I belong to Chrestomanci Castle
Sunday, 27 March 2011 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtA happy day playing quite a lot of Dragon Age yesterday (I'm getting better at setting tactics), but I got to my Twitter feed late last night to see that Diana Wynne Jones had died. This wasn't entirely a shock, I had a horrible suspicion it was her when Neil Gaiman tweeted about a friend on their way out, but it was still incredibly sad, and I'm still rather weepy. She's probably in my top 3 favourite fantasy authors ever.
I'm not sure if I should be glad or sorry that I never read any of her novels when I was actually a kid - if they would have been a richer or poorer experience than reading them as an adult. On the whole, I don't think it matters. I can't at this stage even remember who introduced me to her novels and which one I read first, but it was sometime in my first few years of university. (Vague suspicion rests on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
virtualkathy, and possibly Fire and Hemlock, or The Power of Three. I know the Evil Landlord hit me with Archer's Goon at some stage, but I think it was later). She's always been the author whose next book I will automatically buy, without question, in hardback if necessary, and which I will automatically enjoy. She never had off days. Each novel was a perfect, quirky, original, meaningful thing.
DWJ is the ultimate literary exemplar of the thing that Buffy got right, what JK Rowling dreams of being, vainly, in her most aspirational moments - fantasy that uses magic and symbol intelligently and with considerable emotional reality to talk about human experiences, issues, angsts. The Ogre Downstairs is the perfect Difficult Step-parent novel, through the lens of an enchanted chemistry set. Archer's Goon is the ultimate sibling rivalry cautionary tale. Black Maria is about emotional manipulation and gender stereotyping. They're brilliantly written, sharp and humorous and warm, and jam-packed with ideas - she tucks away in odd narrative corners whole edifices of fancy around which a lesser writer could construct an entire novel.
It's difficult to say which are my favourite DWJ books, because as I think of them, each of them becomes the obvious candidate. I have a very soft spot for Chrestomanci, the dashing, witheringly sarcastic enchanter in the midst of alternate realities, and the rabble of gifted and chaotic children who surround him (and as one of which he started himself). The Chrestomanci regulation of magic is a more intelligent and Victorian precursor to Rowling's Ministry of Magic, and has a far more real sense of the costs of power, control and responsibility. But I am also enamoured of the chatty, down-to-earth witchery of Sophie and her sisters in the Howl's Moving Castle series, as well as Howl himself, and of the beautiful, devastating critique of bad fantasy and bad teaching in The Dark Lord of Derkholm and its sequel. And, of course, the magic-infested fantasy convention in Deep Secret makes me incredibly happy, as does the alternate-worldery of The Merlin Conspiracy. Also, salamanders. And Minnie the elephant.
I give up. I love them all. I re-read them often, and in fact over the last week or so I've just ambled contentedly through the Howl series yet again. The long row of DWJ books in my shelves is a storehouse of treasures, an old friend, a magic box which I open to connect me with someone who I wish I could have met: a warm, vibrant, vital, slightly mad mind with an earthy sense of reality and a sharp and compassionate eye. I can't bear to think that my DWJ collection is now complete, that there will never be another new book from her. The rising young stars of the fantasy genre will have to scramble to match her. But they'll never be her. She was an original.
I'm not sure if I should be glad or sorry that I never read any of her novels when I was actually a kid - if they would have been a richer or poorer experience than reading them as an adult. On the whole, I don't think it matters. I can't at this stage even remember who introduced me to her novels and which one I read first, but it was sometime in my first few years of university. (Vague suspicion rests on
virtualkathy, and possibly Fire and Hemlock, or The Power of Three. I know the Evil Landlord hit me with Archer's Goon at some stage, but I think it was later). She's always been the author whose next book I will automatically buy, without question, in hardback if necessary, and which I will automatically enjoy. She never had off days. Each novel was a perfect, quirky, original, meaningful thing. DWJ is the ultimate literary exemplar of the thing that Buffy got right, what JK Rowling dreams of being, vainly, in her most aspirational moments - fantasy that uses magic and symbol intelligently and with considerable emotional reality to talk about human experiences, issues, angsts. The Ogre Downstairs is the perfect Difficult Step-parent novel, through the lens of an enchanted chemistry set. Archer's Goon is the ultimate sibling rivalry cautionary tale. Black Maria is about emotional manipulation and gender stereotyping. They're brilliantly written, sharp and humorous and warm, and jam-packed with ideas - she tucks away in odd narrative corners whole edifices of fancy around which a lesser writer could construct an entire novel.
It's difficult to say which are my favourite DWJ books, because as I think of them, each of them becomes the obvious candidate. I have a very soft spot for Chrestomanci, the dashing, witheringly sarcastic enchanter in the midst of alternate realities, and the rabble of gifted and chaotic children who surround him (and as one of which he started himself). The Chrestomanci regulation of magic is a more intelligent and Victorian precursor to Rowling's Ministry of Magic, and has a far more real sense of the costs of power, control and responsibility. But I am also enamoured of the chatty, down-to-earth witchery of Sophie and her sisters in the Howl's Moving Castle series, as well as Howl himself, and of the beautiful, devastating critique of bad fantasy and bad teaching in The Dark Lord of Derkholm and its sequel. And, of course, the magic-infested fantasy convention in Deep Secret makes me incredibly happy, as does the alternate-worldery of The Merlin Conspiracy. Also, salamanders. And Minnie the elephant.
I give up. I love them all. I re-read them often, and in fact over the last week or so I've just ambled contentedly through the Howl series yet again. The long row of DWJ books in my shelves is a storehouse of treasures, an old friend, a magic box which I open to connect me with someone who I wish I could have met: a warm, vibrant, vital, slightly mad mind with an earthy sense of reality and a sharp and compassionate eye. I can't bear to think that my DWJ collection is now complete, that there will never be another new book from her. The rising young stars of the fantasy genre will have to scramble to match her. But they'll never be her. She was an original.
