Diana Wynne Jones

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Hi all,

I've searched for a thread discussing the late DWJ's works and couldn't find one. We can talk about her novels in general here, and I'd like to start with the Chrestomanci books, which I find both awesome and galling at the same time. The awesome part lies in the first book, Charmed Life, which I almost enjoyed as much as the first HP book. I think the magic system was incredible and the characters were great. I loved all the fuss that was made over the character Chrestomaci before his appearance (especially the You-Know-Who-esque "Don't mention his name!"). I simply cannot fault Charmed Life in any way, it's one of the best MG books I've ever read. The best part was watching Gwendolen develop from a girl with an evil streak to a full-fledged dark witch at the end.

For me, Gwendolen is one of the reasons why the other five Chrestomanci books were a disappointment. I still remember reading them, one after the other, hoping the plot with Cat and Gwendolen's rivalry would be revisited, but it never was. DWJ pulled a Narnia by making all books after Charmed Life take place in different timelines with a whole new cast of characters (except for The Lives of Christopher Chant, which is a prequel). I always thought that, by the end of CL, the stage was set for Gwendolen to be the main villain of the series and Cat and Janet as the heroes with Chrestomanci as their mentor. I could really see the other five books in the series being sequels to CL, that would've certainly made the series more interesting than those standalone books (Caprona, Witch Week, Conrad's Fate, Pinhoe Egg). I wonder if DWJ didn't think too highly of CL's cast? Or maybe she just wasn't fond of direct sequels? She kinda does the same with Howl's Moving Castle (her masterpiece, IMO). Who wouldn't have wanted a trilogy and even seven books about Howl Pendragon?! Instead we get two inferior books after HMC with different main charcters (Abdullah and Cimorene) in which Howl and Sophie barely appear.

Between not writing a sequel for either Charmed Life or Howl's Moving Castle, do you think DWJ didn't fully tap into her characters' potential? I honestly do :(
 
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t0dd

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"Charmed Life" is the only one of the Chrestomanci books I've read (I read it last year, though I saw part of the "Jackanory" adaptation of it as a boy), and I liked it a lot. I didn't know that the other books in the series didn't involve the leads of "Charmed Life". Perhaps DWJ felt that she'd said all she needed to about Cat, Gwendolen, and Janet and preferred exploring other aspects of the Chrestomanci concept.

I found Gwendolen creepy as well - especially since, judging from the indications about the story's internal chronology, she'd have to have been twelve at the most. A definite creepy child.

While nearly all of her books I've read from library copies (including "Charmed Life"), I do have a copy of her "Power of Three" - I liked it a lot, though it's difficult to discuss; the concept includes a really big spoiler warning.
 

Emissarius

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"Charmed Life" is the only one of the Chrestomanci books I've read (I read it last year, though I saw part of the "Jackanory" adaptation of it as a boy), and I liked it a lot. I didn't know that the other books in the series didn't involve the leads of "Charmed Life". Perhaps DWJ felt that she'd said all she needed to about Cat, Gwendolen, and Janet and preferred exploring other aspects of the Chrestomanci concept.

I found Gwendolen creepy as well - especially since, judging from the indications about the story's internal chronology, she'd have to have been twelve at the most. A definite creepy child.

While nearly all of her books I've read from library copies (including "Charmed Life"), I do have a copy of her "Power of Three" - I liked it a lot, though it's difficult to discuss; the concept includes a really big spoiler warning.

Gwendolen was indeed creepy. I wonder if readers weren't prepared for such an evil child antagonist back in 1977? I always got the sense that Jones had no idea what a unique character she created. Having Gwendolen in a single book is blasphemery!
 

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I read and loved Witch Week first--many many times--and was really surprised to be reading Charmed Life and find myself seeing elements of Witch Week in it (mostly in the form of Chrestomanci). While I enjoyed CL, my childhood self was most in love with Witch Week.

As an adult, when I read the other books, I found that I enjoyed The Lives of Christopher Chant the most. It absolutely could have been the POV, which sticks to Christopher, rather than the omni of CL & WW (I don't remember what the others have). While it cannot be denied that DWJ has mad storytelling skills, as an adult, I found Witch Week especially and Charmed Life somewhat to have too much head-hopping.

So for me, the connection to the Chrestomanci-verse was Chrestomanci (as Christopher) himself, and therefore, I never felt lacking that Cat, Janet, and Gwendolyn didn't return (Cat does return in The Pinhoe Egg, which I don't remember anything else about except not enjoying it as much as Conrad's Fate).
 

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I read and loved Witch Week first--many many times--and was really surprised to be reading Charmed Life and find myself seeing elements of Witch Week in it (mostly in the form of Chrestomanci). While I enjoyed CL, my childhood self was most in love with Witch Week.

As an adult, when I read the other books, I found that I enjoyed The Lives of Christopher Chant the most. It absolutely could have been the POV, which sticks to Christopher, rather than the omni of CL & WW (I don't remember what the others have). While it cannot be denied that DWJ has mad storytelling skills, as an adult, I found Witch Week especially and Charmed Life somewhat to have too much head-hopping.

So for me, the connection to the Chrestomanci-verse was Chrestomanci (as Christopher) himself, and therefore, I never felt lacking that Cat, Janet, and Gwendolyn didn't return (Cat does return in The Pinhoe Egg, which I don't remember anything else about except not enjoying it as much as Conrad's Fate).

I excluded The Lives of Christopher Chant from my criticism cause it's very similar to CL, especially the later half that takes place in Chrestomanci Castle.

Apart from Gwendolen, another reason why I think the other four books were inferior is because things just didn't happen on such a grand end-of-the-world scale. If u recall the last few chapters of CL, every evil person in the wizarding community attacks Chrestomanci Castle. The guy himself is pinned to a tree using silver, and Cat is nearly offered as sacrifice. In many ways, the finale of CL was like the ending to a last book of a series, not the first. That's how grand it was. The Magicians of Caprona and Witch Week had such tinier scale events they were incomparable, while Conrad's Fate and the Pinhoe Egg came out so late during Jones' career that (like House of Many Ways) they were underwhelming.
 

Fuchsia Groan

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When I was nine, I had a friend whose mom worked in publishing. She gave me copies of three books by a then-very-obscure author: Dogsbody, Power of Three and Charmed Life (the sequels wouldn't exist for many years to come). My mind was blown. I practically memorized all three books, but Dogsbody was my favorite and still is. It made me cry, it introduced me to the fraught topic of Irish-English politics, and it was so durn weird.

I reread my treasured copies for years, but never saw a single DWJ book on shelves. Finally, in high school, I figured out how to order books through a store (this is how it was before the Internet, kids!), and I started reading more of her books, both older and newer.

My favorites among her post-1970s books are Archer's Goon (love the town concept and the humor), Fire and Hemlock (a little long and rambly, as she was making a foray into upper YA, but very compelling), The Homeward Bounders (again, great concept; a rare first-person DWJ book), Howl's Moving Castle (no explanation needed), and The Time of the Ghost (love the weird family angst/humor). I also loved Witch Week, but the rest of the Chrestomanci books faded from memory.

I'm going to say something blasphemous: I wish Jones weren't still so much more obscure than Rowling, even though I understand why. I think DWJ was basically a stand-alone writer, which is why her series don't satisfy as series. (She came closest to a strong series with her Dalemark trilogy from the '70s.) But series are what make a fantasy author's career. Or maybe she was too weird (exactly what I love about her), or maybe it was that she had trouble sticking her landings (ending her books coherently). Or maybe the time just wasn't right. Who knows?

Anyway, I've met practically no one IRL who's read DWJ, with the exception of my sister, who became a fan thanks to my indoctrination. :) But I did finally start seeing her books on shelves in the 2000s, and that's probably entirely due to HP, so yay!

I'd love to have seen Gwendolen evolve into an uber-villain, too! What an amazing character.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Dogsbody was the first DWJ book I read, and it broke my heart. It was so good.

My only problem with it was I read fantasy because I despised to the depths of my soul all the “real world problem” middle grade books shoved at me at the time, full of anorexic abused druggie runaway kids from broken homes who had to deal with brutal modern day realism realities of real life in reality. This was long before Harry Potter and it felt sometimes like the overwhelming philosophy of middle grade and young adult lit of the time was to beat fantasy and magic out of us good and early.

So I loved the book, but the real Irish Troubles and the bullying boys, ouch.
 

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I'm going to say something blasphemous: I wish Jones weren't still so much more obscure than Rowling, even though I understand why. I think DWJ was basically a stand-alone writer, which is why her series don't satisfy as series.

I don't think that's the only reason she's not as big as Rowling. I was too young when HP first came out, but I remember reading some articles about ten years later (mid-2000's I think) about authors like Susan Cooper and Jane Yolen claiming that DWJ's work should receive more attention than Rowling's. I love both authors equally and if I had to choose a favorite book from both, it'll be the timeless, untouchable masterpiece that is Howl's Moving Castle. But I don't agree with Ms. Cooper and Yolen (or whoever had made the aforementioned claim). Rowling is just in a different league because of the insane amount of detail in her universe. Only in HP did wizards really have their own lifestyles and rules and did everything differently than the non-magical community (compare Harry's Quiddich, an innovated game, with Christopher Chant playing rugby, for instance).

But series are what make a fantasy author's career.
Agreed, and when you look at Charmed Life. Goodness me, the world-building had all the elements of a successful series. I'm gonna list a few things that I absolutely adored about CL:
1) The magic shop street Cat and Gwendolen lived in before being adopted by Chrestomanci was like a miniature Diagon Alley. It's a shame DWJ completely forgot about it once the siblings left it.
2) Chrestomanci Castle, while not Hogwarts-sized in neither size nor stature, was a magical place with its own confusing corridors, gardens, and that quality where voices don't echo inside no matter how loud you screamed.
3) Chrestomanci himself, whether through the "don't mention the name!" thing or his tendency to materialize whenever someone thinks of him, could've made him a staple in MG fantasy if the rest of the books hadn't centered around other characters who had to look for him.
4) The part where Cat sneaks into Chrestomanci's quarters and witnesses the man talking to the other teacher (Saunders) and there's a small dragon in the room and mention of dragon's blood. That scene was in every way as chilling as all those scenes where Harry uses his cloak to spy on teachers.
5) The fact that Gwendolen had stored Cat's lives in a matchbox and had been using them to empower herself. I seriously doubt DWJ was aware of how awesome and chilling that revelation was, because she didn't expand on it at all :( I was more shocked there than when it turned out that Quirell and not Snape was the bad guy.

Or maybe she was too weird (exactly what I love about her)
I generally disagree with authors who love to experiment or follow their own emotions instead of giving their fans (who'd made them famous) more of what the fans want. This is probably a ridiculous analogy, but I always think of Rowling as Michael Jackson and DWJ as George Michael. The latter drove his fans (including me) nuts by not releasing the kind of music they wanted to hear, insisting he was an artist and not a muscian who adhered to the mainstream's demands. I hated George for that!
 
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The Second Moon

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I loved Howl's Moving Castle. But the other books in the series were disappointments. Still love the book though. I even got a small statue of the fire demon.
 

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Didn't Jones write a series about the wizard school concept before Rowling?

Nothing to add, except I hated Dogsbody. Nothing about it made sense.
 

Brightdreamer

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My personal favorite thing of hers I've read was her timeless classic The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, poking fun at tropes and genre conventions (and later inspiring two books - of which the first, Dark Lord of Derkholm, was vastly superior to the sequel, Year of the Griffin.)

DWJ is one of those authors I feel I should like more than I do. She definitely broke ground in children's/YA fiction, and deserves recognition for that; without her, authors like Rowling might not ever have gotten their chance in a category that was much more rigid before she came along. She had ample imagination. Yet for some reason I tend to feel lukewarm about the books of hers I've read, largely due to the characters; I don't generally like her MCs, and pretty much wanted to backhand Christopher Chant all through The Lives of Christopher Chant (the only Chrestomanci book I've read, which put me off the others.) I had a similar reaction to her posthumous autobiography (Reflections); I could appreciate her hard work and imagination, and know she had a lot to say about writing that was worth listening to, but underneath I detected something abrasive and egocentric about her personality that kinda put me at arm's length.
 
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Emissarius

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Didn't Jones write a series about the wizard school concept before Rowling?

DWJ never wrote an archetypal wizard school story but was nonetheless most famous for her wizards before Rowling. Most credit for the magic school theme goes to Ursula Le Guin's first Earthsea book, although I can't see why. The so-called school for wizards was barely 30% of the book and it wasn't very imaginative and there weren't many teachers or students there (The rest of the book is about the protagonist wandering through the land). The best wizard school I've seen before HP has to be Anthony Horrowitz's Groosham Grange. It was only two books, and the second especially reminded me of the first HP book. Jane Yolen had a golden opportunity with Wizard's Hall which came out two years before HP and had a school that was like a miniature Hogwarts, but she obviously failed to realize how appealing (and underpresented) the magic school theme had been at that point, and I think Yolen lived to regret it!
 

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My fault. I was thinking of Diane Duane's So You Want to be a Wizard series, which actually dealt with a magic book and not a wizard school.