecessary.
You might also enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams, Fiction - The irreverent galactic adventures of the Earthman Arthur Dent, who survives the planet's destruction by hitching a ride on a passing spaceship)
GalaxyQuest (Terry Bisson, Fiction - The washed-up cast of an old sci-fi series meets aliens who believe it was all real)
Collinsfort Village (Joe Ekaitis, YA Fiction - A friendly griffin and his grizzly companion live in an American suburban town)
Heroics for Beginners (John Moore, Fiction - A prince sets out to win the hand of his princess girlfriend with the help of a handbook on practical heroics)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - Sick of being a proper princess, a girl in a fairy-tale kingdom runs away to live with dragons)
Forever After (Roger Zelazny, Fiction - After Good conquers Evil, four heroes must set out on a "reverse quest" to scatter the powerful magical artifacts that won the day)
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Fantasy Stories
Diana Wynne Jones, editor
Kingfisher
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Anthology
**
DESCRIPTION: A variety of fantasy stories, from silly to profound, have been gathered from variety of sources by noted fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones. Included are a few of her own works, plus passages from authors such as C.S. Lewis, E. Nesbitt, and Patricia Wrede, among others.
REVIEW: When am I going to learn to stop buying anthologies that aren't compiled by Bruce Coville? Most of these stories are from full-length books - at least one of which is a series - and therefore seem fragmentary and pointless on their own. They range in style from silly to dark to downright convoluted, so I'm not sure just what age or intelligence level Jones (or rather the publisher) was aiming this anthology at. There were two, maybe three decent stories in here, but on the whole it was tiring to read, especially as so many of the excerpts were written in wordy, elder-day English. I admit that I didn't bother reading all the way through some of the "stories" because I grew tired of the excerpt approach. If she was going to include segments of larger works, she should've chosen stand-alone pieces, and not ones that began in the middle of the action and ended just before something else was going to happen. Are there really so few age-appropriate short fantasy stories in the world that Jones had to take fragments from larger works, or was she simply reliving her own childhood favorites by sneaking bits of them into this book? Whatever the answer, it made for tedious reading and a low rating.
You might also enjoy:
Strange Happenings (Avi, YA Fiction - Five tales of transformations)
A Treasury of Witches and Wizards (David Bennet, editor, YA Fiction - A collection of stories)
Bruce Coville's themed anthologies (Bruce Coville, editor, YA Fiction - Anthologies on a variety of subjects, from magic to aliens)
The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis, YA Fiction - Children from our world visit the domain of the Lion Aslan; part of a Narnia story is included in this book as an excerpt)
The Book of Enchantments (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - A collection of Wrede's short stories)
Here, There be Dragons (Jane Yolen, YA Fiction - Dragon-themed tales from author Jane Yolen)
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The Merlin Conspiracy
Diana Wynne Jones
Greenwillow
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***
DESCRIPTION: The islands of Blest, a parallel version of Earth's British Isles, control the magic of many of the multiverse worlds, though few outside Blest seem to
realize it. The Merlin is responsible for its maintenance, traveling with the King's Court to every corner of the land in a perpetual tour. Arianrhod and Grundo are two kids who
travel with the tour, both of them children of courtiers and mages who help run the Progress of Blest. When the old Merlin dies, they alone see the trouble that soon crops up
with the new Merlin, involving Grundo's greedy Earthmaster mother and a nasty courtier named Sir James. They must find help to stop the conspirators from corrupting Blest's
magic, lest half the worlds of the multiverse fall into black shadow.
Nick lives on Earth, but was born on another world. He lives with a man he calls Dad, but is really just another lonely stranger who needed a friend as much as Nick needed an
adult figure in his life. Nick has known about the other worlds and magic all his life, but until now has never managed to get to them. Then, a stranger at a writer's conference
pushes him into another world, and Nick's troubles really start. A man sent to kill him for something he may do in the future, a case of mistaken identity blown way out of
proportion, and a promise to help a pretty girl - Arianrhod - save the multiverse's magic await him.
REVIEW: This book should have been half as long as it was. It would have been, had the characters not all been so irritatingly stubborn and the tangents into unrelated ideas not so long. I liked some of the imagery and many of the ideas presented here, but I couldn't enjoy my time with them because of the annoying people, protagonists and antagonists alike. The ending felt inconclusive, radically altering some fundamental principles of the multiverse but with absolutely no apparent repercussions for any of the main characters or worlds. I was strongly reminded of Jones's Chrestomanci universe from The Lives of Christopher Chant (and other Chrestomanci books I haven't read), which also featured an ignorant little twit as its main character. What with the many worlds and near-constant travel between them, I suspect that The Merlin Conspiracy was set in some part of the Chrestomanci world, as I definitely got the impression that there was a great deal of backstory to Nick and "Roddy" and their multi-world universe that I was somehow supposed to know about. In any event, I wasn't completely disappointed by this book, but I was far from completely satisfied with it.
You might also enjoy:
The Everworld series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Four Chicago teens are pulled into a world where elder gods and magic reign)
The Lost Years of Merlin (T. A. Barron, YA Fiction - A reluctant young mage must learn to control his wild, dangerous powers)
The Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum, YA Fiction - A tornado drops a Kansas girl into a world of magic)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - Discovering a faerie prince in the garden sends a boy on a cross-dimensional journey and into great danger)
Dragon Companion (Don Callander, Fiction - A laywer finds himself inexplicably transported into a world of elves and dragons)
The Wiz Biz books (Rich Cook, Fiction - A Silicon Valley programmer is transported to a magical world, where writing code and crafting spells aren't all that different)
The Dragon and the George (George R. Dickson, Fiction - Seeking his missing wife, a man finds himself in a medieval world of magical wizards and talking dragons)
The Inkheart trilogy (Cornelia Funke, YA Fiction - The ability to read characters out of books, and real people into them, puts a bookbinder and his daughter in mortal peril)
Coraline (Neil Gaiman, YA Fiction - Feeling neglected by her parents, a girl finds a doorway to a mirror version of her flat and a strange "Other Mother," whose boundless attention comes with a terrible price)
Beyond the Open Door (Andrew Lansdown, YA Fiction - A strange knife found in the potato patch lets a boy cut windows into another world)
The Chronicles of Narnia (C. S. Lewis, YA Fiction - Children from our world visit the magical realm of the Lion Aslan)
Eccentric Circles (Rebecca Lickiss, Fiction - A woman finds a fairy world through the back door of her inherited cottage)
The Pendragon series (D. J. MacHale, YA Fiction - A boy's odd uncle leads him through a wormhole to another dimension to fight an evil force)
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica (James A. Owen, YA Fiction - United by a strange atlas, three soon-to-be-famed authors visit the Archipelago of Dreams, inspiration of myth and story since the beginning of time)
The Transall Saga (Gary Paulsen, YA Fiction - A boy faces the ultimate survival challenge when he finds himself transported to a hostile alien world)
The Diadem series (John Peel, YA Fiction - A strange messenger plucks three children from their native worlds and leads them on a dangerous quest to find their true destinies)
The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman, YA? Fiction - A girl in an alternate London discovers a church-led conspiracy and evidence of other worlds)
Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow (James Rollins, YA Fiction - An ancient artifact pulls two siblings into a dangerous lost world)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man travels to the realm of the faeries, where magic parallels technology and a war with humanity is on the horizon)
The 100 Cupboards trilogy (N. D. Wilson, YA Fiction - A boy finds strange magical cupboards that lead him to other worlds, and his own peculiar destiny)
A Plague of Sorcerers (Mary Frances Zambreno, YA Fiction - A young mage with a skunk familiar investigates a suspicious magical plague)
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The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
Diana Wynne Jones
DAW
Fiction, YA? Fantasy
*****
DESCRIPTION: From the requisite Map to cryptic Gnomic Utterances, this guide describes the various people, places and things of fantasy realms. It creates a collective "generic" world called Fantasyland, where the Management (authors) arrange Tours for you, the adventurer (reader.) This is a guide to your travels in the realm, describing events you are likely to encounter, as well as the people you encounter them with (or because of) and the places they occur in.
REVIEW: This is a hilarious book for anyone who reads fantasy! Like the Nitpicker's Guides do for TV shows, it humorously yet non-maliciously points out the
conventions, clichés, and peculiarities of the genre. It also answers those questions which the authors seem to avoid. How can horses in Fantasyland be ridden at a full
gallop all day, never throwing a shoe or breaking a leg (unless Forces of Darkness are half an hour behind), and always behaving as reliably and obligingly as a bicycle?
Obviously, they aren't animals at all; they're some form of plant, reproducing by pollination (which also explains how docile stallions are and why mares never go into heat.)
Want to know the truth about your Companions? Consult the Guide's handy Color Coding guide for clothing, skin, hair and eyes to see if they're good or evil, lost heirs or
witches in disguise. How come nobody ever catches a cold or other disease unless required to by the plot? Obviously, there is a serious ecological imbalance in Fantasyland,
wherein there are almost no bacteria or other microbiotic life forms, so all sickness is magical in origin. I laughed the whole way through, especially when I recognized so
many elements of fantasy works I've read. Fans of the genre will love this guide!
Incidentally, Gnomic Utterance is the term applied to those vague analogies, quotes and bits of history that either precede a chapter or are spoken by mysterious people
(such as Mystical Masters, Crones and Tour Mentors - see the Guide for more on these characters) who inhabit Fantasyland. Usually, they have little to no bearing on the
plot, and they are in no way related to gnomes.
You might also enjoy:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams, Fiction - The irreverent galactic adventures of the Earthman Arthur Dent, who survives the planet's destruction by hitching a ride on a passing spaceship)
GalaxyQuest (Terry Bisson, Fiction - The washed-up cast of an old sci-fi series meets aliens who believe it was all real)
Heroics for Beginners (John Moore, Fiction - A prince sets out to win the hand of his princess girlfriend with the help of a handbook on practical heroics)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - Sick of being a proper princess, a girl in a fairy-tale kingdom runs away to live with dragons)
Forever After (Roger Zelazny, Fiction - After Good conquers Evil, four heroes must set out on a "reverse quest" to scatter the powerful magical artifacts that won the day)
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Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book
Terry Jones, Brian Froud (illustrator)
Stewart, Chabori & Chang
Fiction, Fantasy
**
DESCRIPTION: A humorous take on the "Cottington Fairy" hoax (involving fairy photographs that gained international attention, but were ultimately proven to be faked by the two girls who took them), crossed with the Victorianesque hobby of pressed flower books. This diary records young Lady Cottington's encounters with fairies and her later attempts to capture them, both on film and in her special book. Included in the book are examples of her "collection."
REVIEW: The illustrations were fairly amusing, and everyone said it was light and whimsical, so I read it. Big mistake. The words take most of the fun out of the illustrations, which are indeed charming in a grotesque sort of way (but I've never been a huge fan of Froud's more grotesque works.) Jones would've done better just to annotate the illustrations, rather than weave a tale of Ms. Cottington's first encounters with the fairies, and subsequent harassment by them. At the end, I wasn't laughing at all. Collectors who just want the funny Brian Froud pictures of pressed fairies will be happy with this book. Anyone else, don't bother.
You might also enjoy:
I Was a Teenage Fairy (Francesca Lia Block, YA Fiction - A tiny fairy queen helps a girl deal with an overbearing mother and abuse)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - A boy finds a faerie prince in the garden)
The Spiderwick Chronicles (Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, YA Fiction - Children find a field guide to fairies and other invisible magical beings)
Fairy Dreams (Carol McLean-Carr, YA Picture Book - Fairies visit a little girl's room at night, borrowing her toys and replacing them with magical gifts)
Fablehaven (Brandon Mull, YA Fiction - Two kids discover fairies and other magical wonders on their grandparents' farm)
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