A plethora of Diana Wynne Jones
Feb. 5th, 2011 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnThere was a dead silence. In fact, the silence was so very dead that Abdullah realized that the sixty ears... [mild spoilers redacted]... anyway, that all these ears were at that moment focused entirely upon what he and Flower-in-the-Night were saying.
"Talk among yourselves!" he shouted.
The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, "The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of." -Castle in the Air
Of course I liked all of these. I've never met a DWJ I didn't like! (Um, well, okay, a couple with squicky large-age-power-disparity relationships, but that just meant I hated the romance, not the writing.)
Enchanted Glass: A nice sweet little book, though nothing special. The thing I like about DWJ is that even when you're old enough you can guess the plot far quicker and easier than when you were little, it's still worth reading.
Castle in the Air: Reread. This book was way more charming than I remembered -- I think part of my previous disappointment was that I was expecting it, well, to be a straight sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. But, of course, DWJ doesn't do straight sequels. Much better to think of it as a book that takes place in the universe of HMC, with some shared characters, as I did this time around, and I really liked it.
House of Many Ways: I liked Castle in the Air better, but this one did have the quality, rare in DWJ books, that there was no extra-powerful character come to save the day in the end. (Think about it. Almost all her books are like this. The Undying, the Chrestomanci, etc. Howl counts in HMC, since from the POV of the main character he's extra-powerful.)
"Talk among yourselves!" he shouted.
The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, "The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of." -Castle in the Air
Of course I liked all of these. I've never met a DWJ I didn't like! (Um, well, okay, a couple with squicky large-age-power-disparity relationships, but that just meant I hated the romance, not the writing.)
Enchanted Glass: A nice sweet little book, though nothing special. The thing I like about DWJ is that even when you're old enough you can guess the plot far quicker and easier than when you were little, it's still worth reading.
Castle in the Air: Reread. This book was way more charming than I remembered -- I think part of my previous disappointment was that I was expecting it, well, to be a straight sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. But, of course, DWJ doesn't do straight sequels. Much better to think of it as a book that takes place in the universe of HMC, with some shared characters, as I did this time around, and I really liked it.
House of Many Ways: I liked Castle in the Air better, but this one did have the quality, rare in DWJ books, that there was no extra-powerful character come to save the day in the end. (Think about it. Almost all her books are like this. The Undying, the Chrestomanci, etc. Howl counts in HMC, since from the POV of the main character he's extra-powerful.)
