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eloquentgifs · 3 years

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DWJ Reading Project. Part II

As I said here, my 2021 resolution is gonna be READING EVERY DIANA WYNNE JONES BOOK I CAN FIND, and due to my love of making lists and taking notes, I’ve decided keeping track of this reading project here in this post, which I’ll keep updated as I make progress. It’s mostly for my own pleasure, but maybe it helps someone who wants to give it a try to this amazing writer and doesn’t know where to start.

Part I (1970 - 1976 & The Dalemark Quartet)

Part III (1984 - 1992 & Land of Ingary Series)

- The Chrestomanci Series (DWJ’s suggested reading order): · Charmed Life (1977): I couldn’t fully enjoy it because the main premise of the story is the codependency Cat has with his AWFUL sister, and how her abuse shapes everything on his life. He has such a low self esteem and needs so much a hug, it just breaks my heart every page. In any case, the worldbuilding, the magic system and the general vibe are just amazing. If it keeps like this, I totally understand why so many people love this series

· The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988): Ok, this is the good shit. I don’t even know how to describe it in few words. Let’s say that there’s also a kid being abused by his relatives, and there were parts where I wanted to throw the book against the wall, but Christopher is such a fascinating character to read about that you just can’t stop. And this universe, OMFG. Also, is the Asheth thing some kind of homage to The Tombs of Atuan?

· Conrad’s Fate (2005): I’ve binge-watched Downton Abbey a few months ago, so finding out this book is basically DA with magic was just a delight. Christopher and his new BFF Conrad arrive to this big ass manor to work as lackeys, while both having secret agendas of their own. There’s everything one would expect and more: Rich Family Drama, Upstairs/Downstaris antics, crime solving, forbidden loves, scifi-ish reality bugs, and of course abusive relatives (at this point, if I were DWJ’s uncle I'd think she was trying to tell me something). I read it in a day and a half. The only negative thing I can say is that I missed Christopher POV of things.

· Witch Week (1982): This is about a bunch of pupils and teachers in a deppresing boarding school. Everyone is a little bit of an asshole at some point, but it's understandable because this world must be the worst in Series 12. Not only they keep burning witches in modern times, but witches aren’t even a minority, so you can imagine the amount of hypocrisy. It’s interesting how the witch thing can be considered a metaphor for lgtb kids: everyone is scared of being called a witch because they’ll get bullied (and maybe arrested and burnt), but every time a character find out they’re in fact a witch, they just feel confident and happy because they’ve found themselves, so they can’t even hide it. Also, there are more secret witches around than they would expect.

· The Magicians of Caprona (1980): Two families of famous spell-makers keep hating each other through generations, to the point they put Caprona, the city-state where they live, in danger. Sometimes the Italian stereotypes were too much and took me out of the story, but not gonna lie, I really loved the opera spells, the large families living all together in a big house and being loving and supportive with each other, and BENVENUTO.

· The Pinhoe Egg (2006): This one is also about confronted families of magic users, but this time they’re in the villages near to Chrestomanci Castle, and no one really knows there’s a feud because their spells are based on herbs and plants, not in singing opera on the streets. Cat comes back and shares the spotlight with Marianne Pinhoe, and as always I would love more Christopher Chant, but I can´t really complain.

· Mixed Magics (2000): Four short stories settled in the Chrestomanci Universe, more or less linked to the main characters. My favourite is the third one, Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream, mostly because the idea of a kid selling her dreams as stories is brilliant, but also because I loved that little moment where Christopher reviews Carol’s dreams and everything he says is the kind of critique that Diana always received on her books.

- The Homeward Bounders (1981): There are some misterious powerful people who seem to be addicted to Age of Empires, but they play it using actual worlds and actual people. When someone from these worlds find this out, they got exiled and doomed to jump from world to world, only able to stop when they manage to get back to their original world. The first act remind me a little of those stories from Arabian Nights where the main character keeps arriving to weird islands and getting into the most bizarre troubles but always manages to survive. Due to life circunstances I couldn't focus 100% on the reading, but I did enjoy the characters, mostly Helen, and Jamie eventually grew on me too. I must confess I got kinda lost with the final explanation about the game and the nature of this multiverse and what it's Real and how Hope acts literally as an anchor that keeps the system going (although I find the notion really interesting as an allegory, and once again a really cool message for kids: hope can be your prison)

- The Time of the Ghost (1981): Ok, this one was a dark trip. I can’t really say that much because everything is a spoiler. Let’s say it’s about an amnesic ghost who’s drawn to their family, and there’s a lot of sadness, pagan blood rituals (one chapter in particular has A LOT OF BLOOD for my taste), abusive relationships, and a little bit of the theme in the previous book: the negative side of hope that makes us cling to things in an unhealthy way. Also, I’ve read this book is kinda autobiographical, and it explains so much about the way DWJ used to depict families in her books, it’s heartbreaking. It has its moments of fun and sweet melancholy tho. It’s never 100% depressing with Diana. I think that’s what make it feel so realistic.

#Diana Wynne Jones #Reading EVERYTHING #2021 Resolution #DWJ Reading Project #Chrestomanci #Charmed Life #The lives of Christopher Chant #Conrad's Fate #Witch Week #The Magicians of Caprona #The Pinhoe Egg #Mixed Magics #The Homeward Bounders #The time of the Ghost

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laryna6 · 4 years

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Things I would like to write for someday:

MDZS - I do have a bunny - The Adventures of Murder Mom and Love Freak Sectmaster Dad, just energy is the issue.

Baccano - Such a delightfully crazy cast! I need to get caught up on the novels.

Diana Wynne Jones - Howl’s Moving Castle is the obvious choice, but I really like this one short story, Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream. It kind of ends on a note of ‘when she grows up she’s going to be amazing’ and I kind of want an in-universe interview about the long-awaited release of her Hundredth Dream, and how does the former blockbuster creator feel about her new work not becoming a massive hit the way her childhood work did, but Carol basically *dons shades* and is too rich to care about mass market appeal anymore.

CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner series - I was delighted to find there is fic for it! But I have a ‘verse where Bren was in the same generation as the paidhi he replaced instead, and was in court when a young Ilisidi made her trek over the mountains and Jase ends up meeting this Cool Old Guy Bren who is just not fazed anymore because long association with Ilisidi overloaded all his brain’s adrenaline receptors decades ago. So Tabini’s delight at a paidhi who is his age gets targeted at Jase, who is not the velvet glove to his admired-but-terrifying grandmother’s iron fist. (Ilisidi runs over idiots on her mecheita and then Bren provides tea and sympathy)

Dragon Quest IV - Alena showing up places in search of a fight and soloing the final bosses of various game franchises while Kyril follows her around offering apologies and seeming like a wimp until someone discovers he’s gotten *much better* at the instant death magic (courtesy of one of the spin-off games). Now-Queen Alena has been able to abolish taxation in her country and fund impressive public works programs by selling the loot from her hobby of kicking the shit out of ultimate evils, and they have a public health service that dispenses all the late-game healing items Alena doesn’t need. She also teaches martial arts classes to the various kidnapped princesses she’s run into.

Lunar: Eternal Blue - Remains the best-done romance in a video game I’ve seen to this day. On the Grand List of JRPG Cliches, it’s the namer for a trope... that it actually subverts?

Petshop of Horrors - I am so pissed that Tokyopop replaced the line with Leon revealing that he’d known what was up for ages with something random. I’m not pleased with the epilogue and did the sequel series ever stop being filler?

Koori no Mamono no Monogatari - So good and I should re-read.

Archdemon’s Dilemma - I raved about this relatively recently.

#all of the bunnies

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