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Charmed Life

Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, 1977.

This is the first book in the Chrestomanci series.  There are many different dimensions with duplicate worlds, and in each of those duplicate worlds, there is a copy of every person.  People’s lives can differ dramatically between the different worlds, but there is one person in each generation who has no duplicates in any of the other dimensions or worlds.  This person is called the Chrestomanci.  All of the talents, abilities, and lives that would have been spread among the duplicates across the other worlds are now centered on that one person, giving that person, literally, nine lives.  Very often, the Chrestomanci doesn’t realize that he’s a Chrestomanci until he actually dies . . . and fails to die because he uses up one of his spare lives and continues living with the others.

When young Eric Chant’s older sister Gwendolyn gives him the nickname Cat at a young age, saying that he has nine lives, he doesn’t understand that it’s literally true.  Then, he and Gwendolyn are unexpectedly orphaned during a boat accident.  Their parents drown.  Gwendolyn doesn’t because she’s a witch, and the water rejected her.  Cat thought that he was saved because he grabbed hold of Gwendolyn.  Gwendolyn knows differently.

After their parents’ deaths, Cat and Gwendolyn live with their downstairs neighbor for a time, receiving support from the town. Their neighbor, Mrs. Sharp, is also a witch, and she recognizes Gwendolyn’s talent. When she goes through the children’s parents’ things, she finds three letters from someone called Chrestomanci, and she recognizes immediately that they are important. Cat doesn’t fully understand who Chrestomanci is, but everyone regards him as an important person, so much so that they even hesitate to say his name out loud. His signature is valuable, and Mrs. Sharp offers the letters as payment for witchcraft lessons for Gwendolyn from the best tutor in the area, Mr. Nostrum. Gwendolyn breezes through the early lessons easily, and everyone in the neighborhood recognizes her talents. They are sure that Gwendolyn is destined for great things, and they are all eager to ingratiate themselves with her. A local fortune-teller even says that Gwendolyn will be famous and may be able to rule the world if she goes about it in the right way. The fortune-teller also tells Cat’s fortune, but his fortune is a warning that he is in danger from two sides. Cat is frightened and unsure what to think of it.

However, there is still the question about how the children’s parents knew Chrestomanci and what their father argued about with him in their letters to each other. Mr. Nostrum is particularly curious to know what the children know about Chrestomanci, having apparently tried to learn things about him through his signature and failing, but neither of the children can tell him much. Cat still isn’t sure exactly who Chrestomanci is, so he suggests that Mr. Nostrum just write to Chrestomanci himself to ask. It’s such a straightforward approach that it never occurred to either Mr. Nostrum or Gwendolyn to do that before. Gwendolyn ends up writing the letter to Chrestomanci herself, exaggerating her plight as an orphan to gain sympathy, and implying that Cat also drowned in the boat accident. When Chrestomanci arrives to see Gwendolyn, he is initially surprised to see Cat.

Although their relationship to Chrestomanci isn’t explained at first, Chrestomanci takes custody of the children and brings them to live at his castle with his own wife and children, Julia and Roger. Everyone tells the children how lucky they are because living with someone as important as Chrestomanci means hob-nobbing with other important people. Cat realizes that the reason why Gwendolyn wants to go to Chrestomanci is that she is serious about becoming famous and ruling the world. She sees life with Chrestomanci as the first step. Cat is more intimidated and homesick.

Life in Chrestomanci’s castle is quite different from what Gwendolyn expected, though. There is some kind of enchantment over the castle that muffles Gwendolyn’s powers, and that drives her crazy. Gwendolyn is contemptuous of Julia and Roger for being plain and fat, but both of them turn out to be better at magic than she is and are fully capable of standing up to her magical tricks and bullying. Worst of all, nobody seems impressed by Gwendolyn or thinks that she’s special, and Gwendolyn is accustomed to people thinking that she’s special and impressive.

Chrestomanci makes it clear that none of the children are supposed to be practicing magic unless they are under the supervision of their tutor, Michael Saunders. When Gwendolyn and Cat begin having lessons with Michael Saunders along with Julia and Roger, it becomes apparent that Gwendolyn is far behind in her normal subjects, like math and history, even behind Cat, who is younger. Gwendolyn airily tells the tutor that she never paid attention to such things at their old school because she was concentrating more on learning witchcraft. Michael Saunders tells her that she won’t have any more magical lessons until she catches up in her normal studies, and Chrestomanci backs up the tutor. Gwendolyn is infuriated because, not only is nobody treating her like she’s special and impressive, for the first time in her life, they are treating her like what she really is: a spoiled and naughty child.

Gwendolyn’s parents didn’t fully have the ability to impose consequences on Gwendolyn when they were alive, although they were a restraining influence. After they died, nobody tried to restrain Gwendolyn, only trying to ingratiate themselves so she would help them or they could use her for their own purposes. Although Cat has idolized his older sister, there are dark sides to her personality that he has never realized before, and he soon discovers that she has sinister intentions that involve him.

One day, Gwendolyn vanishes and is replaced by one of her duplicates from another world, where magic doesn’t exist.  This other version of Gwendolyn, who is called Janet, has no idea where she is or how she got there.  It is from her that Cat learns that there is no duplicate of himself in her world.  While Cat struggles to figure out what is happening, he helps the new girl to pretend that she is the usual Gwendolyn, although she actually has a very different, much nicer, personality. The more Cat tells Janet about Gwendolyn, the less Janet likes her or the idea of being her, which makes Cat nervous.

When Cat and the new Gwendolyn realize what Cat’s Gwendolyn intends to do, they will need the Chrestomanci’s help to stop her and for Cat to claim his true destiny, the one that Gwendolyn has been attempting to conceal from him all along.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

One of the best parts of the book for me was the setting at Chrestomanci Castle. The idea of living in a castle with magical playmates who can make toy soldiers move on their own is exciting! Cat and Gwendolyn’s rooms in the castle sound like the kind of bedrooms that any kid might imagine having. Even though the castle is strange and sinister things are happening, there is also a kind of coziness to the atmosphere. The children have hot cocoa every morning in the nursery. (I’m not sure why Cat, Gwendolyn, and Janet don’t like hot cocoa. Having hot chocolate for breakfast every morning would have made me happy as a kid, although I admit that, if Chrestomanci and Millie are concerned about their children’s weight issues enough to limit their marmalade intake, that’s not really the best morning drink they could have. I would have suggested tea instead. While we’re on the subject, I didn’t like the way they kept going on about the kids’ weight issues.) They have their own old-fashioned schoolroom in the castle with their own private tutor. When they get allowance money, they can walk to the charming, old-fashioned town nearby and buy candy and other small items. Millie is a doting magical mother, and even though Chrestomanci can be a little intimidating and fussy about appearances, he seems to genuinely care about the children and isn’t above sticking his well-dressed head into the nursery to say good morning and check on them.

During his time at Chrestomanci Castle, Cat learns things about his parents and his sister that he never knew before. His parents were actually cousins, and marriages between cousins in magical families are frequently dangerous, especially when they have children. Chrestomanci is also their parents’ cousin, and the argument he had with their father through their letters was about preventing the couple from having children any children with magical abilities, a suggestion that insulted and angered their father. Their father later came to regret that when young Gwendolyn first started using her powers, and even her parents started to see that she was dangerous. They weren’t quite sure how she was using Cat, but they had the sense that she was using him to do her magic somehow. Nobody thought to take Cat’s nickname seriously until Janet started questioning the reason why Gwendolyn started calling him that.

The truth is that Cat is a nine-lived enchanter. Gwendolyn realized this when he died at birth but didn’t actually die, and even though she was young herself, she found a way to hijack his powers. From the time when he was a baby, she’s been using his powers as if they were her own. That is how Gwendolyn appears to be unusually powerful for her age, even though she’s never really had the patience to go through any of her lessons by the numbers, just glossing over the beginning parts. Cat has been unable to use his own magical abilities because Gwendolyn has been keeping them all for herself, so for a long time, he assumes that he doesn’t have any magic at all. Since Gwendolyn has been doing this for his whole life, Cat has grown accustomed to how it feels and doesn’t notice it until Janet puts together the clues and realizes what’s been happening. When Gwendolyn does particularly powerful magic, she even sacrifices one of Cat’s extra lives, which she placed in a little matchbook for easy use.

Cat is appalled when he finds out about it, and he doesn’t want to believe it at first. However, when he tries to light one of the matches and instantly catches fire, he is convinced. What is even worse is that Gwendolyn and her magic tutor are planning to use him as a human sacrifice to open the gateway to other worlds so that they and the other evil magicians can use their powers to control these other worlds. Gwendolyn is a malevolent narcissist and always has been. Cat is devastated when he learns how little Gwendolyn cares about him, but he manages to finally summon enough anger to stand up to Gwendolyn and take his powers back from her. Like other victims of narcissists, he has always been the stronger and more powerful of the two of them, but he needed some help to see it.

Unlike Gwendolyn, Janet is not a narcissist and is capable of feeling empathy and caring for others. She’s even capable of selfless acts and personal sacrifices for the sake of others when necessary. When Gwendolyn escapes and permanently seals herself in another world where she is a queen, Janet is stuck in Cat’s world, unable to return to her own. It’s a terrible blow for her to be separated from her parents, who are alive in her world. However, when Chrestomanci asks her if she will be okay and if she wants him to try to return her to her own world, she refuses the offer because she has discovered that the double who replaced her in her world is an orphan who badly needs a family. While Gwendolyn was even going to volunteer Janet, one of her other selves as a sacrifice if Cat wouldn’t do, Janet is willing to sacrifice her former life in her world for the sake of one of her other selves. Janet is really the kind of sister that Cat has needed all along. She says that she was supposed to have a younger brother in her world but that he died at birth, and she is fascinated to find Eric/Cat alive in this new world and get to know the brother she lost. Janet learns to love her new brother and to get along with Julia and Roger, becoming the kind of girl Gwendolyn really should have been to her family. She doesn’t have any magical abilities, but she discovers that she can help help her new family because life in her usual world (which is supposed to be our world) has given her a different perspective from theirs. She is the one who suggests to Chrestomanci that he stop using silverware made of actual silver, which impedes his powers, and use stainless steel instead. When Gwendolyn played magical tricks at dinner, Chrestomanci always had trouble dealing with it because he was holding silver, but if he uses stainless steel, he won’t have that problem again. Chrestomanci and Millie admit that they never thought of that because stainless steel cutlery isn’t common in their world.

I remember finding this story fascinating the first time I read it as a kid. There are some dark themes with Gwendolyn’s narcissism, the threats to the children’s lives, and even Cat losing a few more lives. Cat’s growth is central to the story. Once Gwendolyn’s toxic influence is removed from his life, he begins to see the truth about himself and how Gwendolyn has treated him. Cat had always looked to her for comfort as his sister and his last living relative (so he thought), but all along, she was the one who was most dangerous to him, and that’s a terrible betrayal. Once Cat starts to understand the situation, he begins to see his own potential, and he also has some new people in his life who show him better treatment. The castle is charming, the world is fascinating, and the story is thought-provoking about the different ways a person’s life can go in different circumstances. Other books in the series go into more detail about how the different worlds in this universe function and how they split off from each other in different series, based on the outcomes of important events.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Howl’s Moving Castle

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, 1986.

The kingdom of Ingary is the land of fairy tales. There is magic, and in a family of three children, it’s always expected that the youngest of the three will be most successful. Sophie Hatter, as the oldest of three, is disappointed when she first realizes that, but she reconciles herself to her rather dull fate. She is devoted to her younger sister and half-sister, and she does her best to look after them and help prepare them for their futures.

When Sophie Hatter’s father dies, her stepmother Fanny has to decide what arrangements to make for the family’s hat shop and the three girls in the family: Sophie, her younger sister Lettie, and her half-sister Martha.  Because Martha is very bright and expected to one day seek her fortune in the world, as third children generally do, Fanny arranges for her to become an apprentice to a respected witch.  Lettie becomes an apprentice in a pastry shop, where she will learn a good trade and possibly meet a nice young man to marry.  Sophie, as she had always expected, continues to work in the hat shop.  None of the three girls are particularly excited about the arrangements, but they make the most of it.  Sophie does have a talent for hat-making.  In fact, she has a very unusual talent because, as she talks to the hats while she makes them, the things she predicts for the buyers come true. People become increasingly attracted to the hat shop because it seems like good things happen to people who buy hats there.

Sophie is good at working in the hat shop, but she has to admit that her life there is dull. She doesn’t really know what else she would want instead, but she feels isolated, hearing gossip from other people but not really talking to anybody herself. A visit to her sister Lettie on May Day puts Sophie’s life in perspective and calls the things that are expected of older and younger siblings into question. Sophie learns that her sisters, dissatisfied with the arrangements Fanny made for them and having ambitions other than the ones that are expected of them, have secretly switched places with each other. Lettie craves learning and adventure, so she has taken Martha’s place as the witch’s apprentice to learn magic. Martha doesn’t actually care about going out to seek her fortune at all. She doesn’t want adventure or riches. What she really wants, although she’s never admitted it before, is to marry, settle down, and have ten children. Working in the pastry shop, she has already attracted quite a following of young men, and she’s sure that she’ll find one who will love her and make her happy. Neither of them cares about fitting the tradition mold of three siblings, and they’re both concerned about Sophie’s future. Sophie has never had any particular ambitions of her own, but her sisters know that being shut up in the hat shop all the time isn’t good for her. They think Fanny is taking advantage of her because it’s Sophie’s work that’s attracting all the customers these days, and Fanny isn’t even paying her an apprentice’s wage! Apprentices like Lettie and Martha get wages at other businesses, but Sophie’s been working for free while Fanny takes all the profits. It gives Sophie a lot to think about, and she becomes convinced that she’s being exploited when she asks Fanny about wages, and Fanny puts her off. Sophie is so angry that she thinks maybe she should run away to seek her fortune, but she can’t shake the idea that eldest children can’t do that. Soon, circumstances intervene to force Sophie to be the one to go out and seek her fortune anyway.

Dangerous and mysterious things are happening in the kingdom. Rumor has it that the evil Witch of the Waste has threatened the king’s daughter and that the king’s personal wizard, Suliman, has vanished after going to deal with her. People think that the Witch of the Waste probably killed him. The king’ brother, Prince Justin, also went in search of Suliman and disappeared.

One day, the Witch of the Waste pays a visit to Sophie’s hat shop.  Mistaking Sophie for one of her sisters, the witch curses Sophie, turning her into an old woman.  Unable to explain to anyone what has happened (which is part of the curse), Sophie makes the decision to leave the hat shop, finding a new job as housekeeper to the mysterious wizard Howl, a sinister figure himself.  Little is known about Howl, although he is known to live in a strange castle that moves from place to place, apparently of its own accord, and he has a reputation for breaking women’s hearts.

Howl is even stranger although somewhat less sinister when Sophie gets to know him.  He allows Sophie to stay in his castle, not so much by requesting her to stay but by not telling her to leave, much like he did with his apprentice Michael, an orphan who came to live with him and gradually became his apprentice when Howl decided not to send him away.  Howl is vain (using makeup and hair dye to make himself more handsome), immature, and somewhat cowardly, but he is still a powerful wizard and can accomplish great things when he makes up his mind that he wants to (or finds himself unable to refuse).  He doesn’t real steal girl’s souls, as some of the rumors about him say, but he is definitely a flirt and a womanizer, who drops girls as soon as they fall in love with him because he likes pursuing them but is afraid of commitment. In fact, he even has Michael spread scandalous rumors about him in the towns where they do business so people will be more reluctant to try to get him to commit to anything or anybody.

Howl has other problems aside from his immaturity and fear of commitment.  Calcifer, the mysterious fire demon that powers the moving castle, hints as much to Sophie.  He hopes that Sophie will be able to help, although he, too, is unable to explain the reason why for magical reasons.  Howl is not an ordinary person, but a traveler from another dimension, from a strange country called Wales, the same place where the king’s wizard, Suliman, was from. In Suliman’s absence and against Howl’s will, the king recruits Howl to be the new royal wizard, to find the missing Suliman and Prince Justin, and to deal with the Witch of the Waste.

Sophie struggles to convince/cajole/force/help Howl to save the kingdom and to learn the secret curse that Howl himself is living under even while suffering from her own curse.  Surprisingly, it seems that Sophie is the key to breaking not only Howl’s curse but her own.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It’s the first book in a loose series. Many people these days are familiar with the story because it was made into a Miyazaki movie, although the movie was very different from the book in a number of ways.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I first read this book when I was in high school, years before the movie version was made. In a way, the book is party mystery or puzzle as well as fantasy. Calcifer and Howl have a problem that they can’t talk about because of the magic around it. Only one rumor about Howl is true: Howl is literally heartless. But, Calcifer has a heart. It takes a long time for Sophie to make the connection and to realize what Calcifer actually is and what Howl did. Howl made a sacrifice years before that has left both Howl and Calcifer in a precarious position. The clues to Howl’s past and the arrangement between him and Calcifer are in a poem by John Donne that turns out to be part of Howl’s nephew’s school assignment. The Witch of the Waste, who turns out to be one of Howl’s former, discarded conquests, knows Howl’s secret and is trying to use it to get revenge on Howl.

Although the movie version is very good, and I enjoyed watching it, it is very different from the original book. The beginning part of the movie, where Sophie is working in the hat shop and cursed by the Witch of the Waste before going to work for Howl is very similar to the original book. However, the major problem of the war in the movie never happened in the book. War is a common theme in Miyazaki movies, but there’s nothing in the book about wizards making themselves into weapons of war. Instead, the main problems of the book are about lifting Sophie’s curse, figuring out what the secret contract between Howl and Calcifer is, evading the wrath of the Witch of the Waste, and finding the missing Suliman and Price Justin. The movie addresses the arrangement between Howl and Calicifer, but it doesn’t fully cover any of the rest of it. There are some characters and plot lines from the book which were combined or reduced in the movie in favor of the war plot, which I found less interesting because it has less intrigue. In the movie, the Witch of the Waste is tamed and redeemed as a character, but in the book, she really is evil and is never redeemed.

There’s also nothing in the movie about Howl being from Wales in our world and the land where he lives being a different dimension, but that’s a major part of Howl’s character in the book. In the book, Sophie even visits Wales with Howl and meets his family. His sister thinks that Howl, known as Howell Jenkins in his native Wales, is a wastrel, who hasn’t made anything of himself in spite of his college education. She’s only partly right. What she doesn’t know is that Howl started learning about magic at university, which is how he found out how to travel to other dimensions and make himself into a wizard. In spite of his immaturity and attempts to avoid certain types of service, he is actually very skilled and powerful. Howl can’t tell his sister the truth, so he just lets her think that he’s a wastrel.

Sophie finds Wales strange and mysterious. She is terrified when Howl takes her and Michael for a ride in his car. One of my favorite parts is when Howl needs to talk to his nephew about the poem he was assigned at school, but he doesn’t want to talk to Howl because he’s playing a computer game with a friend. Sophie and Michael don’t understand computers or that the boys are playing a game, so when the friend says that he can’t stop to talk or he’ll lose his life, they think that the boy’s life is really in danger. They almost panic when Howl pulls the plug on the computer to get his nephew’s attention, totally unworried about his nephew possibly dying. That’s one of the reasons why I prefer the book to the movie. Many of the humorous little moments like this are lost in the movie, although the movie did keep the episode where Howl has a temper tantrum and fills the house with green slime.

There are also intricacies of the plot that aren’t explained in the movie. The one I mind the most is that the movie doesn’t fully explain how the curse on Sophie works or how it gets broken, either. The book provided more information, which helps Sophie fully appreciate who she really is. As Calcifer realized soon after meeting Sophie, removing the curse on Sophie is complicated because it has two layers. Howl even admits later that he’s been quietly trying to remove Sophie’s curse himself, but he was never successful because Sophie was actually maintaining the curse herself. The first layer was what the Witch of the Waste did to her, but Sophie herself has magical powers that she has been unconsciously using throughout the book. The reason why good things kept happening to the people who bought her hats was that she was unconsciously casting spells on the hats when she talked to them while making them. The second layer of the spell on Sophie herself was her unconsciously reinforcing her sense of being old through all of the negative things she’d been telling herself about being the eldest child in her family. Sophie’s power typically manifests in the things she tells to people and things, and she’s been telling herself all the wrong things.

Because of all of the tales about how the youngest children are the ones who successfully go out to seek their fortune, Sophie has felt relegated to just being the eldest, helping other people, and not really thinking about what she wants for herself. Even as a young woman, she acted and felt old before her time because she didn’t have any confidence in herself or anything to look forward to in her future. Her sisters even worried about her for not having enough self-respect, no ambitions or dreams of her own, or ability to stand up for herself. Because she never expected to do much of anything with her life or any belief that she might have talents of her own, she and everyone else completely overlooked all of the magic that she’s been instinctively doing. When Sophie discovers that her sisters have switched places and learns about their real life ambitions, she is stunned to realize that she has badly misunderstood both of them for most of their lives, also making assumptions about them based on their birth order. She has also misjudged or underestimated other people, but the person she’s misjudged and underestimated is herself. Howl is the one who tells her that there’s nothing wrong with her being the eldest sister; the times when she gets things wrong have been when she acts without fully thinking things through. Part of the key to breaking her curse is to get rid of the negative feelings she’s had about herself and her ability and to see herself for who she really is: a person with powerful talents and a right to want things and achieve things for herself and her future. Once she sheds her doubts about herself and her abilities and stops thinking of herself as just the eldest and doomed to fail, she realizes how she can use her powers to save Calcifer and Howl, and Calcifer lifts the rest of her curse.

Posted on by TracyC

A Meeting of Minds

A Meeting of Minds by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman, 1999.

This is the final book in the Minds series. Each book in the series begins shortly after the previous book ends, and this one starts only three weeks after the last book.

Princess Lenora and Prince Coren are still in Andilla for their impending wedding when, while simply walking down a hallway of the castle, they suddenly find themselves transported to a land of snow. The world in which they now find themselves is our world (which, I guess would be distant past of their world, the late 20th century). Disoriented and cold, Lenora and Coren go inside a shopping mall to get warm. At first, Coren thinks that Lenora has caused their present predicament (because, usually, she does, either consciously or unconsciously), but Lenora denies having anything to do with it.

At the time they’d been walking down the hallway, they’d been discussing the exhibition at the castle in honor of their upcoming wedding and Lenora’s desire for a better world. The exhibition was called “A Meeting of Minds” and designed to showcase the ways that different groups of people in their world live and what they envision as a perfect world. The entries in the exhibit were chosen as entries in a contest, and a panel of judges from different countries would choose winners from among them. The winning entries would be adopted as real laws in the hope of fulfilling Lenora’s wish of making the world a better place for everyone. What could go wrong? (Seriously, things in this world always go wrong when people try to enforce some vision of perfection, so what’s it going to be this time?) Could the exhibition have something to do with their present predicament?

Lenora and Coren briefly consider different possibilities, including the possibility that some unknown enemy has sent them to this strange place, but nothing really makes sense. Lenora has the uncomfortable feeling that something she’s done may have cause this problem after all, although she can’t think what it is. Either way, they are stuck in a strange land.

They stop a passing girl and ask them where they are, and she tells them that they’re in a mall called Portage Place. That doesn’t really explain much to Lenora and Coren, so the girl tells them to buy a map. Lenora and Coren don’t understand the concept of “buying” (in the last book, they didn’t know the word “economy”). When they try to ask her the name of her “world”, it turns out that the girl is an alien conspiracy theorist, wearing a shirt with a picture of an alien on it and the words “The Truth is Out There” (the slogan from the X-Files tv show). The girl is very excited, thinking that Lenora and Coren are space aliens. She tells them that they’re in Winnipeg on Earth and asks them where they’re from. Coren recognizes the name “Earth” as the old name for their world. This confirms that, although there are fantasy elements in these stories, Lenora and Coren are actually from the distant future of the Earth, although the three of them work out that they might actually be from a parallel universe of our Earth. However, her helpfulness ends when she suddenly seems to suspect them of being “Mindies” and making fun of her. Lenora and Coren don’t know what she’s talking about.

The two of them explore the mall, getting into trouble when they try to stop two girls from taking another child’s toy and end up having security called on them and not having money to pay for food in the mall food court. Fortunately, a couple of other young people in line offer to pay for their food. These young people, Barb and Thomas, seem to recognize them as Princess Lenora and Prince Coren, but strangely, Lenora and Coren learn that they think that they’re in costume and only pretending to be themselves. It slowly comes out that the authors of the book series live in Winnipeg and that there’s a fan convention in town for the books in which Lenora and Coren are fictional characters. (I’ve never actually heard of a convention specifically for this series of books, but I don’t live in Canada, so I can’t swear that it never happened. However, the characters later meet someone dressed as Spock at the convention, so it’s possible that this is supposed to be part of some larger book or sci-fi/fantasy-themed convention.)

Lenora and Coren don’t fully understand the concept of the fan convention, but Lenora sees it as a possible lead to what’s happening, so she insists on going to the convention center. At the convention center, Lenora and Coren encounter other people who are apparently trying to dress like they do and pretend to be them. Some of them even criticize what Lenora and Coren are wearing because their real outfits don’t agree with the fans’ interpretations of the characters. (Fandoms are like this in real life. The more someone likes something and spends time with it, the more they consider themselves an authority on it. They kind of are, but sometimes, fans get wrapped up in their own vision of what they’d like characters to be like that they kind of depart from the original story or get out of sync with the vision of the original authors. It’s almost like they mentally create an alternate reality of a world that was already fictional, which fits very well with the themes of this entire series.) Lenora and Coren think that they’re all very rude for criticizing the way they dress, telling them how they should talk to be in character, and thinking that Coren is a wimp or geek or that Lenora is annoying or arrogant, which some of them say right in front of them.

At this point, someone comments that Lenora sounds just like she does in the books, and the people at the convention start talking about all of the books in this series, which I’ve already reviewed. Finally, Lenora and Coren understand that these people know about them and are imitating them because they have read books about them. Coren is embarrassed when these fans start talking about some of his more embarrassing moments like they’re common knowledge. Lenora gets angry and decides that they need to talk to the authors. (Which seems to have been the goal of this book.)

Coren and Lenora get in line to talk to the authors of the books, but when they meet them, the authors also just think they’re fans of the books who are putting on a little skit for them. There’s some banter with the authors (including some inside jokes that Carol and Perry seem to have with each other, like how bad Perry’s handwriting apparently is), and the authors remark how much Lenora and Coren sound like their characters, although they don’t think they really look like them (which is interesting, as if they have a completely different vision of them in their minds). Lenora gets angry with them and accuses them of stealing from their lives to write their books, so she grabs some of the books the authors and signing and runs away with them.

As Lenora and Coren hide from security with their stolen books, they start reading about themselves. They find that the books do describe their previous adventures together, and they seem to capture some of what they were thinking and feeling at the time, but not everything is correct. In a twist that makes this book a little more interesting than it started out, not everything in the books they read is like the real-life Minds books. Lenora and Coren start noticing that Sayley plays a very prominent role and is described in glowing terms and that her favorite word, “scrumptious” appears frequently. Then, Lenora and Coren discover that one of the events at the convention is a worship service for the “Divine Sayley.” One of the other convention attendees tells them that the Sayley in the books was named after the Divine Sayley, who is a real figure in their world, an angelic-looking girl with divine powers, who seems to be a glowing version of their Sayley.

It seems that Lenora and Coren have discovered the source of this strange world and everything that has been happening to them, but how and why did Sayley do it? Or, did she really do it at all? And how can Lenora and Coren get home when their powers no longer work?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers:

First, I’d like to talk about why the authors wrote this book. It’s somewhat of a departure in theme and tone from the rest of the series, and because of that, it annoyed me. At first, I guessed that this book was just the authors’ excuse to have their own characters meet them in the story, to show off a few inside jokes for their own amusement, and to kind of toot their own horns. That sort of story annoys me. I don’t like it when authors do that. When I read a series that I like, I want to do it for the sake of the characters and the stories, not for the sake of the fandom, and any inside jokes the co-authors have with each other are not jokes I am personally in on, so I’m just not going to get the same charge out of them. (There’s an in-joke in this book about Perry Nodelman having some kind of special underwear. I don’t know what it is because it isn’t described, but I’ve seen lots of funny undershorts in those catalogs that come around Christmas, and I don’t really care which pair he owns. Younger readers would probably get more of a kick out of that bit of trivia than I do.)

However, I looked it up, and I found this explanation, written by one of the co-authors, Carol Matas:

Why We Wrote A Meeting of Minds

In thinking about the imaginative powers of the people of Gepeth, it suddenly struck us that they could have imagined us. After all, the Gepethians have the power to make whatever they imagine real, so why not this entire world of ours, including the city of Winnipeg and everyone who lives there–including us? Lenora and Coren are figments of our imaginations–but we might also be figments of theirs. In A Meeting of Minds, that is exactly what happens. Lenora and Coren and the authors Carol M and Perry N come face to face, as Lenora and Coren find themselves stuck without their powers in the city of Winnipeg and unable to get out. Who created whom? And will Lenora and Coren ever manage to escape this frightening city, worse than their worst nightmares? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

That explanation did make me feel a little better about the book, that more thought went into it than just a bunch of inside jokes for fans. The Minds books all focus on the power of the mind and the imagination and the nature of reality. A meta plot, like trying to decide if the authors created the characters or the characters created the author does fit with the theme of the theme of the series, almost like the end of Through the Looking Glass, where the reader is left to decide whether Alice dreamed the Red King or if Alice was just part of the Red King’s dream. However, by the end of this book, the question is resolved, as far as people in Lenora’s world is concerned. According to the story, Sayley really did create Winnipeg and everything in it, including the authors of this book and their books and fandom. There is something a little unsettled about the end of the book, but that’s not what it is.

I can’t talk about my full opinion of this story without some spoilers, though, so get ready: The current problem is actually a plot by Leni and Cori, the annoying doubles of Lenora and Coren created two books ago in the series, although it also turns out that their plot is part of the machinations of someone else.

It’s important to remember that Leni and Cori are basically Lenora and Coren themselves, sharing all of their memories up to the point in time when Lenora created them as separate people, but with twists to their personalities. She created Leni on purpose as a double of herself so she could go off and do what she wanted and people wouldn’t know she was missing, but she made Leni a distinct personality, who would like all of the boring things she didn’t like about managing a household and planning a wedding, so Leni would be happy to stay home and do those things while Lenora herself went adventuring. Cori was an accidental creation, when Lenora’s powers where acting erratically. She was in trouble and wished that Coren was there to help her, but she also wished that Coren was a braver, more action-oriented person, so Cori appeared as a kind of white knight figure to rescue her. Once Lenora created Leni and Cori, she didn’t have the heart to un-imagine them into non-existence because they are now distinct people and personalities by themselves.

Unfortunately, while Leni and Cori are pretty well-suited to each other, they both come with their annoying defects. Leni is frivolous and vapid, getting too wrapped up in petty details, like hair, clothes, and makeup, to care about larger issues. Cori is brave but reckless. He doesn’t have the real Coren’s thoughtfulness and rushes right into danger because his only solution to anything is fighting. Lenora and Coren come to appreciate each other more after seeing what their doubles are like and experiencing their annoying sides. Coren realizes that he doesn’t want Lenora to be like Leni, and Lenora stops complaining that Coren thinks too much. They don’t like their doubles, but the feeling is actually mutual. Because Leni and Cori have personalities that are almost opposite to Lenora and Coren, they find Lenora and Coren as annoying as Lenora and Coren find them, just for different reasons. Cori thinks that Coren is a wimp, and Leni thinks that Lenora is irresponsible and tasteless.

Part of the problem is that, while everyone knows that Leni and Cori are recently-created doubles instead of the real Lenora and Coren, Leni and Cori are still real people with all of the memories of Lenora and Coren. So, while the public and their royal parents acknowledge Lenora and Coren as their real children and the real princess and prince, Leni and Cori are angry and dissatisfied because they are no less “real” and have all the memories of being princess and prince. They are not treated as equals to Lenora and Coren, and their own parents don’t really consider them their children. Leni resents being treated like she’s secondary to Lenora, especially since Lenora made her to be the embodiment of all of the qualities that her parents wished she had. Leni is (for the most part) quiet and obedient, focused on spending all of her time looking the part of a princess, and rarely uses her powers in order maintain the Balance. While all of the preparations are going on for Lenora and Coren’s grand wedding, preparations that Lenora and Coren themselves don’t even find particularly interesting because they just don’t like all of the fuss and pageantry, Leni and Cori are also engaged to be married and actually want the pageantry of a grand wedding instead of the quieter ceremony being planned for them. With Lenora and Coren put out of the way, they can take over the wedding themselves, and Leni thinks that, once people get used to her instead of Lenora, they will think of her as an improvement and forget about Lenora.

Sayley did create the little world of Winnipeg that Lenora and Coren are trapped in as a display, her entry in the A Meeting of Minds contest, but Leni is the one who trapped Lenora and Coren in that world. In another twist, it turns out that Sayley created Winnipeg not as her example of the best world possible but as her example of the worst world possible, which she created for contrast. (Sorry, real world Winnipeg. It turns out that Sayley thinks snow is dreadful, but on the bright side, none of you will ever have to worship the Divine Sayley, which by itself makes real world Winnipeg immediately a better place for everyone.) When Sayley discovers what Leni and Cori have done, she wants to tell Coren’s parents, but Cori reads her mind and Leni banishes Sayley to her own exhibit along with Lenora and Coren.

By Sayley’s logic, what really makes her version of Winnipeg so bad is that nobody there believes in the power of the imagination. Everyone there likes to imagine things and they enjoy hearing about the power of imagination, which is why they are fans of Lenora and Coren, but none of them believe that imagination is real or that they can actually create the things they imagine. Their lack of belief in the powers of the mind is what prevents Lenora and Coren’s powers from working. Even though they worship Sayley as “divine”, Sayley says that they don’t really believe in her, they just consider her to be a symbol. Because of that, nobody there respects the real Sayley or listens to her. Sayley is unable to get the authors, Carol and Perry, to listen to them even though she tries to prove to them that she actually made them because she knows all about the embarrassing pair of underwear that Perry owns. Carol and Perry are still unconvinced and think that Sayley needs “help.”

Fortunately, there is one person in this world who Sayley allowed to have the power of imagination, Michael, and he believes that Sayley, Lenora, and Coren are all who they say they are. Michael figures out how to help them all to escape from the exhibit, but when they do, they still have to face down Leni and Cori and the evil force that is controlling them – Lenora’s old alter-ego and nemesis, Hevak.

The evil way that Leni behaves in this book is a clue that she isn’t quite herself. Normally, being well-behaved is a part of her personality, and her scruples would prevent her from doing any of the things she did, even though she secretly wanted to in the back of her mind. Hevak explains that, because Leni is another version of Lenora, he a part of her as well as Lenora. When Leni was feeling jealous and resentful about the wedding, it awakened him in her mind, and he used his influence to force her to overcome her normal inhibitions and do what she was thinking of doing. At first, I was thinking that having Hevak come back seemed like a bit of a cop-out and seemed a little like those cliched scenes in anime where the villain changes into their “final form” and reveals their “true power”, but that explanation actually does make sense for the way this world functions.

Just as Hevak and Lenora are poised for their ultimate battle, however, it all just kind of comes to an end. Defeating Hevak proves easier than it seems like it should because Hevak himself has changed, even though it doesn’t really seem like it from the rest of the book. What Hevak decides is that he’s been through just about everything – he tried to create perfection and failed, people have called him evil (because he does evil things), he tried to be perfectly good, and for a long period, he was stuck in a state of nothingness. Now, he wonders what it’s all for. He hasn’t really accomplished much, and he doesn’t really see the point in continuing on this way. He’s thought about it so much that he’d really rather return to nothingness and not have to think about anything. It’s a little anti-climactic for how much of a nemesis Hevak is.

However, Lenora can’t bring herself to imagine him as not existing permanently because he was always an extension of herself, so instead, she takes Michael’s suggestion and sends him to Winnipeg, which gives the authors a chance to make a few more jokes about life in Winnipeg. Michael says that there are many unimaginative people there who spend time not doing much or thinking much, so without his powers, Hevak will fit in nicely and feel comfortable. Sayley promises to make Winnipeg a little nicer than it is now without changing its character completely, giving it other seasons besides winter and making it part of a much larger world, so people in Winnipeg won’t feel trapped there if they don’t like the climate and can experience some variety. Unfortunately, she also says that, since Winnipeg was supposed to be her worst world, she’s going to give the other seasons a downside, too, which is why she decides to invent mosquitos for Winnipeg’s summer. (So, now we all know who to blame.) Michael isn’t worried because he says that people in Winnipeg are tough. I kind of liked Hevak’s banishment to Winnipeg for the humor value, even though it felt like a rather easy wrap-up to the story.

This is the final book in the Minds series, and from the way it ends, I think there could be room for another one after it, even though one was never written. The book ends with Lenora and Coren’s actual wedding, stopping just as the ceremony ends. It appears that they are going to live happily ever after with the form of perfection they’ve selected taking effect as the ceremony ends, but exactly what that means is never clarified, probably because perfection is a difficult thing to imagine and maybe complete perfection is impossible to achieve. Lenora and Coren are both happy, although Coren does have some slight misgivings about whether the perfection is going to be too perfect in some way. (Remember, this series is all about Balance.) However, he brushes his worries aside to complete the ceremony. Then, we don’t know what happens after that. Is their new perfect world everything they’ve ever wanted and keep everyone happy forever, or will there be new, unforeseen complications after their marriage? Would new, unforeseen complications actually make Lenora happier than a completely settled world because she actually likes excitement and new problems to solve? Could that actually be her version of perfection? Is there a chance that Hevak will return from Winnipeg or has he finally found his true niche there, shoveling snow? There are no answers to these questions because the series is over, so we’ll never know, but I’ll leave you with a final thought – this world is all about imagination and the power of the imagination to create, so if you imagine something after this, that’s what you’ve created.

Posted on by TracyC

The Lost City of Faar

Pendragon

The Lost City of Faar by D.J. MacHale, 2003.

Press and Bobby have followed Saint Dane to the territory of Cloral, a world completely covered by water and occupied by peaceful people who live in floating cities.  Of course, with Saint Dane on the loose, things aren’t going to stay peaceful for long.  An entire city of people are killed when they eat poisoned food, and it looks like Cloral’s entire food supply may be in danger. 

Saint Dane is commanding a group of pirates raiding cities for their food supplies.  Among the dead is Cloral’s last Traveler, and his successor is his son, Spader, who has no idea what the Travelers are or what kind of dangerous mission awaits him.  Spader takes his father’s dead very hard and vows revenge upon Saint Dane.  As Bobby, Press, and Loor, who Bobby introduces to Spader in order to help explain who Travelers are, acquaint Spader with his new duties as the Traveler of Cloral, they try to convince him that preserving the peace of Cloral is more important than seeking revenge.  Spader is hot tempered, and they try to teach him to use peaceful means to combat Saint Dane, who has superior strength, anyway. 

Before he died, Spader’s father left behind one clue to the solution of their problems: a reference to the lost city of Faar, apparently the last city on dry land on Cloral. According to legend, it sank many years ago, but its advanced civilization may not have been completely destroyed. Centuries ago, the water level of Cloral rose, and the people of Faar realized that their city would soon be underwater.  They built a dome to protect their city, and they have been secretly helping the people in the floating cities by tending to their underwater farms and sharing technology with them.  However, they have been afraid to openly reveal themselves to the rest of Cloral because they were worried about their culture becoming contaminated. 

When Press, Bobby, and Spader tell them that Saint Dane knows where they are and is on his way to destroy them, most of the people flee the city.  The dome is broken, and it looks as though they will be unable to retrieve the equipment that the people of Faar were going to give them to save Cloral’s food supply.  However, the one person who remained in Faar and was killed was talking about making Faar “transpire.” Bobby, wanting to fulfill the dead man’s mission, activates the machinery to make it happen.  It turns out that the people of Faar have made it possible for their city to detach from the ground and float to the surface, like the other cities of Cloral.  Faar and its people have now rejoined the rest of Cloral, and they are able to retrieve the machinery they need.  Sadly, Spader tries to chase down Saint Dane as he escapes through the flume, and Press is killed saving him.  Spader volunteers to accompany Bobby on his mission to stop Saint Dane.

Throughout the books, Bobby, like Spader, has to come to terms with the fact that his life and his entire identity are not what he has always thought they were. Other Travelers also go through the same process as they learn about what it means to be a Traveler and to accept the mission of the Travelers. All through the series, there are other revelations about the nature of the Travelers themselves and how they came to be.

The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 4 Comments

Mairelon the Magician

Mairelon the Magician by Patricia C. Wrede, 1991.

This young adult book takes place in an alternate history version of Regency England.  In this world, magic is a normal and accepted part of society.  “Wizard” is an accepted profession, and there is even a Royal College of Wizards dedicated to magic.  Not everyone can be a wizard because not everyone has the ability to use magic.  It is a skill that people are either born with or born without, similar to people who have an innate talent for art or music, compared to people who are born tone-deaf or color-blind.

In this early 19th century world, there is a teenage girl, Kim, who lives on the streets and survives by her own wits, taking whatever jobs she can and committing a little petty thievery whenever she needs to.  She has spent most of her life dressing like a boy and pretending that she is one because life on the streets is even more precarious for a girl.  For a time, she was part of a gang of child thieves run by a woman call Mother Tibb.  As far back as Kim can remember, Mother Tibb was the only one who took care of her as a child.  Kim has no memory of her parents or any knowledge about what happened to them.  She doesn’t even have a last name.  However, before the story begins, Mother Tibb was caught and hanged for her crimes.  Some of the other child thieves were apprehended and put in prison or exiled to Australia, but Kim managed to escape.  Since then, she has been on her own.  So far, she has managed to avoid being pressured in to joining up with other gangs or turning to prostitution to survive, but the fear of that haunts her. Her future is uncertain.

At the beginning of the book, Kim is hired to sneak into the wagon of a traveling magician who is performing in the market and to see what he keeps among his belongings.  The man who hired her doesn’t want her to take anything, but he is particularly eager to see if the magician has a particular silver bowl in possession.  It’s a strange request, but the money that the man offers Kim is too good to pass up.

However, the magician, who calls himself Mairelon, isn’t quite what he seems.  He is not just an ordinary traveling entertainer using some sleight of hand to amuse people in the market.  Kim discovers that he can do real magic as she searches his wagon and is knocked unconscious by a real magical spell that Mairelon uses to protect his belongings.

When Kim wakes up, Mairelon and his servant, called Hunch, have tied her up.  Unlike Hunch, Mairelon has also realized that Kim is actually a girl, not a boy.  The two of them question Kim about why she sneaked into the wagon, and she tells them the truth about being hired to do it.  When she describes the man who hired her, it seems that Mairelon recognizes the description.  The part about the silver bowl also unnerves him.

Surprisingly, Mairelon makes Kim an offer to come with him and Hunch when they leave London.  He is fascinated by Kim’s skills in picking locks, even the lock on the booby-trapped trunk that knocked her unconscious, and he thinks that Kim might be useful to him and Hunch, perhaps helping with the magic act.  In return, he offers to teach Kim some of his magic tricks.  Hunch is dubious about Kim because she has obviously been a thief, and Kim also isn’t sure what to make of Mairelon.  She knows that he’s hiding something, but she isn’t sure what.  No one with real magical abilities like him would ordinarily be making a living with simple magic tricks in the market. 

However, Kim does accept the offer because she’s been worried about one of the major criminals in the area, Dan Laverham, who has been showing too much interest in recruiting her. He is heavily involved with a number of criminal activities, and he knows that Kim is a skilled lock pick.  If he found out that she was a girl, he would probably also press her into prostitution. Dan Laverham would be a good reason to get out of London for a while.  Also, Kim realizes that if she learns a few magic tricks from Mairelon, she might be able to set herself up as an entertainer and make an honest living, safe no matter who finds out that she’s female.  Besides, Kim realizes that if she’s not satisfied with the situation, she could always run away later.

Before leaving London with Mairelon, she returns to the man who hired her, at Mairelon’s suggestion, and tells him that she didn’t see a silver bowl in Mairelon’s wagon (which is true because she was knocked unconscious and didn’t see anything in the trunk).  The man is angry, but Mairelon, who followed her in disguise, helps to create a distraction so that she can get away from the man.  They leave London in the middle of the night because Mairelon says that he was spotted by someone who recognized him when he went out to get magic ingredients.

On the journey, Kim gradually gets to know Mairelon and his situation.  The silver bowl, which Mairelon does have, is actually part of a set of magical objects which, when used together, can compel people to tell the truth without interfering with their ability to answer questions intelligently.  Mairelon’s real name is Richard Merrill, and he is, or was, part of the Royal College of Wizards.  Years earlier, the Royal College of Wizards was analyzing this particular set of magical objects and the unique spell that they control, when they were suddenly stolen, and Merrill was framed for the theft.  At the time, Merrill was unable to prove his innocence (at least not without sounding as if he had done something inappropriate with a lady, which he also did not do – they were just together at the time of the theft because she was helping him and another friend with a magical experiment), but he was also recruited by his friend in the government to be a spy against the French, so the story of his supposed theft gave him a plausible reason for wanting to leave the country.  In the time since then, he and his friend have continued to look into the matter of the theft, and they have made some progress in tracking down the other pieces of the magical set.  At the time that Kim met him, he was on his way to the next piece of the set, a silver platter.

To their surprise, however, they soon discover that someone has been making copies of the platter.  The copies are not magical, but they do confuse the issue.  Who is making the copies and why would they want copies, since they do not have the powers that the original has?  As Kim and Mairelon investigate, they crash a house party at a lavish country estate and spy on a meeting of a rather inept society of druids.  All the while, they are getting closer and closer to finding the original thief.

I loved the combination of mystery, fantasy, history, and humor in this book!  It’s one of my all-time favorites.  It has a happy ending with Mairelon’s name cleared and the thief caught.  They also discover that Kim has the ability to use magic, and Mairelon offers to take her on as his apprentice, saving her from the streets forever.  There is a sequel to this book called Magician’s Ward, about Kim’s life and adventures as Mairelon’s student.  The hints of romance in this book are also much stronger in the next one.  There are only two books in this series, which is disappointing because the characters are so much fun, and I think that there is a lot more room for their development.  By the end of the next book, Kim’s future is looking more certain, but her past is still murky.  Originally, I had expected that there would be secrets revealed about Kim’s past because of her ability to use magic, possibly something that was passed on to her by her parents.  However, by the end of the second book, Kim still doesn’t know who her parents were/are, and it doesn’t look like there’s any chance that she will ever know.  Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes, secrets are more tantalizing when you imagine the answers than when you actually find out.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.