Jonathan's comments (member since Aug 09, 2008)

Jonathan's comments from the Diana Wynne Jones Fans group.

Girl who reads all the time (this is the third book in as many days, all different authors, where the heroine reads all the time! Such a blatant appeal to the reader, who probably is and does!)

Anyway back to business, she has influential connections, meets a domestically inclined male, has a distant mother (as usual in DWJ), and saves the impoverished pocket kingdom! Lots of fun on the way with evil purple people, Wizards impersonating children, screaming children, bags of laundry, a magical house and a cute little dog. And a hot tin roof.

Issues of republicanism, class struggle and nepotism are not directly addressed :)

I couldn't remember so checked, and lo on page 189 she is both married and heavily pregnant.

And Luke is quite realistically bad.

He liked Lettie, though I don't remember if anything came of it.

Luke's relatives competing over who is the most ill is a real highlight.

Speaking of burning things ... There are some great witch burning scenes in Witch Week, and some great fire starting episodes in Eight Days of Luke.

Let me damn it with faint praise instead :) The writing is a bit clunky, but the plotting was good for the first few. The films are good :) Some people I know** who hate fantasy writing in general simply love HP, it confirms their stereotypes about fantasy being for children and when stuff is aimed at children it is ok to be a little bit crap.

BUT I say it is NOT OK! Burn them all with really hot flames and give the people all a book by DWJ (back from when she was really good, not one of the new ones obviously).

Ha! Stop winding me up:)

HP is for Lovely Ordinary Sensibilities Everyday Readily Shared, where Charmed Life is really good. The Many Lives of Christopher Chant is good too. It was written quite a lot later on and has a different atmosphere being a prequel. Witch Week and the Magicians of Caprona have Chrestomanci in fully powered vagueness.

If I joined it I might have to post on it and then where would we be?

Howard's dad, Quentin Sykes (from Archer's Goon), who rages about taxpayer's money despite not *spoiler cough* paying anything himself. Archer himself with his vast genius ego, his brother who didn't wink but 'got paint in my eye', the rest of the criminal family, and the stupendous Awful. Really I love them all, even the smelly old goon :)

Sheri S Tepper is a lot of fun, her only drawback is her occasional tendency to decide that all men (sometimes all humanity) are evil, and that the world/universe would be better off without them. Good writer though :)

It is the old 'lose them to save them' thing.

You can vote for as many as you like and re-order them on the right hand side of your screen, but the more you vote for the less each vote counts, this strikes me as a bit weird because it gives greater 'fire power' to people who have read fewer of the books on the list, but it's only for fun :)

Please vote for your favourite on the Listopia List.

I have re-read Cart & Cwidder to remind myself. One thing that I loved and at the same time appalled me, was the way in which certain characters from earlier books are portrayed in later books from different points of view in a much less sympathetic light. I was kind of aghast that DWJ had done this, thinking 'No! What have you done, that's not right at all', but I admire that she was brave enough to do it :)

Larger than life musician hauls his family into a world of trouble. Political disputes and old loves combine to change the children's lives forever.

One of the few DWJ books to feature parents, but worry not, they are swiftly pushed out of the main action.

The background politics, the day to day grind of life and the myths of ancient singers work very well to ground the story, it all feels very real, as does the parents marriage and the feeling they have for one another. The songs and legends work in the way Tolkien uses them to build the sense of a world far bigger than the small story we see in detail.

This all leads up to an absolute storm of magic as the action builds to a rather similar magical weapon as seen in "The Blue Sword" (Robin McKinley), or "Three Against the Witch World" (Andre Norton).

Not a long book, but memorable. DWJ is always so good at feelings.

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Less good things: Despite poor Lenina's unhappy state, I can't really believe the way she treats Brid and Moril, they are 13 and 11 for goodness sake...

Not in a "I must force my reading onto you"! But sometimes she does run out of her own books and I could have one ready to lend...

DWJ has two strikes against it, being fantasy (this is a fairly large crime except in the case of Harry Potter), and being Juvenile (this a moderate crime). She tends to like Sagas and more grown up fare and Austen.

Maybe Fire and Hemlock, being more romantic than most and having Schooling (just like HP). This is no doubt a pointless quest, praps I would do better with George R R Martin (just like the Wars of the Roses, which is just like the Tudors, which is on TV). There is a kind of logic in there somewhere.

I think I prefer Mr Wedding, he has a similar feel to Chrestomanci about him, though much less powerful :)

In American Gods by Neil Gaiman, he also uses Norse Gods, though in a much more gore heavy fashion. Not child friendly :) I would say though that in that book his version of the gods is much more similar to the Odin and Loki from "Swords and Ice Magic" by Fritz Leiber, where they are also a pair of malign wanderers. Hmm, it is hard to really discuss this without spoilers!

Eight Days of Luke is DWJ at the peak of her powers, linking the rather strained personal circumstances of David with the world of Nose mythology.

David's no-good relations manage to make his poignant situation hilarious in their disregard for David's feelings. There is a wonderful scene where two of them compete over who is the most unwell. As always when DWJ is on song each character has a strong personality, and David's emotional reactions to everything that happens just feel so right even in the strangest of circumstances.

The mythology is worked in day by day as you would expect :) I remember being at school when the origin of the names of days and months was explained and being quite amazed that Christianity allowed them to survive.

Altogether a tremendous book, similar in some ways to the much more recent "The Game" but better.