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Enchanted Glass

Diana Wynne Jones

3.88 · Rating details · 5,590 ratings · 653 reviews

Aidan Cain has had the worst week of his life. His gran died, he was sent to a foster home, and now malicious beings are stalking him. There is one person Gran told Aidan to go to if he ever got into trouble—a powerful sorcerer who lives at Melstone House.

But when Aidan arrives on the doorstep, he finds that the sorcerer's grandson, Andrew, has inherited the house. The goo ...more

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Hardcover, 292 pages

Published April 6th 2010 by Greenwillow Books (first published January 1st 2010)

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Mar 24, 2011 Rhiannon Miller rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One thing I've always liked about Diana Wynne Jones' books for children is that she makes no artificial barrier between adults and children; they're all people. So rather than have the grownups dismiss or disbelieve the children's real concerns for no apparent reason other than that they're grownups, in her books parental and other adult figures listen, understand, and get stuck in to the magic. In Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones takes this a stage further: even though the book is obviously a One thing I've always liked about Diana Wynne Jones' books for children is that she makes no artificial barrier between adults and children; they're all people. So rather than have the grownups dismiss or disbelieve the children's real concerns for no apparent reason other than that they're grownups, in her books parental and other adult figures listen, understand, and get stuck in to the magic. In Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones takes this a stage further: even though the book is obviously aimed at children and young teenagers, the main protagonist is an adult in his thirties — and a real adult at that, not just an older person with a childish personality. I found the switching of viewpoints between him and the twelve-year-old secondary protagonist a good way of showing that there is no real difference between people of different ages, just different personalities.

In this book, Diana Wynne Jones takes a lot of themes she's touched upon in previous stories, reworking them and improving them in new ways. Melstone House has a very similar atmosphere to Chrstomanci Castle, with Andrew Hope as a more believeable and rather more interesting Chrestomanci reminiscent of a more sympathetic Rupert Venables from Deep Secret. There's a lot about names, their power and variation (think Eight Days of Luke); some clannish villagers, some wise, some annoying (like The Pinhoe Egg); and references to greater powers (Black Maria or, better, Power of Three). And I've always loved the way she depicts the working of magic: natural, powerful, and almost instinctive to the practitioner, not at all mechanical the way Harry Potter magic can be.

There's a well-constructed plot, with a nice little — not so much a twist as a flourish— at the end, but this takes second place to the enjoyable character interactions and atmosphere. This was a nice gentle change for me from plot-driven books where bad thing after bad thing happens and only begins to start coming right near the end. I particularly liked her handling of Andrew and his half-forgotten memories of his grandfather, subtly hinting — but never explicitly saying — that his grandfather had made sure the memories would resurface as they were needed.

I have a suspicion that in writing this book towards the end of her life, Diana Wynne Jones is deliberately looking back over her career and picking out some of her favourite ideas and giving them a work over. And I think she succeeds: it was certainly good enough for me to read it twice in quick succession, just because it was such an enjoyable world to be in, with such nice people to get to know.
...more

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Dec 12, 2019 Spencer Orey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Another gem from Diana Wynn Jones. Really funny. Great magic.

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Feb 23, 2011 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: middle-grade, fantasy, own

This is Diana Wynne Jones at her very best, a mixture of magic, humor, and sheer delight as an absent-minded professor inherits/encounters his grandfather's house, his magical field-of-care, two tyrannical servants, a giant, a weredog, a beautiful secretary, and a young boy hiding from the magical forces who are trying to kill him.

Don't worry if you're confused, it will all be sorted out in the end, as Andrew gets his head out of the clouds and begins to figure out the puzzle that has been left ...more

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Apr 02, 2010 Joel rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommended to Joel by: Connie Fletcher

Shelves: 52-in-2010, 2010, ya, sci-fi-fantasy, library-books, add-half-a-star, dwj

2.5 stars.

I had to choose the UK edition, as the cover of the US version is totally lame. Who do they think it's going to appeal to? Boys won't want to read it because it has rainbow swirls, and girls won't want to read it because it's about a smelly boy. I certainly felt stupid finishing it in Starbucks this afternoon (though I did get to sit next to the old lady with a Kindle and her iPad-wielding elderly husband again... the second time I've encountered these tech-savvy retirees).

So this is a 2.5 stars.

I had to choose the UK edition, as the cover of the US version is totally lame. Who do they think it's going to appeal to? Boys won't want to read it because it has rainbow swirls, and girls won't want to read it because it's about a smelly boy. I certainly felt stupid finishing it in Starbucks this afternoon (though I did get to sit next to the old lady with a Kindle and her iPad-wielding elderly husband again... the second time I've encountered these tech-savvy retirees).

So this is a pleasant book with thoroughly delightful characters, but I have to admit that I often didn't have a very good idea of what was going on. There's something about faerie kings and magical doppelgangers and mysterious parentage and the eponymous glass that does... I'm note sure what. Something magical. It involves magnets? It's quite like Howl's Moving Castle in that way; that book also told a confusing story about very likable characters. I suss that's just Diana Wynne Jones' style -- she doesn't work to over-explain everything, allowing for the mystery in the magical to remain. This is probably more of a problem for her adult readers; kids get wrapped up in books in a different way, and the linear aspects of the plot are less important, because of course the magic colored glass is magical, like, no doy.

It's better to focus on the quirky, slightly familiar characters -- the fussy gardener, the grouchy housekeeper -- which all have the same last name, Stock, which is probably DWJ's little joke, especially considering all the scattered references to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I've got a whole stack of DWJ to enjoy, but I really wish I'd encountered her as a kid, because I think that's when she was meant to be read.

EDIT, SPOILERS:

Oh, so I totally forgot to mention one really weird thing about this book, which requires a reveal of one of the key mysteries. Specifically, we find out that one of the main characters, a young boy, is not, in fact, the offspring of the fairy king but of a seemingly benevolent old magician, who dies on page one. The boy's mother seems to have been a bit of a problem child, sent to the magician for "looking after" by her grandmother when the girl was a teenager. Um, so basically the 60-something magician had sex with a 16-year-old (this is excused by stating she "threw herself at him," and also maybe because women can bewitch men with spells?), knocked her up, and blamed it all on fairy magic. I guess it worked! I'm totally going to file that away for future reference. Also, WTF, DWJ? ...more

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Feb 18, 2010 Wealhtheow rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

On the death of his grandfather, Andrew leaves his professorship to run the family home...and the accompanying magical estate. As he grows used to his new responsibilities, he remembers more and more of what his grandfather taught him about magic, and he starts noticing encroachment on his magical lands. Andrew tries to beat back the fairies' slow invasion with the (sometimes inadvertent) help of his fellow villagers.

This is a lovely book, and I absolutely love the way the village, Melstone Hous ...more

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Aug 12, 2015 Sanne (SignedbySanne) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, owned-physical, middle-grade, fantasy, read-in-2015, read-in-2018

This book was really great!

I picked it up because I had it in my scribd library and was looking for something whimsical and fun to read. I had never read any of Diana Wynne Jones books before, but I saw Neil Gaiman had given this book 5 stars and he is one of my favourite authors.

This was very different from middle grade fantasy that I have read before. It feels very magical throughout the book (although in the beginning there's just small things happening) it really captures this whimsical fee ...more

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Jul 23, 2020 Arie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, big-old-houses

Brilliant audiobook reading of another excellent Diana Wynne Jones tale.

(Though... I didn't notice this the first time around but I could have really done without the final, last-page revelation that feels... deeply problematic) ...more

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Dec 14, 2019 Laura rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ya, audible, fantasy, 2019, british, british-setting

3.5 stars. To be fair to this book, I think if I had the paper book as well as the audiobook and could've switched back and forth like I usually do, I'd have enjoyed this a lot more.

Having only the audiobook and a wandering, distracted mind didn't contribute to maximum enjoyment of this one. I can almost bet I missed a paragraph here or there while multi-tasking that I'd have caught had I switched to the paper book at night.

Saying that though, I always enjoy this author's writing. Her magic is ...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Emily rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy, ya-fiction, missing-somehow

Diana Wynne Jones is my all-time favorite author, and I really enjoyed this book. However - especially compared to her previous work - I felt like the characters and world-building weren't as strong, and it had the younger feel of The Pinhoe Egg as opposed to the older feel of something like Fire and Hemlock. The idea of "counterparts" didn't go far enough. But I did love another DWJ read and hope I continue to get one every few years! ...more

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May 26, 2010 Miranda rated it liked it · review of another edition

I've followed DWJ's books for a loooong time - I can't say with authority that I've read all of them, but I've certainly read most, at one time or another. My husband grabbed this for me when he saw it at the library. It's engaging and well-constructed, with likeable characters, as usual... but there are a couple of things about it that really kind of bother me. First, within the first two chapters, we have three dead mothers and a dead grandmother in the backgrounds of the various main characte ...more

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Feb 28, 2010 Jeremy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Beautiful Beautiful Beautiful. I was so excited to have a brand-new DWJ book to read, that wa unrelated to what had come before. New characters, new people to meet. Her standard themes were there, where she gathers a group of disparate people into one place, antagonistic toward each other they may be, with the right characteristics to step up to the plate to defeat the bad guys when the other members fail. Diana Wynne Jones knows and illustrates the value of the group and the individual's unique ...more

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Jan 15, 2010 Margaret rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-and-science-fiction, 2011-read, 2010-read, children-s-and-ya-fiction, authors-ij, 2015-read

I love DWJ and would rather have a new book from her than almost any other children's author I can think of, and I had a lot of fun reading this one: neat magic, excellent characters, very funny. That said, though, I did think it was rather derivative of a couple of her other recent books (The Pinhoe Egg and House of Many Ways came to mind a lot), so I wouldn't put it with her top-rank books. ...more

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May 22, 2018 C.J. Milbrandt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: _bought-for-home-shelf, here-there-be-orphans, magical-realism, folk-lore-feel, here-there-be-runaways

Andrew Hope inherits his grandfather's field-of-care, although he's a bit vague on what that entails. He has his hands full with the housekeeper and his gardener, who dislike change almost as much as they dislike each other. Then young Aiden shows up on his doorstep. Having a twelve-year-old boy about the place rather opens Andrew's eyes to the magic he's been forgetting.

Overgrown vege and walking the boundaries. Magical knacks and cauliflower cheese. Racing results and polishing glasses. Stain ...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Ranting Dragon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: caleigh

http://www.rantingdragon.com/enchante...

Enchanted Glass is Diana Wynne Jones’s last published book before her death on March 26, 2011. The novel is a charming young adult standalone in Wynne Jones’s trademark style, beloved by many and unique in British children’s literature. Professor Andrew Hope—he isn’t really a professor; he just happens to work at a university—inherits the old Melstone House and its ornery retinue after the death of Andrew’s grandfather, Jocelyn. Of course, Jocelyn w http://www.rantingdragon.com/enchante...

Enchanted Glass is Diana Wynne Jones’s last published book before her death on March 26, 2011. The novel is a charming young adult standalone in Wynne Jones’s trademark style, beloved by many and unique in British children’s literature. Professor Andrew Hope—he isn’t really a professor; he just happens to work at a university—inherits the old Melstone House and its ornery retinue after the death of Andrew’s grandfather, Jocelyn. Of course, Jocelyn was more than just an old country esquire; he was also the local wizard, and Andrew inherits Jocelyn’s magical field-of-care along with the house. Then Aidan, a clever orphan, shows up on Andrew’s doorstep, and the pair quickly come to realize that there’s more to this whole “field-of-care” thing than meets the eye.

Hilariously quirky characters
This will come to no surprise to long-time readers of Diana Wynne Jones: the characters in Enchanted Glass are delightful. There is Mrs. Stock, the commandeering housekeeper who enforces her opinion on proper living room furniture arrangement by cooking up a dreadful cauliflower cheese each lunchtime. There is also Mr. Stock (no relation to Mrs. Stock—it’s just that kind of town), the grouchy, prize-winning gardener who announces his displeasure by dumping an enormous box of inedible vegetables on the kitchen table each morning. There is also Groil, the gentle giant who eats those vegetables after Andrew hides them on top of the woodshed. My own personal favorite is Stashe, Andrew’s bossy sparkplug of a secretary who prowls the house looking for papers to organize and problems to solve, but becomes a problem of her own when Andrew begins to notice just how attractive she is.

The other characters are no exception, and you’ll have fun meeting each in turn. Andrew’s trials with household management are full of gentle, sparkling humor, which more than offsets this next point:

Not all that much happens
For all the quirky characters and magical mishaps, Enchanted Glass is surprisingly thin on plot. Although Jones obviously and happily did not intend to write a thriller here, the novel is still more a series of discoveries rather than a series of conflicts. The climax, while hilariously slapstick, is barely brought about by Andrew or Aidan. The villains—drawn from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and from older, deeper English mythology—are funnier than they are scary. And for a long while at the beginning, not too much happens other than Andrew and Mrs. Stock waging war over the position of the piano in the living room.

Joyful, breezy writing
Luckily, Jones makes this work. Like I said, the humour is gentle, but occasionally Jones surprises with a wickedly funny joke or adult problem—not enough to be inappropriate for young readers, of course, but adding enough sophistication to make Enchanted Glass a fun read even for an adult. The prose brings the word “rollicking” to mind, and the dialogue is perfect. This is an easy, happy read, and it’s easy to see why it’s great for young readers, but a welcome and refreshing break for older readers, too.

Why should you read this book?
Enchanted Glass is a shining example of why Diana Wynne Jones is a household name for children’s literature. Fun, buoyant, and full of good humor, the story is bound to put anyone in a happy mood, and the witty prose is sharp enough for the most discerning reader. Save this one for a sunny day, find a tree to read under, and don’t forget to bring a sandwich. ...more

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Sep 06, 2012 Cecelia rated it it was amazing

I should know by now not to mind the terrible covers on Diana Wynne Jones books. That said, if there’s one thing I know about my bookish self, it’s that I’m incredibly snobby about cover art. So, even though I trust her storytelling implicitly (and explicitly, for that matter), I was put off by this ugly cover and didn't read Enchanted Glass right away. I now wish I had, because in this middle grade fantasy Diana has created a marvelous story, characters and place, and I can see that I’ll be ret I should know by now not to mind the terrible covers on Diana Wynne Jones books. That said, if there’s one thing I know about my bookish self, it’s that I’m incredibly snobby about cover art. So, even though I trust her storytelling implicitly (and explicitly, for that matter), I was put off by this ugly cover and didn't read Enchanted Glass right away. I now wish I had, because in this middle grade fantasy Diana has created a marvelous story, characters and place, and I can see that I’ll be returning to visit its magic again and again.

Have you read Diana Wynne Jones? She’s famous (and rightfully so) for writing fantastical stories about worlds tilted just enough off the reality axis to make strange happenings normal, and to make off-kilter responses to those happenings absolutely necessary. Did that make sense? Let me try again. DWJ is a genius, and she’ll show you magic in a way that is completely new, and sideways, and just-as-it-should-be, all at the same time. Stumbling into one of her worlds only becomes, as Alice said of Wonderland, ‘curioser and curiouser.’

Is it quite clear that I loved this book? I’ll tell you why, then. Enchanted Glass is a double story: it follows thirty year-old professor Andrew Hope and a quite young (12? 13?) Aidan Cain. Andrew has been given a task, but isn’t quite sure what it entails. Aidan is being chased by dangerous not-humans. They each have magic, and they are each drawn to Melstone House… But what are they to do about Aidan’s predicament, and what is Andrew’s inheritance that he can’t find or remember? Unraveling these mysteries will take all of the courage, concentration and luck that both Andrew and Aidan can muster. It is a challenge that will change Melstone, and their lives, forever.

What that summary doesn’t convey is the charm and wit and rightness of Jones’ writing. While there’s always a ‘something large and potentially world threatening’ going on in the background, the characters live very much in the moment, and their actions feel real and justified. Those characters are also authentic: if they’re smart, they’re often blind to a particular problem. If they seem simple, there is something hiding beneath the surface. And even the side characters are never, ever extraneous to the story. That is why a story about a small, magical village feels important and true and beautiful, and why I love Diana Wynne Jones’ writing.

If I must find something to pick over, it’s that there aren’t any female main characters in this story. But there is generational diversity (old, young, in-between!) and species diversity, and most importantly, the end result is a magical tale masterfully told.

Recommended for: all ages, fans of fantasy, fans of Diana Wynne Jones, and anyone who liked J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. ...more

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Mar 23, 2011 Chris rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dwj, fantasy

When Andrew's grandfather Jocelyn Brandon Hope dies, Andrew Hope inherits Melstone House and land. However, all is not what it seems -- Jocelyn Hope was in fact a magician and the surrounding land is deemed a 'field of care', meaning that Andrew has to 'beat the bounds' in order to retain its magical power. Andrew's childhood fondness for Melstone House now becomes complicated by its infusion with magic, especially the strangely coloured glass on an inside door and a counterpart he discovers in When Andrew's grandfather Jocelyn Brandon Hope dies, Andrew Hope inherits Melstone House and land. However, all is not what it seems -- Jocelyn Hope was in fact a magician and the surrounding land is deemed a 'field of care', meaning that Andrew has to 'beat the bounds' in order to retain its magical power. Andrew's childhood fondness for Melstone House now becomes complicated by its infusion with magic, especially the strangely coloured glass on an inside door and a counterpart he discovers in the grounds. More confusion reigns with the presence of a stern housekeeper and a stubborn gardener and the arrival of a twelve-year-old orphan called Aidan Cain needing protection from stalkers. Then there is neighbour Mr Brown, who seems intent on trespassing on Andrew's field of care. Luckily he has an ally in the gardener's niece Stashe to counteract all the events conspiring against him.

Like many Diana Wynne Jones titles, half the fun of Enchanted Glass for adult readers comes not just in being pulled along by the storytelling but in attempting to read between the lines. A feature of this fantasy is the links with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- key fairy characters, namely Oberon, Titania and Puck, reappear here, and there is a temptation to go searching for other covert appearances: are Andrew and Stache, for example, equivalent to Theseus and Hippolyta?

There are in addition various themes, such as the country custom of Beating the Bounds and the nature of the set of two enchanted windows, that beg to be developed further than is here, which suggest a possible sequel was planned before the author's untimely death. I do also wonder about those middle and last names of Andrew's grandfather, as the author's Clifton home was around the corner from a prominent Bristol landmark, Brandon Hill, and near a community arts centre in a converted chapel called the Hope Centre, which Jones must have known: how many other personal in-jokes must there be in this very English novel?

However, and this is also a mild criticism of some of Jones' books, there is the feeling of a rushed ending and of unresolved issues which slightly mar one's enjoyment of a tale well told, but she is so inventive that I would be ungenerous if I couldn't forgive her this one flaw. Enchanted Glass is chockfull of her ideas, fizzing and popping away like indoor fireworks, and it is marvellous to view it all through the tinted spectacles of her imagination.

http://wp.me/s2oNj1-glass ...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Deborah Ross rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Any new book by Jones is a delicious treat, a reason to put down whatever else I'm doing and curl up with a cup of tea. This one, however, came with special poignancy because I received it just after I learned of her death. So I opened the pages with a kind of sadness, not wanting to admit that in many ways, this was farewell. (If there is another book to be published posthumously, I don't know of it.)

And found magic. Within a few paragraphs, her clear prose and unaffectedly direct storytelling ...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Joanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, children-ya

I think I might be in love... I gulped this book down marveling all the while how can a story so magical be so casual, so matter of fact about it? The mythical characters strolling nonchalantly into the story, the ancient magic radiating from everything in sight brought with them only the surprised remembrance, as if like Andrew I had simply forgotten about it all and now that I have remembered again nothing could be more natural.

It's one of those books that make me bemoan the fact that I did no ...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Arie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, fantasy-unusual, faerytales, children

Delightful perfection. All I can say right now, review to come later...

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Apr 18, 2010 Nic rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book has a lot of the great writing - characters especially - for which I love DWJ. Not one of my favorites of hers, but they can't all be Howl's Moving Castle. (Or Chrestomanci. Can we have more Chrestomanci now pretty pretty pleeeease?)

An interesting first: I'm pretty sure no other DWJ book has ever mentioned the Internet, though quite a few have included computers.

I like the idea of the glass itself, and the fact that the fairies are the classic Oberon-and-Titania set. I like the way Aid ...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, dogs, coming-of-age

Man, those pages turn. Not on par with Howl's Moving Castle or Dark Lord of Derkhelm, but a whole lot of fun. I love the smart way Jones plays with the tropes of fantasy. Doubling is a classic technique, and she puts the reader on the path to understanding it very well. Plus, one of the bad guys gets beaned - quite effectively - with a giant zucchini. Happy sigh. ...more

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Jun 25, 2016 Julie rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, from-library, middle-grade, 2016

I so enjoyed this book. I am pretty likely to pick up any Diana Wynne Jones book I run across if I haven't read it before. This one was especially fun. I was drawn to all the characters, and really had a good time watching the events play out. It's very playful with some impressive magical bits as well. So glad I found this book! ...more

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Mar 05, 2017 Lorelei rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Lorelei by: Laura

Shelves: sf

If I'd read this as a teenager, I would have given it five stars. ...more

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Dec 02, 2020 Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, for-the-easily-entertained, children

This is not literature. Obviously not. However I enjoyed it mightily as a bedtime read. Well, most of it anyway. The first 3/4 went by very quickly, and I remember remarking to my husband as I lay there reading, "I better put this away or I'll be here till 3 AM."

However. Titania and Oberon? Really? Kids (for whom this book was most definitely intended) would probably not get the Midsummer Night's Dream reference unless someone had taken them to the play or they had seen the DVD. And then it jus ...more

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Mar 20, 2020 Carmen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020, children-infantil-juvenil, fantasy-fantasía

Now that he understood, Andrew could feel magic pouring in, homing in Melstone from light years away. It was being collected here. Someone, long ago, had set up the two sets of enchanted glass, the one here in the kitchen and the one in the roof of the shed, to act like two poles of an enormous horseshoe magnet, pulling magic into the field-of-care. The Brandon's main task was to protect this glass. They were supposed to used it for the good of the earth.

...more

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Jun 04, 2019 J.R. Dodson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Certainly not a perfect book, and perhaps an inflated rating, but it has a sort of sleepiness and haze that I enjoy in a fantasy. Jones wrote in a way that would find the magic in the mundane.

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Nov 30, 2012 Olga Godim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-scifi

This was an enchanting story, full of magic. I don’t usually read children’s books, and I never read Diana Wynne Jones before although I watched and liked the Manga version of her novel, Howl's Moving Castle. This book – I fell in love with. I enjoyed it tremendously and I’m definitely going to read more of this writer. Much more.
This particular tale is a quiet one. There are two protagonists: Andrew, an adult, and Aidan, a child. Andrew’s grandfather, the magician, died, and left Andrew a legac This was an enchanting story, full of magic. I don’t usually read children’s books, and I never read Diana Wynne Jones before although I watched and liked the Manga version of her novel, Howl's Moving Castle. This book – I fell in love with. I enjoyed it tremendously and I’m definitely going to read more of this writer. Much more.
This particular tale is a quiet one. There are two protagonists: Andrew, an adult, and Aidan, a child. Andrew’s grandfather, the magician, died, and left Andrew a legacy: his house and his land – his field-of-care. Andrew had spent lots of time with his grandfather as a boy, but by now – he’s a teacher at a university – he has all but forgotten about his grandfather’s magic. He has to relearn it fast if he is to save Aidan and the land from the wicked Mr. Brown.
Aidan, a magically gifted boy, naive and curious as only a child could be, comes to live with Andrew after his grandmother died. There is symmetry there, although while Andrew is settling into his new life as a resident magician, Aidan is running away from the fairy folks who for some reason are hunting him.
Andrew takes Aidan in, and the little details of their everyday existence fill the book. It should have been boring but surprisingly it’s not. The magical talent of the writer makes every tiny twinkle in their lives absorbing and slightly mysterious.
Magical and mundane intertwine in this tale, as the author weaves her tapestry of all the separate threads, all the lives revolving around Aidan, and they all sparkle – every filament gilded with fantasy. One thread consists of the antics of Andrew’s strong-minded housekeeper. Another is enriched by his gardener's quirks and oversized vegetables. And then there are Aidan’s friends: the were-dog Rolf and the vegetable-gobbling giant Groil.
The story progresses without haste, but despite the inherent humor, subtle and infused with double-meaning, the tension mounts inexorably, as Mr. Brown sends his minions, one after another, to capture Aidan. Andrew must master his magic in a hurry to thwart the encroaching Mr. Brown and extricate Aidan from his deepening troubles.
The culmination strikes during the annual village Fete, and of course the shameless Mr. Brown cheats at every competition. What else would you expect from a villain?
Besides the two protagonists, the writer’s imagination populated this novel with a slew of secondary characters, all of them colorful and necessary, all of them adding one more facet to the magic of the tale.
The novel is deceptively simple on the surface, but its underlying complexity is adorned by a palette as polychromatic as the enchanted glass of the title. Utterly delightful.
...more

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Dec 25, 2010 Nicky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

In a way, all Diana Wynne Jones' books remind me of each other. There's something very similar in the style of them -- though Enchanted Glass is perhaps a bit more subdued than the others -- and yet also something fresh, every time, something in the tone... A feeling, I suppose, that I wish Diana Wynne Jones would come and tell me bedtime stories, in a way: something about her stories would make my toes curl with glee at the same time as I would know it would be okay to go to sleep.

Enchanted Gla ...more

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Nov 19, 2014 Michele rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ya

A fun story with nods to Shakespeare, British folklore, and classic faerie tropes. Andrew Hope is the classic absent-minded professor, who stumbles into an old feud when he inherits his uncle's field-of-care and unwittingly exacerbates it by taking a young boy under his protection. The boy, Aidan (whose name nobody except his friends can pronounce correctly -- a handy device for spot-the-foe), is clever, funny and kind; he makes friends not only with the local boys but also with the somewhat-slo ...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Lia Marcoux rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I could NOT believe that my woefully inadequate local library had a Diana Wynne Jones book I hadn't read before (one summer I read 40 or so, and that, at the time, seemed to cover it), and I am delighted that it did. Enchanted Glass is reliably weird, and for a change, it's set in a lovely bucolic setting. I especially like the punishment vegetables. Jones invites you into her own logic without romanticism or explanation, and as with all her good books, it stretches out the inside of your head a ...more

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About Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones

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Diana was born in London, the daughter of Marjorie (née Jackson) and Richard Aneurin Jones, both of whom were teachers. When war was announced, shortly after her fifth birthday, she was evacuated to Wales, and thereafter moved several times, including periods in Coniston Water, in York, and back in London. In 1943 her family finally settled in Thaxted, Essex, where her parents worked running an ed Diana was born in London, the daughter of Marjorie (née Jackson) and Richard Aneurin Jones, both of whom were teachers. When war was announced, shortly after her fifth birthday, she was evacuated to Wales, and thereafter moved several times, including periods in Coniston Water, in York, and back in London. In 1943 her family finally settled in Thaxted, Essex, where her parents worked running an educational conference centre. There, Jones and her two younger sisters Isobel (later Professor Isobel Armstrong, the literary critic) and Ursula (later an actress and a children's writer) spent a childhood left chiefly to their own devices. After attending the Friends School Saffron Walden, she studied English at St Anne's College in Oxford, where she attended lectures by both C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien before graduating in 1956. In the same year she married John Burrow, a scholar of medieval literature, with whom she had three sons, Richard, Michael and Colin. After a brief period in London, in 1957 the couple returned to Oxford, where they stayed until moving to Bristol in 1976.

According to her autobiography, Jones decided she was an atheist when she was a child.

Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep my sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college. Beside the children, she felt harried by the crises of adults in the household: a sick husband, a mother-in-law, a sister, and a friend with daughter. Her first book was a novel for adults published by Macmillan in 1970, entitled Changeover. It originated as the British Empire was divesting colonies; she recalled in 2004 that it had "seemed like every month, we would hear that yet another small island or tiny country had been granted independence."Changeover is set in a fictional African colony during transition, and begins as a memo about the problem of how to "mark changeover" ceremonially is misunderstood to be about the threat of a terrorist named Mark Changeover. It is a farce with a large cast of characters, featuring government, police, and army bureaucracies; sex, politics, and news. In 1965, when Rhodesia declared independence unilaterally (one of the last colonies and not tiny), "I felt as if the book were coming true as I wrote it."

Jones' books range from amusing slapstick situations to sharp social observation (Changeover is both), to witty parody of literary forms. Foremost amongst the latter are The Tough Guide To Fantasyland, and its fictional companion-pieces Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) and Year of the Griffin (2000), which provide a merciless (though not unaffectionate) critique of formulaic sword-and-sorcery epics.

The Harry Potter books are frequently compared to the works of Diana Wynne Jones. Many of her earlier children's books were out of print in recent years, but have now been re-issued for the young audience whose interest in fantasy and reading was spurred by Harry Potter.

Jones' works are also compared to those of Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman. She was friends with both McKinley and Gaiman, and Jones and Gaiman are fans of each other's work; she dedicated her 1993 novel Hexwood to him after something he said in conversation inspired a key part of the plot. Gaiman had already dedicated his 1991 four-part comic book mini-series The Books of Magic to "four witches", of whom Jones was one.

For Charmed Life, the first Chrestomanci novel, Jones won the 1978 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime award by The Guardian newspaper that is judged by a panel of children's writers. Three times she was a commended runner-up[a] for the Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book: for Dogsbody (1975), Charmed Life (1977), and the fourth Chrestomanci book The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988). She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, children's section, in 1996 for The Crown of Dalemark. ...more

Books by Diana Wynne Jones

Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1)

Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle, #2)

House of Many Ways (Howl's Moving Castle, #3)

The Lives of Christopher Chant (Chrestomanci, #2)

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“I seem to have excalibured this knife.” — 55 likes

“But I do think that when people say 'a learning curve,' they make a mistake. Learning to me always seems to go in a straight, ignorant line and then, every so often, takes a jump straight upward.” — 35 likes

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