Posted on by TracyC

The Pinhoe Egg

The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones, 2006.

This is the sixth and final book in the Chrestomanci series.  In this series, there are many different dimensions, and in each of those different dimensions, there is a copy of every person.  Different versions of our world can differ dramatically in their history across the dimensions, and individual people’s lives can differ dramatically between the dimensions. There is one person in each generation who has no duplicates in any of the other dimensions.  This person is called the Chrestomanci.  All of the talents, abilities, and lives that would have been spread across the other dimensions are now centered on that one person, giving that person, literally, nine lives.  The Chrestomanci fills an important role, being better able than anyone else to travel across the dimensions, and he acts to keep a balance between them and make sure that the different worlds keep their proper course.

The Pinhoe Family

Marianne Pinhoe and her brother, Joseph, are used to Gammer (their grandmother) telling them and everyone else in their family what to do. Gammer is the matriarch of the magical Pinhoe family, and Marianne, as the only girl born into the family in the last two generations, is expected to eventually succeed her. Joseph has magical abilities, too, but he often pretends that he can’t do things so the rest of his family won’t force him into their magical businesses. He really has a fascination for machines and would rather work with them than do magic, so he does his best to convince the rest of his family that he’s a “disappointment” to them (something that other family members appear to have done when they had interests outside the family). However, Gammer still rules the roost and she has plans in mind for both Marianne and Joseph.

One day, she calls Marianne and Joseph to her house and tells Joseph that she’s got him a job as boot boy at Chrestomanci Castle over the school break. Joseph is angry because he had other plans for the school break and doesn’t want to be a boot boy. Gammer tells him that it’s important for him to go to Chrestomanci Castle because she wants him to act as a spy there. The Pinhoe clan doesn’t live too far from the castle, and for generations, they have been careful to conceal their identities as witches from whichever Chrestomanci happens to be in charge at the time. Gammer says that if Chrestomanci (whom they carefully refer to as the “Big Man” because saying his title aloud calls him) ever found out about them, he and his crew of enchanters would (gasp!) force them to obey rules and regulations and not just use their magic any way they like whenever they feel like it. (If you’ve read all the of previous books in the series, you can see that people like the Pinhoes are part of the reason why rules exist in the first place and why just letting them do whatever they want could be a complete disaster that could tear apart the worlds someday, but oh noes, not rules and regulations and being told not to do insane things that would lead to the destruction of the worlds! We’re not talking petty micromanagement here. Basically, this is a huge red flag, right up front, that the Pinhoes are up to seriously shady stuff that may lead to people dying and/or already have involved people dying.) Gammer wants Joseph to be at the castle to find out if the Big Man has caught on to them or looks like he might be going to. (At this point, we don’t know exactly what activities they’re afraid he’s going to catch onto, but that will become more clear later.) Joseph is still angry and tells Gammer that she can’t make him do it, but something happens that changes everything.

While Marianne and Joseph are still at Gammer’s house, the Farley family comes calling, and they’re angry with Gammer, too. They say that she has somehow betrayed them, particularly Dorothea Farley. After an argument with them, suddenly Gammer seems to lose all of her reason! When she speaks, she doesn’t seem to make any sense, as if she’s completely lost her mind. Marianne thinks that the Farleys cast a spell on Gammer, but she can’t prove it. The rest of the family thinks that the strain of the argument with the Farleys just sent Gammer over the edge because she’s so old. They’re unsure whether or not Gammer is going to recover from this incident or not and how long that might take. They temporarily hire nurses to look after her, but Gammer drives them away by using her magical powers to throw things at them like a poltergeist.

The family members all argue about what to do with Gammer, and in the end, they decide that she must go live with Dinah and her husband because gentle Dinah seems like she’s the only one who can handle her. Some of the relatives argue about who will get Gammer’s house since she will no longer be living there, and Marianne’s father reveals that the house actually belongs to him and that he was just letting Gammer live there. He thinks that the house is too large for his family and that the sensible thing to do is to sell the house and use the money for Gammer’s care and other practical uses. Moving Gammer to Dinah’s house is difficult because she uses her magic to resist it, but they eventually accomplish it. In the meantime, Joseph still has to go to Chrestomanci Castle because all of the arrangements are already made and the rest of the family insists that he do it.

The Chants and Their Horse

While all this is happening, The Chant family is just returning from their holiday in the south of France (which was in Mixed Magics), and they have no knowledge of what’s been happening with the Farleys and the Pinhoes. Julia and Janet have been reading a horse story for girls and have become obsessed with horses and the idea of owning horses of their own. Chrestomanci asks them if they wouldn’t prefer to have bicycles (Roger says he would and Chrestomanci immediately agrees he can have one), but the girls insist that they must have horses. Millie is sympathetic because she wanted a horse of her own when she was young, and they do have stables at Chrestomanci Castle. Chrestomanci reluctantly agrees and purchases a horse for the girls, with the understanding that they will learn to take care of it properly.

However, when the horse arrives, it turns out that Janet is terrified of horses when she actually meets one, and the horse only likes Eric “Cat” Chant. Initially, Cat thought that all of the horse talk was boring, but he feels a strange kinship for Syracuse the horse, and if he doesn’t take care of him, Chrestomanci might follow through on his threat to have Syracuse turned into dog food. (Chrestomanci is also secretly afraid of horses.) Cat finds riding difficult at first, but he enjoys it and becomes fond of Syracuse. Julia and Janet swear off horses in fear and disappointment and get bicycles, like Roger, so Cat becomes Syracuse’s owner.

One day, while riding Syracuse, Cat has a disturbing encounter with Mr. Farley, the gamekeeper. Mr. Farley has placed spells in the territory around his family’s property to keep people away so their magical activities won’t be noticed by anyone, especially the people at Chrestomanci Castle. Since Cat has been riding around the countryside on his horse, Mr. Farley has become paranoid about Cat snooping around. The Pinhoes have some similar worries.

Then, Jason, one of Chrestomanci’s associates, returns to the castle after having been away for years. Jason brings his new wife, Irene Pinhoe, with him. Jason is a plant expert, and he also has some plant samples. Janet and Julia are both heart-broken that Jason is married because they both had enormous crushes on him, and they are sure that Irene is going to be perfectly awful and that they won’t be able to stand her. However, when Cat meets Irene, he thinks that she seems rather nice. She’s an artist and designer, and Cat can tell that she’s using magic in her drawings. Irene admits that her father was some kind of enchanter, and she may have inherited some of his ability, although she seems oddly embarrassed about it and says that she doesn’t know much about her father’s work. Jason and Irene invite Cat to accompany them while they have a look at a house that they’re planning to buy in the area.

Cat and Marianne

Gammer is still not in her right mind, and at Gammer’s request, Marianne has to look after her cat, Nutcase. This is difficult because Nutcase is hard to control, and he somehow manages to get around the spells that Marianne tries to use to control him. After Nutcase kills a bunch of baby chicks belonging to Dinah, Dinah’s husband threatens to kill Nutcase if he comes near their chickens again. Marianne tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep track of Nutcase and keep him out of trouble.

One day, while trying to find Nutcase, she shows up at the house that Jason and Irene are trying to buy while they are there with Cat. It happens to be the old Pinhoe house, the one Marianne’s family is selling, and the Pinhoe family would prefer a Pinhoe to buy it. It helps that Irene is a Pinhoe, and Marianne thinks that she is just like the princess that she imagined in a story that she’s writing. Jason is fascinated by the variety of magical herbs in the Pinhoes’ neglected garden, and he’s sure that he really wants the house, too.

Cat is intrigued by Marianne when they first meet because he can tell that she has powerful magical abilities. Marianne asks Cat to help her find Nutcase, and he agrees. While they’re looking for Nutcase, Cat comments to Marianne how powerful her magic is and that she should trust it more. Cat is surprised at himself for being so bold, and Marianne is surprised at how well Cat has read her.

While they look for Nutcase in the attic, Cat senses that there is something important and magical hidden there, protected by spells, and he feels compelled to figure out what it is. As they investigate further, they find a strange, large egg. Marianne says that she doesn’t really know what kind of egg it is but that Gammer told her that it was a silly joke of her grandfather’s because he claimed it was an elephant’s egg. Cat senses that it’s very important, and he asks Marianne if he can have it. Marianne decides it’s okay if Cat keeps it because nobody else ever really seemed to care about it, and the house needs to be cleaned out when they sell it.

During the night, Cat gets a visit from a large, winged creature that says it’s the egg’s mother. The mother says that a spell prevents her from reclaiming her egg, but she sensed that the egg was moved, so she came to see that it was safe. When the egg hatches, it turns out that it’s a griffin. Cat needs Millie, Crestomanci’s wife, to help with the hatching and caring for the griffin. Crestomanci questions Cat about how he got the egg, and Cat explains that it came from the Pinhoes’ old house, which seems to intrigue Crestomanci.

When Marianne’s uncles learn that Marianne gave the egg to Cat and that it’s hatched, they’re furious with her. They had put the egg in the attic themselves and placed spells on it to prevent it from hatching, although they had never told Marianne about it before.

In the mean time, Marianne has been learning that this isn’t the only secret that her family has been hiding and that things in her family are not what she’s always believed they were. Strange things are happening in the nearby village. First, someone places a bad luck spell on all the Pinhoes. Every member of the Pinhoe family falls victim to various accidents until they find the source of the spell buried in the garden of the old Pinhoe house and destroy it. Then, there’s a plague of frogs and a sudden epidemic of whooping cough that affects everyone in the county.

What Marianne comes to realize is that these curses are being cast by Gammer, who still seems to not be in her right mind. What the other relatives have been taking to be harmless, nonsense mutterings and odd little things that she does to entertain herself have actually been magic spells. The curses have been mostly directed at the Farley family, although because Gammer isn’t really in her right mind, some of them have gone astray and affected other people in the area, including the Pinhoes.

However, when Marianne tries to tell her family what Gammer is doing, nobody believes her. Marianne comes to realize that the Pinhoes themselves have also been under one of Gammer’s spells for their whole lives that cause them to view Gammer with reverence and to make excuses for bad things she does. For some reason, this spell no longer seems to be working on Marianne, even though the other members of her family are still affected. Whe’s beginning to see that Gammer has done some pretty awful things and that her own father has been taking more care of the Pinhoe family than Gammer ever has, even though Gammer has been taking the credit as the family’s leader. Because of Gammer’s spells, none of the rest of the family will listen to anything Marianne tries to say about what Gammer has been doing, and they think that it’s just malicious slander. Worse still, Marianne is in disgrace with them because she gave the griffin egg to Cat.

What is the true story behind the griffin egg, and why are the elder Pinhoes so worried about it? Marianne knows that there is a griffin and a unicorn on the family’s coat of arms. What kind of feud does Gammer have with the Farley family, and are the Farleys really responsible for her present condition? With Gammer’s spells on everyone, how can Marianne get anyone to believe her enough to help her get the answers she needs? Her family has tried hard to avoid getting the attention of Chrestomanci or anyone at Chrestomanci Castle, but they may be the very people Marianne needs now.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I love the Chrestomanci series, and I enjoyed reading this book, although the ending seemed a little confusing and fell a little flat to me. I’m starting out with some minor spoilers, including some for previous books in the series. The major spoilers are at the end. The premise of a magical family with secrets is intriguing and fits well with the rest of the series. At first, Marianne believes everything that her family says and accepts that she will probably be the one to eventually take over Gammer’s position as head of the family. However, Marianne comes to realize that members of her family aren’t what she always thought they were, and some of them are hiding dark secrets. This is also a theme in the Chrestomanci series. Other characters in the series have also discovered that members of their families were hiding dark secrets and have been been betrayed by them. In previous books, the current Chrestomanci was used and betrayed by his uncle when he was young, and Cat’s own sister used him and tried to have him killed.

When Marianne allows Cat to take the griffin egg from their family’s old house, and she begins investigating strange things happening to people in the area, she realizes that her grandmother, who seems like she isn’t in her right mind, is the cause of at least some of it. Her family is unable to accept the truth about Gammer and turns against Marianne. It turns out that even her own father has been hiding secrets from her mother and his children and that, years ago, he was involved in a terrible crime against his own father. When the terrible secrets of the Pinhoe family are finally revealed, some of the Pinhoe marriages break up because the Pinhoe wives realize that their husbands have done some terrible things and have lied to them for years about it. Although Marianne’s parents stay together, Marianne’s mother has to come to terms with the truth about her husband’s past and his lies, and she also realizes that she should improve her children’s education and her own education.

In the end, someone else takes over as the leader and adviser of the Pinhoe family, rather than Marianne, but Marianne doesn’t mind because she’s really too young for the role, and she also realizes that her talents lie elsewhere. Like other young characters in the series, she and her brother are invited to continue their magical education at Chrestomanci Castle with the Chant family children. Marianne’s father is against his children studying with the posh people at the castle because he thinks that they’re trying to be too good for their own family, and Chrestomanci tells him that the only way they’ll be too good for their family is if he decides they are and keeps telling them they are. If that’s the message their father feeds them, then someday, they’ll probably believe it and think that their family has rejected them for being better than they are. Marianne’s father grudgingly allows the children to study at the castle because he can’t stop them and also because he and his brothers have lost face in the community because their past wickedness to their own father has been revealed.

Chrestomanci puts a stop to the feud between the Pinhoes and the Farleys by revealing some of their secrets and by having his assistant take away the Farley family’s magic. He does not take away the Pinhoes’ magic, but he wants to study their unique magic style because it has to do with the life force of living things, and Cat also seems to have a talent for it. This unique style of practicing magic is one of the secrets that the Pinhoes have been trying to keep to themselves, but there are also deeper and darker secrets they’ve been hiding, some of which didn’t really make sense to me.

Major Spoilers

What is eventually revealed is that Marianne’s grandfather, who supposedly died years before, is still alive. He was imprisoned in an area that contains and hides various mythological creatures, and his own sons were the ones who imprisoned him there in an injured state, while they told the whole community and even their own spouses that he was dead. They did it because Gammer, the grandfather’s wife, and Mr. Farley told them to kill their father. They couldn’t bring themselves to actually murder him, so they just crippled and imprisoned him. The reason why they did it was because he was studying the mythological creatures and brought the griffin egg out of the hidden territory. For generations, the family has believed that it was their duty to keep the mythological creatures imprisoned and secret, so they panicked and tried to stop the grandfather when it looked like he was going to expose everything. This is the major secret of the Pinhoes that they were always afraid someone would discover.

Chrestomanci and his people reveal that the family has a hidden history where they were supposed to be the caretakers of the mythological creatures but their mission got corrupted under the influenced of a particularly fanatic religious group, which convinced past generations that the mythological creatures were “abominations” and that they needed to hide their magical abilities. This doesn’t entirely make sense because, in past books, and even in this one, the local clergy knows and accepts magic. Chrestomanci and his family regularly attend church.

The explanation that readers are given is that the past group of religious fanatics was eventually driven out by other groups that came in later, but there’s not much of an explanation of how that works. We don’t know who these fanatics were supposed to be, and the chain of events is only vaguely explained. The Pinhoes aren’t entirely convinced that any of it is true, and because there aren’t a lot of details provided and not much groundwork was laid for this revelation, I wasn’t really impressed with it, either. It also bothered me that the Pinhoes and their mission to hide mythological creatures are very local, just in the village near Chrestomanci Castle, but for reasons that are also never explained, it seems like there aren’t any other mythological creatures, like griffins and unicorns, anywhere else in England or in any other countries. Were all these mythological creatures, their entire populations, only located in this one, particular village or did this one particular village hide all of them from everywhere in the world just in their little, hidden region? Real life animal populations are generally wide-ranging, so if we accept the idea that unicorns and griffins are real and once lived out in the open, I find it hard to believe that these local families were hiding all of them just in their little woods and that nobody, anywhere else, had a clue about it before or any populations of the same creatures elsewhere. Even if all of the other mythological creatures that once existed everywhere else in the world were wiped out by “fanatics” or other causes, it seems like there should still be evidence of it somewhere, like historical accounts or archaeological evidence. If there are plant experts who study magical plants in this series, it would make sense if there were also animal experts who studied magical animals.

There are just too many plot holes here, and all of this is just kind of dumped on the readers at the end without much build-up. It would have made more sense if the children had some kind of historical lessons that included the history of these “fanatics” or the apparent destruction of mythological creatures or something to set this up before the final revelation, but we didn’t really get that. It felt more like a sudden info dump at the end.

The situation with the Pinhoe family in the book seems meant to illustrate how family stories with a very narrow focus and no outside fact checking can lead to serious misconceptions and how militantly clinging to particular ideas simply because it’s “what we’ve always done” is toxic because it can lead to a warped view of history and the places of individuals in it. The Pinhoes have not just been trying to hide their activities from the authorities, but they’ve also been shielding themselves (both intentionally and unintentionally) from anyone or anything that might put a new perspective on their activities. They’ve been worried about the authorities trying to stop them or interfere with their activities, but at no point did they consider that there might be some sound reasons why the things they’ve been doing are pretty strange and out of bounds.

In a way, I think that the message of the story does have some relevance in the real world. Misconceptions about history and historical propaganda can lead people to do some inappropriate and toxic things. I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned somewhere before that I resent the United Daughters of the Confederacy for their textbooks, which were largely propaganda for their personal familial pride. When you have an organization based entirely around the concept of being part of certain families involved in a particular event on a particular side, and the nature of that involvement would seem dubious to people not on that particular side because it implies either support for and/or active participation in an unsavory activity (in this case, owning slaves), you have a group of people with a vested interest in telling a version of the story that puts themselves in a positive light and possibly others in a more negative light to make themselves look better by comparison, regardless of the historical accuracy (much of which, in their case, can be easily debunked by primary sources). “Their” traditional version of the story, the one from the textbooks they produced in past decades, puts Northerners into the role of aggressors, frames the concept of slavery as some kind of noble social service project. Ever heard someone ask if the slaves were grateful that they were given jobs or heard slavery described as a kind of unpaid “job training”? People do, and the propaganda of the United Daughters of the Confederacy is a major reason why. One of their tactics was to make slavery sound like a form of indentured servitude that people to pay off a debt and that could work their way out of once they learned job skills, but in real life, slavery never ends and the people in it never had a debt to pay to the people who owned them. Their works have portrayed black people as varying degrees of incompetent and aggressive, needing to be looked after and controlled. As someone with an interest in children’s literature and a degree in history, I seriously resent this organization, its written works, and the “Catechism” based on their historical fan fiction (my term – the more scholarly one is “pseudohistorical narrative“) that they still make children recite in the 21st century (still touted on their website).

The reason why I’m going on this tangent about United Daughters of the Confederacy and their textbooks is that it’s a real life example of a similar situation to the one that the Pinhoes have during the story. For one thing, there is a generational disconnect because, while the older generations in the Pinhoe family cling to their family’s lore about what their mission is and the secrets the family keeps, they haven’t entirely passed on that legacy to the younger generation yet. There is an enchantment over members of the family that makes them obedient to Gammer, makes them look at her in glowing terms, and makes them disregard bad things Gammer does. However, for reasons that are also not fully explained, Marianne has somehow been exempt from this spell. (I think it might be because, initially, it was assumed that she would be taking over the role of Gammer someday, but it just isn’t really explained.) The older members of the family also cannot fully explain certain things to the children in the family because that would mean revealing what they did to Marianne’s grandfather. Because the direct chain of the narrative was broken, Marianne and her brother don’t look at the family and the things they do in the same way as their elders do. Marianne gave away the griffin egg because the adults tried to act like it was unimportant, to deflect interest from it, giving Marianne the impression that the egg really didn’t matter. Because Marianne has been exempt from her family’s stories about what they consider their mission to be and isn’t under the spell that controls how family members feel about Gammer, she is more open to investigating the situation and seeing the flaws in the things that her family has been saying and doing.

It’s a little like how generations who grew up reading the “textbooks” produced by the United Daughters of the Confederacy have a very different view of history from younger generations or even older people who grew up reading anything else. It sometimes leads to generational conflict as older generations cling to old family stories and the “textbooks” they read in school, and younger generations have more exposure to other ideas through a different set of textbooks and other people’s very different family stories through the Internet and other, modern forms of mass media. The issue of what Americans think about the Civil War isn’t the only time we’ve had this sort of disconnect between how professional historians explain things and how amateurs writers explain them. There was also a panic in the 1920s about how the American Revolution was explained in school textbooks and whether they were sufficiently patriotic. I have some training as an historian because I have a bachelor’s degree in history, but I admit that I didn’t go on for a masters or PhD, so I have some respect for people who are more expert in particular branches of history than I am and are responsible in citing their sources. I have no patience for people who do not reference primary sources or are deliberately misleading. I don’t expect perfection, but honesty and the highest degree of accuracy possible are important when other people depend on you for information.

In the book, Marianne’s father views her different understanding of the family and their situation as being malicious and rejecting her family, thinking herself “better” than they are for thinking that they’re wrong in their understanding of the past. Marianne comes to understand that they’ve done wrong things in defense of that historical understanding, including the way they’ve treated any family members who have disagreed with them in the past. They have been downright cruel, even to their own family members, to protect what their family has always believed and what they’ve always done, and they deliberately shut out any outside influences and interference because, on some level, they are aware that other people would stop them if they knew everything they’ve been doing. They try to keep their activities secret to avoid any interference and consequences from the authorities, and they deride younger generations for getting information or perspective from any outside sources that could offer reality checks. There are people in real life who get defensive about their understanding of history, although the Pinhoes are both a magical and extreme version of that phenomenon, and I still think that their story was explained a little clumsily toward the end of the book. I think more could have been done to build up to that ending, with more hints earlier in the story and some better, more detailed explanations toward the end. Still, I think I get the point that the author was trying to make.

I’m not saying that the author meant this book to be about the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That’s just one of my associations of this type of phenomenon of skewed historical perspective and a toxic level of attachment to family lore as a way of justifying otherwise unacceptable behavior. There are other groups of people who have done similar things, and I think it was the general behavior that the author wanted to examine in a magical setting, removed from any particular real-life group. In fact, I think that’s part of the reason why I was left with the impression that the history of the Pinhoes and their area was poorly-explained and lacked details about which group of fanatics set them on this path generations ago. I think the author didn’t want to involve real history or seem too accusing of any real groups, which would provoke emotional reactions from readers, based on their own understanding of history. (Admittedly, I’m pretty accusing of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and I know that may rub some people the wrong way, but I’m far from the only person who has issues with their “mint julep textbooks“, the issues with the books and their version of history still exist, and I still stand by my criticism.) It occurred to me that the fanatics who dictated that magic and magical creatures were “abominations” might be early Christian missionaries or Catholics before the Protestant Reformation, but the timing of events in the explanation seemed a little vague to me, so I think, as readers, we are not supposed to care about who they were, specifically, but to see the results of what they did, which lasted for generations. From there, we can reflect on what this type of phenomenon might look like in our own societies and the need to accept some outside input for fact-checking purposes.

Posted on by TracyC

The Magicians of Caprona

The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones, 1980.

This is the second book in the Chrestomanci series.  In this series, there are many different dimensions with different worlds, and in each of those different worlds, there is a copy of every person.  Different versions of our world can differ dramatically in their history across the dimensions, and individual people’s lives can differ dramatically between the worlds. There is one person in each generation who has no duplicates in any of the other worlds.  This person is called the Chrestomanci.  All of the talents, abilities, and lives that would have been spread across the other worlds are now centered on that one person, giving that person, literally, nine lives.  The Chrestomanci fills an important role, being better able than anyone else to travel across the dimensions, and he acts to keep a balance between them and make sure that the different worlds keep their proper course. This book begins with a brief explanation, although most of this was established in the first book in the series, Charmed Life.

In the world where the Chrestomanci lives, magic not only exists but is a known and accepted profession, and society is a little more old-fashioned than in our world. Also, there is a kind of alternate history, and some of the countries are organized differently. This story is set in Italy, which is not a unified country in this world, but a series of small dukedoms. The Chrestomanci series is a somewhat loose series, meaning that, while Chrestomanci appears in the different books and always plays some kind of role, he is not always one of the main characters. This story sets up a Shakespearean kind of feud between two families.

The dukedom of Caprona is known to having the best spell-makers in the world. The problem is that the best spell-makers belong to two particular families, the Montanas and the Petrocchis, who have a long-standing feud. The adults in the families never explain how, exactly, the feud started. They just warn the children to avoid to avoid the children of the other family. When members of the two families meet in public, they usually ignore each other, although sometimes fights break out. The fights are particularly bad when they use magic. Locals and tourists alike are alarmed by these fights and get out of the way to avoid being caught up in them.

Because the adults don’t talk about the cause of the feud, the children of the two families tell each other stories about it. In the Montana family, the children say that it started because the Duke of Caprona favored their family over the Petrocchis. The children also tell each other stories about the other family’s atrocious habits. Young Rosa Montana particularly likes telling her siblings and cousins scandalous stories about how the Petrocchis never bathe and sometimes kill their unwanted babies or eat their own family members. Because the members of the two families almost never see each other, the other Montana children can only suppose that the stories they hear about the Petrocchis are true.

When young Tonino Montana starts school, he is very upset. Things don’t seem to come as easily to him as they do to his siblings and cousins, and he feels awkward when the teacher tells him to do things differently from the way he’s always been taught to do them or repeats things that he’s already learned. When Tonino runs off into the city by himself because he’s upset, the rest of his family worries about him. Old Niccolo, the head of the family, talks to Benvenuto, the head cat in the Montana household, about Tonino. The Montana family keeps cats, who help them at their spell-making, but not everyone in the family has the ability to talk to the cats and understand them. Old Niccolo can communicate with the cats, but even Tonino’s father, Antonio, can’t. Benvenuto tells Niccolo that he will look after Tonino and not to worry about him. Tonino, like Niccolo, can talk to cats, and he hasn’t fully appreciated the talent yet.

Benvenuto becomes Tonino’s special friend. He helps Tonino to understand that, like the kittens he talks to, he’s still young and learning. Tonino needs to give himself time to develop. Benvenuto also tells Tonino that it’s fine to tell his teachers what he already knows, and Tonino comes to realize that he is far ahead of the other students in some ways, having already learned to read. His talent for talking to the cats also gives him a special place in his family. Benvenuto also allows Tonino to give him brushings, which he would never allow from any other family member before, so he becomes more well-cared for.

As time goes on, however, Tonino comes to realize that the adults in the Montana family are worried about the state of their family and the state of Caprona itself. Other dukedoms around them are becoming more powerful, and some of the old spells that the two families made to protect Caprona are breaking down. Of course, the Montanas blame the Petrocchis for the weakness of the spells and for not maintaining them properly, but Tonino realizes that the old Montana spells are breaking down as well. It’s not, as the older Montanas said, that they have had to bear the weight of making up for the weak Petrocchi spells.

Tonino gets his first look at the Petrocchis when both families are summoned to the duke’s palace to discuss the state of their spells and the rival states that are seeking to conquer Caprona. Speaking together for the first time in a long time, both families come to realize that, even though they have separately been working to make their spells stronger, each year, the protective spells they cast on Caprona have been getting weaker. There is a rumor that there is an evil enchanter who has been working against them on behalf of their enemies. Naturally, both Petrocchis and the Montanas secretly suspect each other of being involved. They also can’t help but notice that something is seriously wrong with the duke himself. He seems strangely childlike, and his wife seems to be running everything.

The Montana family offers a solution that even they aren’t sure they can fulfill. There is an old story that all of the children know about an angel who once protected Caprona with a magical song. Everyone thinks that, as along as the song is sung, Caprona will be safe. The children learn this song in school, but what they don’t know is that the words they learn to the song aren’t the original words to the song. The tune is original, but the original words were lost to time. The Montanas know that the song is a powerful spell, but it won’t function correctly until the original words to the song are restored. In their pride against the Petrocchis and their worry about the state of Caprona, the Montanas have pledged that they will find the original words to the song. Also, naturally, the Petrocchis have promised the same. Neither family knows exactly how they will do that, but they are each determined to somehow do it before the other family can.

There is only one person both of the families accept and who can work with either family without earning the resentment of the other: Chrestomanci. The situation is serious, war is pending, and Chrestomanci has also been summoned for help. As the most powerful enchanter in the world, he has the respect of all sides. Since Chrestomanci is British, he admits that he is somewhat limited in how far he can interfere in Italian affairs. His main interest is in the evil enchanter and their misuse of magic, although he will help Caprona and his friends in the magical families, if he can.

Chrestomanci notices that, aside from being able to talk to cats, Tonino also has an ability to tell when someone is an enchanter without being told. Chrestomanci says that he needs to go to Rome to make some inquiries, and he asks Tonino to stay close to his grandfather when his grandfather has to meet with anyone, to see if he can spot the evil enchanter. However, the evil enchanter already knows too much about the two families and about Tonino in particular.

When Tonino is kidnapped by the evil enchanter, his family immediately blames the Petroccis and sets out to confront them … only to be met halfway by the Petrocchi family, on their way to confront the Montanas about kidnapping one of their children, Angelica. The feud between the two families becomes worse than ever, but an accidental encounter between Tonino’s brother Paolo and Angelica’s sister Renata reveals that neither family has kidnapped anyone. The evil enchanter is playing both of the families against each other to distract them from what they really need to do: find the children and prepare to defend Caprona from its enemies. Paolo and Renata have trouble convincing either of their families of the truth because they are already too convinced that the other family is their real enemy, so they struggle to figure out how to save Tonino and Angelica themselves.

Meanwhile, Tonino and Angelica team up in captivity to find a way to escape and tell their families where to find the secret words to the angel’s song. While they are being held captive together, Tonino and Angelica argue about the nature of their families, but by talking together, they come to realize that each of their families has held half of the answer to the problem all along. If only the children can get together and reach their families to tell them the truth about the angel’s song and the identity of the evil enchanter!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in different languages).

My Reaction

During the course of the story, we never learn the original cause of the feud between the two families. It might have been something with one family thinking that the other was being favored by a past duke, or maybe it was some private quarrel between the heads of the two families. The cause is less important than the result. For generations, each family has been quietly maligning the other to the children of the family, who have continued to pass on the stories.

When the younger members of both families finally meet and talk to each other, they are initially offended that the other family has been saying the same horrible things about them that they’ve been saying about the other family, but it’s also an eye-opening experience. The two families are actually very similar to each other, both in their professional work and in their private family life. In fact, they live nearly identical lifestyles. The fact is that both families have been contributing to the spells maintaining their city for centuries, working together since before their feud began. Their spells were always intertwined and made to work together. Since the feud started and the families stopped working together, they have still had to work together in the service of their city and duke, but the feud has also served as a distraction from the real sources of danger.

As with other Chrestomanci stories, Chrestomanci doesn’t solve all of the problems of the story himself. Instead, he acts as a helper, revealing key information and providing guidance to help the other characters to solve their own problems. As a neutral observer, Chrestomanci sees both of the families and their quarrel for what they really are. He also helps to reveal the true villain of the story for who they really are.

Chrestomanci also points out the hidden talents of the children in the story. Although Tonino doesn’t think he’s as good as magic as others in his family, he does have other talents and magical abilities. At the end of the story, he goes to England with Chrestomanci to study for a while. His adventures in England are part of one of the short stories in Mixed Magics.

Posted on by TracyC

House of Many Ways

House of Many Ways cover

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones, 2008.

This is the third book in the Howl Trilogy. The Howl books are a loose series. Although the wizard Howl, his wife Sophie, and the fire demon Calcifer are the main characters in the first book and appear in all of the other stories, they are not the main characters in the other stories.

When her Great Uncle William, who is a wizard, has to go away for treatment for a health condition with the elves, Charmaine’s Aunt Sempronia volunteer her to house-sit for him. When Aunt Sempronia goes to tell Great Uncle William that Charmaine will be looking after his house, he asks whether Charmaine knows anything about magic. The aunt says that she doesn’t think so. Charmaine spends all of her time reading and doesn’t usually help much with the housework at home. Her aunt thinks this responsibility would do her good. Great Uncle William is a little concerned because his house is not an ordinary house, and he says that he had better take some precautions.

Although Charnaine could be annoyed at being volunteered for this chore without her permission, she is actually grateful for this opportunity to get away from her parents. Her parents are overprotective of her, and they never allow her to do anything that is remotely daring or doesn’t seem completely respectable. She feels stifled, and she wants the chance for a little independence. One of her first acts of independence is to write to the king, telling him that, more than anything, she would like to help catalog his library. She knows that the king is cataloging it himself with the help of his daughter, Princess Hilda (which was established in the previous book in the series), but Charmaine loves books more than anything and she has always dreamed of being an assistant librarian in the royal library. Her parents would think that she was being too cheeky by asking for this position.

In the meantime, Charmaine can prove herself capable and enjoy further independence in Great Uncle William’s house. When she arrives there, Aunt Sempronia tells her that living in a wizard’s house is serious business. Charmaine doesn’t know much about magic because her parents would never let her study it. They didn’t think magic was very respectable.

When Great Uncle William meets her, he seems pleased by her and starts to tell her that he has taken precautions for her stay in the house. Charmaine is about to tell him that she doesn’t know any magic, but they are interrupted by the elves, who come to take Great Uncle William away for his treatment. Charmaine asks the elves how long Great Uncle William will be gone, but they just say “as long as it takes.” Although Charmaine finds herself alone in the house, she hears Great Uncle William’s voice telling her that she will have to tidy the kitchen and apologizing for leaving so much laundry. His voice also says that there are more detailed instructions in the suitcase he left behind.

Before looking at the detailed instructions, Charmaine decides to take a look around the house and get herself unpacked. The kitchen is a horrible mess, and there are enormous bags of laundry. To her astonishment, there are no water taps in the kitchen sink, but there is a water pump outside. This is going to make her job harder. She is tempted to put her nose in a book and forget all her troubles and chores in the house, but she left the job of packing her own bag to her mother, and her mother didn’t include the books she had sitting out. Charmaine realizes that she should have packed her bag herself. This house-sitting job is going to be an education in responsibility as well as independence for Charmaine.

Charmaine also discovers that there’s a dog in the house that nobody told her about. Great Uncle William’s voice tells her that the dog is called Waif, that he used to be a stray, and that he’s afraid of everything. Charmaine was always afraid of dogs because of her mother’s worries about them, but Waif is so timid that she doesn’t worry about him and shares her food with him.

Charmaine realizes that she has led a very sheltered life, partly because of all of the things she was never required to do and also because of the things her parents wouldn’t let her do. It helps that anytime she asks a question out loud, Great Uncle William’s voice gives her the answer.

As Charmaine starts learning her away around the house, she discovers both that she has her work cut out for her and that it’s incredibly easy to get lost in the house. She also discovers that Great Uncle William’s study has many books in it. A note that her uncle left for her in the study says that he could be gone for about two weeks to a month and explaining more about the spoken instructions he left for her as well as the instructions in the suitcase. The note says that she can use the books in the study, but it warns her to be careful of the difficult spells. Charmaine is very appreciative for the books, although she finds them difficult to understand because they are all about magic. There are also many letters in the study written to her uncle by other wizards, including one from the wizard Howl. Many of the letters are from people asking Great Uncle William to take them on as apprentices. Charmaine thinks that her letter to the king probably sounded as pathetic as some of those letters to her great uncle.

Because Charmaine has never been allowed to try any magic before, she can’t resist trying one of the spells from one of her uncle’s books. She chooses one that looks pretty easy, but because the book’s pages turn every time she leaves to get more ingredients, she ends up putting bits and pieces of different spells together. Her spells does what she intends it to do, but the full results take some time.

Things get complicated when Charmaine has a terrifying encounter with a creature called a Lubbock while picking flowers in the mountains near the house. The Lubbock claims that it owns all the land around and everyone in it … including Charmaine. She has a narrow escape, getting away from the creature!

After she returns to the house, she meets a new arrival: Peter, Great Uncle William’s new apprentice. This unexpected guest gives Charmaine an extra responsibility. Peter is still pretty inexperienced with magic and often gets left and right mixed up, but even though he’s almost as inexperienced with everything as Charmaine, he is still company for her in this strange house. He recognizes that the reason why the house is so confusing and rooms seem to move around is that Great Uncle William has cast a spell on the house to bend space and include extra rooms in the house.

When Charmaine tells Peter about her encounter with the Lubbock, he is alarmed. The two of them research Lubbocks in Great Uncle William’s books, and what they learn is horrifying. Lubbocks need human hosts to reproduce, and those hosts die. The Lubbock offspring are also evil. While a full Lubbock looks like a purple insect, a human and Lubbock hybrid will have purple eyes. Charmaine and Peter reassure themselves that neither of them shows any sign of being part Lubbock. However, even with her aunt and mother coming to check on her, Charmaine isn’t prepared to let her fear of the Lubbock ruin her first experience with independence.

To her surprise, the king also accepts her application to work in the royal library! The cataloging work in the library isn’t quite as much fun as she had imagined it would be because much of it is routine documents, but Charmaine learns that the king and his daughter are searching for some very important documents. Before he went away, Great Uncle William was also helping them. Now, the princess has called in an old friend of hers, Sophie Pendragon, wife of the Royal Wizard Howl of Ingary. There is a plot against the royal family which has kept them poor. Not all of the royal family is what they seem to be, and some of the secrets of the past are hidden in Great Uncle William’s unusual house.

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

My Reaction

Some of the characters in this book other than Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer were introduced in the previous book in the series. The elderly princess was one of the princesses kidnapped by the djinn, which is how she met Sophie. The king’s cook, Jamal, and his dog were also introduced in Castle in the Air. However, Charmaine is definitely the main character of the story, along with Peter as her sidekick and main helper. The other characters are there for support. Howl and Sophie help Charmaine by providing her with information that she wouldn’t have had otherwise, and Calcifer destroys some of the threats because only a fire demon is powerful enough to do it. Howl is in the castle in disguise because, as one of the royal wizards of another country, it wouldn’t be right for him to seem to be working for the royal family of another country. Unlike in Castle in the Air, though, readers know right away what Howl’s disguise is, and it’s played for comedy. The villains of the story aren’t too difficult to spot once they appear. What is more mysterious is what the king is searching before and what happened to it.

Charmaine’s self-discovery is a major part of the story. Charmaine knows from the beginning that she has lived a very sheltered life because of her mother’s standards for what is “respectable” and proper for a young girl like her. She has already decided that she doesn’t agree with all of her mother’s ideas and that she wants some independence. To her credit, although she does resent some of the routine chores she has to do while taking care of Great Uncle William’s house, she is determined to learn what what she has to learn to achieve some independence and do some of the things she really wants to do. Peter knows more about some things than Charmaine does, like how to do dishes and laundry, so he is some help to her, but he has only recently left home to take up his apprenticeship, so there are things that he doesn’t know, either. Neither one of them knows how to cook, so they turn to Charmaine’s father for advice and recipes. Charmaine’s father is more broad-minded than her mother, so he is willing to help. Charmaine also gradually learns to get along with Peter, and they learn how to consider each other’s feelings and allow each other their own learning opportunities. At one point, Peter tidies up Charmaine’s room as a favor to her, but she is annoyed and tells him not to do that anymore because she wants to take care of her own things for herself.

From her own experimentation and from what her father tells her, Charmaine discovers that she has a natural talent for magic. She inherited her magical talent from her father, who admits to her that he has secretly been using his talent for making things in his bakery. He never tells his wife about his magic because she wouldn’t approve.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Castle in the Air

Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones, 1990.

This is the sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, the second book in the Howl Trilogy, although the characters from the first book only appear in secondary roles in this one. The series is somewhat loose, sort of like the Chrestomanci series by the same author. Characters from earlier books appear in later ones, but the main characters change in each book. This story is set in a country to the south of Ingary, where the first book took place, in a sort of Arabian Nights type setting.

Abdullah is a carpet merchant, operating a modest booth in the bazaar. He did not receive much inheritance from his father, having disappointed him in some way before he died. Apparently, there had been some sort of prophecy about Abdullah when he was born, and Abdullah has not lived up to it. He doesn’t know what the prophecy was, and mostly, it doesn’t bother him much, although he sometimes likes to imagine what it could have been, building “castles in the air” in his daydreams, where he is the kidnapped son of a king. Abdullah is mostly content with his life, doing enough business to get by, slowly building his business to have better stock, and using his free time for his daydreams. The only part of his life that he doesn’t like is when his father’s first wife’s relatives stop by his booth and nitpick him, telling him what a disappointment he is, how he should be more prosperous, how his business should be better than it is, how he should already be married, everything they can think of to make him feel bad about himself.

Then, one day, a stranger comes by Abdullah’s booth to sell him a carpet. The stranger is rude and disparaging of Abdullah’s shop, and Abdullah is dubious about the quality of the carpet he is trying to sell. The carpet seems rather old and worn. The stranger tells him that it’s a magic carpet and can fly. At first, Abdullah thinks that’s just a story to make him pay more for the carpet than it’s worth, but the stranger shows him that the carpet can fly by making it hover in Abdullah’s shop. Abdullah checks the carpet over and tries it out himself to assure himself that it’s not some kind of trick, but the carpet can really fly! Abdullah wonders why someone would be selling a perfectly useful and valuable flying carpet, even if it is a bit worn, but he decides to buy it anyway. Since he doesn’t like the stranger and suspects that there is some kind of trick involved, he drives a hard bargain, but eventually purchases the carpet. That night, Abdullah decides to sleep on top of the carpet, just in case the stranger’s trick is to call the carpet back to him in the middle of the night after having made the sale.

When Abdullah wakes up in a beautiful garden, like the one he imagines in his daydreams where he is secretly a prince, he assumes that he is dreaming. When a beautiful princess comes to him in the garden, he is sure that this must be a dream, although she doesn’t look exactly like the princess he always imagined himself in his daydreams. He decides to alter his daydreams to suit the girl. Since he thinks this is just a dream, he introduces himself to the girl as his imaginary alter-ego, the long-lost prince of a distant kingdom.

To Abdullah’s astonishment, the princess is astonished when he says that he is a man. For one thing, Abdullah is still wearing his nightgown, which the princess thinks resembles a dress, and for another, Abdullah doesn’t resemble any man she’s ever seen before. The truth is that the princess has not seen many men before. In fact, the only man she’s ever seen in her life is her father, who is a much older man than Abdullah. She thinks that all men are older men, like her father. Abdullah has heard that royal girls are kept practically prisoners, hidden away from other people. The princess, who is called Flower-in-the-Night, says that her father has kept her away from other men because he has already chosen her husband for her and doesn’t want any other man to fall in love with her and carry her off first, ruining his plans. Even though she knows that she has lived a relatively sheltered life, she still suspects that maybe Abdullah is still not a man, although she admits that it could just be because he is from a different country. She says that she wants to know all about him and his country. Abdullah, still thinking this is a dream, tells her about his daydreams of being a prince as if they were true. Then, in spite of thinking that this encounter is all a dream, he offers to come again and bring the princess as many pictures of other men as he can find, both to prove that he really is a man and also so that the princess will have a more realistic idea of what men are, so she will know whether or not she really loves the man he father has chosen for her.

After he lays back down on his carpet again, he wakes up in his own booth in the bazaar, and the carpet is still there, underneath him. The only thing he can’t find is his nightcap. After his dream, which is the most realistic dream he’s ever had, Abdullah’s ordinary life suddenly seems incredibly drab. The more he thinks about his dream, the more Abdullah remembers that he took off his nightcap in his dream. It makes him realize that the dream was actually real, and he left the nightcap behind in a real garden he visited during the night!

Abdullah comes to the conclusion that, thinking about his daydreams while he went to sleep, he must have said something in his sleep that caused the carpet to take him to the garden of a real princess. Now that he knows that the princess is real, he goes to a local artist and asks him to draw portraits of all different types of men, young and old. It’s a strange request, so he explains that it’s for a friend who is an invalid and cannot go out and see people. The artist is intrigued (and also thinks that Abdullah may be crazy), so he agrees to do it for a low price. When other people learn that Abdullah is collecting portraits now, many people try to sell him their portraits, too. It just sounds that much crazier when Abdullah refuses to buy any female portraits. Abdullah tells people that he’s think of expanding his business to selling art as well as rugs.

Abdullah realizes that the magic carpet seems to require a kind of code word to work, something that the man who sold it to him didn’t tell him but which he’s been saying in his sleep. He tries all kinds of words when he’s awake, but he can’t figure it out. Fortunately, the carpet works again when he’s asleep. He once again finds himself in the garden with Flower-in-the-Night. After he shows her all of the pictures of different men he’s collected, Flower-in-the-Night admits that she was wrong and that he’s definitely a man. She now realizes that her father is not a typical example of what all men are like, and to Abdullah’s delight, she says that she likes him better than any of the other men in the pictures. She says that she wants to marry him! Although that’s what he wants, too, it’s awkward because, when he saw her before, he was acting out his daydream with her, and he’s not really a prince. Breaking it to her gently, Abdullah says that, even if he was once a prince, he is now a carpet merchant and not a wealthy man, like her father would want to marry. Flower-in-the-Night insists that she doesn’t care.

Abdullah explains to her how he comes to her on the magic carpet but that he can apparently only use it to travel when he says the right word when he’s asleep. Flower-in-the-Night is an educated and intelligent young woman, something that Abdullah admires in her besides her beauty, and she deduces from what’s she’s read about magic carpets that the secret word is some common word that is pronounced in an old-fashioned way. Unfortunately, Abdullah accidentally sends himself back home too quickly, without Flower-in-the-Night!

He consoles himself by thinking that he will just have to make some arrangements that day and visit her again the next night to elope with her. However, his father’s first wife’s relatives have also been making arrangements for him. Although Abdullah has not known what kind of prophecy was made about him when he was a baby, they have known for years. That day, they reveal to him that the prophecy was that he would not follow his father in his business (the thing that had always disappointed his father) but that he would be raised above everyone else in the land two years after his father’s death. They’re not exactly sure what being raised above others in the land means, but they think it must mean that he is destined for some kind of honor or high social rank or wealth. Now, two years after his father’s death, the news that Abdullah has started dealing in art and not just carpets, like his father did, signals to them that Abdullah’s fortunes are changing and that his destiny for some kind of greatness must be close at hand.

His father’s first wife’s relatives try to force him to marry a couple of nieces of theirs to keep that greatness or whatever wealth might be coming to Abdullah in their family. Abdullah is appalled, and to get out of the marriages they are trying to arrange, he lies and tells them that his father made him take a solemn vow not to marry until he has achieved the goal of the prophecy and been raised above all others in the land. This gets him a temporary reprieve, but he knows that the relatives will check all of the officially recognized vows to verify whether he’s telling the truth.

His only hope is to return to Flower-in-the-Night and elope with her, taking her as far away as they can go to start over beyond her father’s reach. Unfortunately, when he returns to her garden, he is just in time to see her abducted by a djinn! Horrified, he tries to chase after the djinn on his magic carpet to rescue Flower-in-the-Night, but he isn’t able to follow the djinn. Not knowing where the djinn has taken Flower-in-the-Night, Abdullah returns home without her. The next morning, he is arrested by the Sultan’s men for kidnapping the princess! The Sultan knows that he has been visiting Flower-in-the-Night because he left behind his nightcap, with his name on it.

Under the Sultan’s questioning, Abdullah admits to visiting the princess and bringing her all the portraits of men that the Sultan has found among the princess’s belongings, although really, the Sultan has found less than half of the pictures that Abdullah brought. Abdullah points out that the Sultan has a strange way of caring for his daughter, by raising her to be so isolated that she can’t even recognize a man when she sees one. The Sultan admits that he had to raise her that way because a prophecy when she was a baby said that she would marry the first man she saw, apart from her own father. He planned to introduce her to the man he picked for her before she could see anyone else, and Abdullah’s sudden appearance has ruined his plans. Abdullah is sure that the Sultan will execute him for what he’s done. To Abdullah’s relief, the Sultan knows that he can’t cheat the prophecy, so the Sultan plans to find his daughter and make her marry Abdullah. Unfortunately, that doesn’t rule out executing Abdullah after the wedding. The Sultan also doesn’t believe Abdullah’s story about the djinn kidnapping the princess. He’s convinced that Abdullah is hiding the princess somewhere, so he has Abdullah locked in the dungeon until he can find her.

Abdullah despairs in the dungeon, knowing that the Sultan and his men won’t find Flower-in-the-Night and that he can’t tell them where she is. Then, his friend Jamal’s dog accidentally brings him the magic carpet. From there, Abdullah sets off on a wild journey, fleeing from the Sultan’s men, becoming the captive of bandits, and finding a bottle with a genie in it who must grant his wishes. With the help of a genie, finding Flower-in-the-Night seems like it should be easier, but that doesn’t mean that’s going to be easy. Even if the prophecy guarantees that Abdullah will somehow be successful in finding and marrying Flower-in-the-Night, there are no guarantees for what will happen to him afterward. Even the djinn is a pawn in someone else’s game.

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

My Reaction

I first read this book not long after I read Howl’s Moving Castle in high school. At the time, I knew it was a sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, and I was confused by the change in location and because it took a long time before Howl and Sophie appeared in the story. At first, it seems like this is a completely unrelated story to the first book, but actually, Howl and Sophie are very involved in Abdullah’s situation. It just isn’t obvious because neither of them are recognizable when they first appear in the story. About halfway through the book, Abdullah learns what has happened to Howl’s moving castle, but what has happened to Howl and Sophie isn’t clear until later. Howl’s moving castle has been commandeered by the true villain of the story, and the people of Ingary think that Howl is missing. By the end of the book, it is established that Howl is a royal wizard as well as Suliman, and he and Sophie are not only married, but they have a child of their own. Their son’s name is Morgan. Since the last book, Sophie’s sister Lettie has married Suliman and also has a baby.

Prophecies play important roles in the story, and I like how the characters realize that prophecies can be literal or figurative, and there are situation that the prophecies don’t cover. The Sultan accepts that his daughter must marry the first man she sees other than himself because of the prophecy about her, and while he’s disappointed that this man turns out to be Abdullah the carpet merchant, there’s nothing in the prophecy that says that he can’t execute Abdullah immediately after the wedding and marry his daughter to someone else. The prophecy that Abdullah will be “raised above” everyone else can also have many possible meanings. It could mean that Abdullah will come to some high status in life, or it could mean that the Sultan will follow through on his threat to have Abdullah impaled in the air on a 40-foot pole.

Of course, the story has a happy ending. I was concerned that Flower-in-the-Night would be upset that Abdullah wasn’t telling her the truth about being a kidnapped prince, but she actually realizes the truth before Abdullah admits it to her. She understands how Abdullah feels because she used to have a daydream of her own about being an ordinary girl with a father who sold carpets in the marketplace.

Posted on by TracyC

A Walk in Wolf Wood

A Walk in Wolf Wood by Mary Stewart, 1980.

John and Margaret Begbie are traveling with their parents through Germany, and the family stops to have a picnic in the Black Forest. From their picnic spot, they can see the old castle on the hill that they visited earlier that day. The children’s parents doze off after lunch, but the children stay awake and see a strange man. The man walks by their picnic spot wearing an old velvet costume and a dagger in his belt, and the children see that he’s crying. The kids worry about the man because he seems so deeply distressed. They decide to leave a note for their parents and follow the man to be sure that he’s alright.

As they go after the man, they spot what looks like the tracks of a large dog, but the man didn’t have a dog with him. The kids realize that these are actually wolf tracks, and John remembers that their father told them that this area is called Wolfenwald, which means Wolf Wood. Then, they find the man’s gold medallion lying on the ground. Going a little further, they find an old cottage. The cottage looks abandoned, but they decide to explore around it anyway, just in case the man went inside. No one answers their knocks on the door, but they see the man’s clothes on the bed inside the house. They decide to leave the medallion with the man’s clothes and go back to their parents, but they suddenly notice that it has become night, and when they try to leave the cottage, they are confronted by a large wolf!

John frightens the wolf away by flinging the medallion at it. When the wolf is gone, the children decide that they have no choice but to risk going through the woods in the dark to find their parents. However, when they arrive at the picnic spot again, their parents aren’t there. The children find the note they left and a bar of chocolate. They eat the chocolate and lie down to wait for their parents to return for them, but the next thing they know, they are woken by the sound of a horn and the horses of a group of hunters. The hunters are pursuing the wolf. When they wave down one of the horsemen, he offers them a coin to tell him where the wolf is. Margaret points the man in the wrong direction to get the hunters off the trail of the wolf. The children aren’t really sure whether it’s a real wolf or just a dog that resembles one, but Margaret has the sense that the wolf needs their help.

The children also need help. They notice that the horsemen are dressed strangely, like people out of the past, and the coin that the man gave them is stamped with the year 1342 although it looks new. Even more strangely, the children suddenly realize that they understood what the man said even though neither of them can speak German. Is this is a dream, or have they gone back in time?

Not knowing what else to do, they decide to return to the cottage and see if the man who owns the medallion is there and can explain things. The man does have an explanation. He explains that he was the wolf. The man, whose name is Mardian, is a werewolf, and Margaret saved his life when she diverted the hunters. Mardian says that he and his family served the dukes who have ruled this land, and he and the current duke grew up together and were best friends for years. However, after suffering a terrible injury at the hands of an enemy and losing his wife, Duke Otho became a changed man, angry and bitter. In a fit of temper, he even accused Mardian of plotting against him. A real enemy in Otho’s circle, an enchanter called Almeric, used Otho’s suspicions to try to eliminate Mardian. When his plots to kill Mardian failed, Almeric used sorcery to turn him into a werewolf. Now, Alermic has promised a reward to the hunter who kills the wolf, and in the meantime, he has disguised himself as Mardian and taken his place in the duke’s castle. So far, the duke hasn’t even noticed that Mardian has been replaced by an imposter. Mardian believes that Alermic will use his position to kill both the duke and his young son so he can take the dukedom for himself. Can the children help Mardian expose the imposter and break the spell?

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

My Reaction

In order to reach the duke and get his help to expose the imposter, the children must disguise themselves as other children from this time period and join in the life of the duke’s castle. Mardian gives them a plausible cover story, in case anyone asks them who they are. They carry off the charade very well, and there are so many people and children in the castle that two more aren’t questioned. John is even mistaken for another boy, called Lionel. John doesn’t know who or where the real Lionel is, although he theorizes that the real Lionel might have died young because many children of this time period did. While real-life castles were full of many different types of people of all ages, I do find it a little difficult to believe that so few people are surprised by children who suddenly appear without any introduction. There does seem to be the implication that people do come and go from this castle, making it difficult to keep track of everyone.

Margaret and John also experience the different expectations people of this time have for girls and boys. John is immediately put to work as a servant, waiting on the noblemen of the duke’s court as a page along with the sons of the nobles. He also has to dodge the rough games that the other boys play that are meant to prepare them for war. On the other hand, Margaret is taken to the nurseries with the other young girls of the castle and lectured about how she should be quiet and modest. The girls are much more closely supervised than the boys, although she finds a way of slipping away from the others to meet with John.

I liked some of the descriptions of the Medieval food in the book. At one point, Margaret thinks she’s eating turkey (a bird native to the Americas and not found in Europe during this time period), but John tells her that it’s actually swan and peacock, birds which were eaten around this time. There are a few instances where alcohol is mentioned because people during this time period drink wine and small beer. The duke also insists that a boy bring him his favorite posset, a drink I discussed in my earlier review of the The Box of Delights.

Posted on by TracyC

The Bone Keeper

The Bone Keeper by Megan McDonald, paintings by G. Brian Karas, 1999.

The story in this picture book is written as an unrhymed poem and illustrated with paintings that resemble paintings on a cave wall.

Bone Woman is a strange old woman. She is ancient, legendary, may have powers to bring back the dead, and lives in a cave full of bones.

She spends her time searching for bones in the desert sand. She collects the bones, studies them, and arranges them to form complete skeletons.

When she manages to complete a skeleton, she performs a ritual to bring the creature back to life!

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

My Reaction

This is one of those picture books that I think would actually be appreciated more by adults than by children. The poetry and art style seem more sophisticated than the styles that children seem to prefer. Most of the pictures are not very colorful, using a lot of grays and browns and black, although the art style is unusual and fascinating, looking like paintings and drawings scratched into rock.

I think kids could understand the action of the story – a strange old woman who lives in a cave collects bones, assembles them into skeletons, and can use them to bring animals back to life. It’s a strange story, partly because there is no explanation about why she is doing this.

One of my regrets about this book is that it doesn’t explain the background of this story. I had expected that there would be a section at the back of the book that would explain more, but there isn’t. From the context – the pictures, the style of the story, the names that the woman is called, and the fact that the artist thanked the Phoenix Public Library and the Heard Museum (both places that are familiar to me) in the dedication – adults can figure out that this is a story from folklore, but it’s not immediately clear what kind of folklore. Anyone who doesn’t already know the story might be confused. I didn’t know this story when I read the book, so I had to look it up.

The story of the Bone Woman has been told and referenced in other books. The story of La Huesera (the Bone Woman) is a Mexican folktale. Sometimes, it’s also called La Loba (the Wolf Woman) because that is the animal that she particularly wants to resurrect. The Bone Woman is a “wild woman” or a “crone” who uses a kind of natural magic to bring life to lifelessness and restoring what was lost.

Posted on by TracyC

Talking to Dragons

Talking to Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, 1985.

This is both the fourth book in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles and the first book in the series that was written.  The author wrote this story before the others and then wrote the other three to explain how the characters got to this point.  The first three books in the series focus on Princess Cimorene and her adventures, but this book focuses on her son, Prince Daystar.

Partly because this series is kind of backwards, with the last book being the first written, I’m going to start with a spoiler.  When the book begins, Daystar is unaware that he is a prince and that his father is the king of the Enchanted Forest.  He grew up in an ordinary cottage on the edge of the forest, so he is accustomed to the presence of all kinds of fantasy creatures and fairy tale characters.  He thinks of himself and his mother as ordinary poor folk.  However, his mother has taught him not only reading and writing but other skills that are more unusual for peasants, like music, fighting, and even a little magic.

When Daystar is 16 years old, a wizard named Antorell comes to their house.  Daystar’s mother, Cimorene, seemed to know him, and he knows her.  Antorell demands “the sword” and the boy, and Cimorene casts a spell to melt him.  (“’No! Not again!’ he screamed.”  If you’ve read the other books, you already know why.  But, again, this book was written first.)

The next day, Cimorene gives Daystar a sword that he’s never seen before but which seems to draw him to it, and she starts giving him instructions.  The instructions are vague, but Cimorene insists that Daystar is to go into the Enchanted Forest and not to come back until he can explain why he had to go in there in the first place.  Also, he is not allowed to draw the sword from its scabbard unless he really needs to use it.  Cimorene says that she can’t explain more because it might “ruin everything.”  Not knowing what else to do, Daystar starts into the Enchanted Forest.  When he glances back, Cimorene and the cottage have suddenly disappeared.  Daystar has no idea why, but he has no choice but to keep going.

In the forest, Daystar meets a talking lizard called Suz, who claims to know everything about the Enchanted Forest and what goes on there (a tall claim, considering everything that goes on there).  When Daystar asked him if he knows anything about the mysterious, magical sword that his mother gave him, Suz tells him that it’s the Sword of the Sleeping King and that everyone has been looking for it.  Daystar knows nothing about it, which surprises Suz.  To Daystar’s surprise, both the sword and Daystar’s lack of knowledge agitate Suz, who says that he must get Kazul, who will know what to do.  Before he then runs off, leaving Daystar wondering who Kazul is, Suz tells him that he’s going to have to learn about the sword by himself because there are certain rules associated with magic, but that he should follow the sword to find out.

The next person Daystar meets is a red-haired girl who is stuck in a hedge.  She is surprised by how easily Daystar can get into the magical hedge, and at first, she thinks that he is a wizard.  She is relieved when she finds out that he’s not.  The girl, Shiara, tells Daystar that wizards have been chasing her because she burned the Head Wizard’s staff.  Most people could never accomplish that because wizards’ staffs are extremely powerful and have protective spells on them, but Shiara is a fire-witch.

As the two of them talk, Daystar learns that, while fire-witches are extremely rare and powerful come by their powers naturally, Shiara’s abilities are more unpredictable than most.  She has trouble casting spells on purpose, but when she gets mad, she can do some extremely powerful ones without really trying.  Fire-witches tend to have tempers, and Shiara is no exception.  Because of that, she doesn’t have many friends.  Most people are afraid to be around her because they never know when she’ll lose her temper and accidentally set things on fire.  Even worse, for Shiara, is knowing that most fire-witches are able to do very impressive spells and are almost invulnerable, but yet, she can’t even burn her way through a hedge when she tries it.  The wizards are very interested in her because most fire-witches are immune to their spells.  When they learned that she was a fire-witch who couldn’t cast her own spells, they tried to kidnap her in order to study her magic, which she how she ended up setting the Head Wizard’s staff on fire.

Daystar and Shiara finally get out of the magical hedge when Daystar suggests that Shiara try being polite to it instead of losing her temper.  Creatures and objects in the Enchanted Forest tend to respond well to politeness.  When they’re out of the hedge, a wizard shows up and tries to kidnap Shiara again, but Daystar defends her with his sword.  However, Daystar’s hand is injured when he tries to pick up the pieces of the wizard’s staff, and it explodes.

Daystar and Shiara seek help from Morwen, a witch who lives nearby.  It is from Morwen that Daystar begins to get a sense of what his sword is capable of doing.  He also meets up with Suz again, who tells him that he should go to the castle and that Kazul will meet him there.  Daystar still doesn’t know what he’s walking into, but missions in the Enchanted Forest can’t be ignored, and he has a mission to complete that everyone has been waiting for since before he was born.

By the end of the story, Daystar has learned what he needs to do to rescue his father, and Cimorene and Mendanbar are reunited.  Shiara ends up getting what she wants, partially, because she gains the ability to use her powers, but is forced to be polite in order to do so, which really irritates her.  She becomes Kazul’s new princess, where she will learn both the personal skills and magical skills she needs to control both herself and her ability.  Cimorene believes that Shiara will end up marrying Daystar eventually and becoming the next queen of the Enchanted Forest.  However, the series ends here, and the future is left to the imagination.  Morwen also decides to marry Telemain, a character from the previous books.

Like other books in this series, this book contains a lot of humor and parodies on popular fairy tales and fairy-tale creatures. Personally, I like the first two books in the series the best, but this one is also fun. There is a mild touch of romance to it, which is also nice.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

There is one more story after this series, a short story in the collection Book of Enchantments that features Daystar and both of his parents but does not have Shiara.

Posted on by TracyC

Calling on Dragons

Calling on Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, 1993.

This is the third book in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Cimorene is now married to Mendanbar and expecting their first child.

Morwen, a witch living in the Enchanted Forest, realizes that something strange is going on when she encounters a rabbit that is more than six feet tall. The rabbit, called Killer, has no idea how he managed to grow so big. It just happened suddenly that morning while he was eating some clover. Morwen goes to investigate the clover patch in the hopes of finding what might be responsible for the change. She discovers a wizard’s staff nearby, which is never a good sign.

She contacts King Mendanbar, Queen Cimorene, and her friend Telemain, a magical theoretician. Part of what they discover is that one of the wizards has shrunk himself in size. Mendanbar also discovers that someone has stolen the sword that he uses to control the threads of magic in the Enchanted Forest. The sword helps to maintain the protective spell around the Enchanted Forest that keeps wizards out. If the wizards have it, they may be able to enter the forest and soak up its magic. Mendanbar wants to go with the others to get it back, but Telemain points out that he can’t because he’s the other main focus of the protective spell; if he leaves the forest, it will be completely vulnerable. Even worse, they don’t have much time to retrieve the sword because whenever it’s outside of the Enchanted Forest, it leaks magic. Although Mendanbar doesn’t want to let Cimorene go on the mission to retrieve the sword while she’s pregnant, he has to let her go with the others. Before the book is over, Killer, who accompanies them on their mission, changes from a giant rabbit in to a flying blue donkey.

Among the fairy tale parodies that the characters encounter on their journey are a farmer named MacDonald (E-I-E-I-O) and a sorceress named Rachel who lives in a tower that can only be entered via a chair which Rachel lowers to bring people up (“Rachel! Rachel, send down the chair”). They keep in touch with Mendanbar in the castle using a magic mirror (“Mirror, mirror on the wall, I would like to make a call.”), until, for some reason, they are unable to reach him.

They are able to retrieve the magic sword, but the wizards capture Mendanbar and seal him inside his castle, trapped in a transportation spell to keep him safe yet contained. They don’t want to kill him because the Enchanted Forest would be plunged into chaos by his death, and they can’t keep him prisoner in a normal way because his friends would rescue him. Cimorene and the others know that the sword has the power to break through the shield spell on the castle, but the problem is that only a member of the royal family can wield it to do so. The sword allows Cimorene to carry it because she is Mendanbar’s wife, but only a blood relative can use the sword to break the spell . . . which mean that they have to wait for Cimorene’s baby to be born and become old enough to do it.

Although I like this series and think it’s a lot of fun, I’m not really fond of the last two books because of Mendanbar’s years of imprisonment. He’s okay when they finally get to him, but I still don’t like it. The ending of this book leaves things hanging until the fourth book.

This book is currently available online through Internet Archive.


Posted on by TracyC

Searching for Dragons

Searching for Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede, 1990.

This is the second book in The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, continuing the adventures of Princess Cimorene, although the story is told from the point of view of Mendanbar, King of the Enchanted Forest.  The Enchanted Forest is no ordinary kingdom, and Mendanbar is no ordinary king.  To be King of the Enchanted Forest means being a skilled enchanter.  Mendanbar can use the forest’s magic directly, making him more powerful than wizards.  Most of the creatures in the forest obey him, and unlike ordinary people, he can find his way around the forest almost automatically, even though things in the forest tend to move around.

At the beginning of the story, Mendanbar’s steward, Willin, pesters him about the subject of getting married.  Mendanbar hasn’t given the matter much thought since his father died three years earlier, but then, there’s been a lot to do.  Queen Alexandra has several daughters, any of which would be considered “suitable,” but Mendanbar doesn’t like any of them.  Mendanbar is annoyed because he’d just gotten the elf clans’ feud settled and was looking forward to a period of relative calm, so he decides that he’s going to give himself the day off, for a change.

He decides to take a stroll by the Green Glass Pool to relax, but on the way, he encounters a princess.  That’s not too unusual for the Enchanted Forest (home to many fairy-tale creatures and the events that make up fairy tales), but this princess strikes Mendanbar as a particularly scheming and ambitious one.  She tells him a great tale of woe in which her wicked stepmother cast her out that Mendanbar can tell is carefully rehearsed and might have even been the idea of the stepmother in question, with the idea of hooking an adventurous prince.  (Royal families do things like that, see the previous book in the series.)  However, Mendanbar is puzzled because the forest usually keeps out people who are obviously selfish.  Then, the princess mentions crossing an area of waste to get into the forest, and Mendanbar is alarmed because there shouldn’t be a wasteland there.  Forgetting about the princess, he hurries off to investigate.

Sure enough, Mendanbar discovers that a section of the forest is actually missing, destroyed to the point where there are just dead stumps.  Even the magic is gone.  Upon further investigation, Mendanbar finds dragons scales.  He isn’t sure why the dragons would want to attack the Enchanted Forest because they haven’t had any quarrels and mostly leave each other alone.  On the advice of a nearby talking squirrel, Mendanbar goes to see the witch Morwen.

After examining the dragon scales, Morwen demonstrates that, although they appear to be different colors and look like they’re from different dragons, they have actually been disguised.  They are actually from one dragon only.  Morwen also doubts that a dragon was really responsible for the damage to the forest.  After all, why would a dragon waste time disguising his scales when he could just pick them up?  Also, healthy dragons don’t shed that many scales.  Morwen is a friend of Kazul, who is the current King of the Dragons, and she advises Mendanbar to go see Kazul. 

Morwen also chides Mendanbar for not visiting Kazul when she became the king the year before.  Mendanbar feels a little guilty, saying that he’s just been very busy, which is true.  However, Morwen points out that what he could use is more effective help to organize things in the kingdom, not just making lists of things for him to do, like his steward does.  It’s part of the reason why people are saying that Mendanbar should get married.

Before Mendanbar can visit Kazul, he gets an unexpected visit from Zemenar, the Head Wizard.  Zemenar says that the wizards have been having problems with the dragons (again, see previous book) and that the dragons will not let them enter the Caves of Fire and Night.  He hopes that Mendanbar will allow them access from the Enchanted Forest.  Mendanbar doesn’t really trust the wizards, and he refuses the request on the grounds that he has something important to discuss with the King of the Dragons himself.  Zemenar tells Mendanbar about Kazul’s princess, Cimorene, blaming her for the the “misunderstanding” between the wizards and dragons.  Mendanbar at first imagines that Cimorene is much like the scheming princess he met that morning, but soon discovers that she’s anything but.  Taking the enchanted sword that only the kings of the Enchanted Forest can use with him, Mendanbar goes to visit the dragons.

At Kazul’s cave, Mendanbar meets Cimorene, who informs him that her official title is now Chief Cook and Librarian.  She tells him that part of the point of advertising this title is that it cuts down on the number of princes who come around.  Lots of princes want to rescue a princess, but few people want to rescue a Chief Cook and Librarian.  Mendanbar finds Cimorene a surprising change from the other princesses he’s met.  Mendanbar also makes a positive impression on Cimorene by using his sword to fix a broken sink, even if she describes the magic as being a bit “flashy.”

However, all is not well among the dragons.  Although Cimorene is reluctant to admit it at first, Kazul has mysteriously vanished.  She was planning to go out and search before Mendanbar showed up.  Kazul had been visiting her grandchildren when she decided to go by the Enchanted Forest to investigate someone growing dragonsbane.  Mendanbar shows Cimorene the dragon scales he found, and she indentifies them as belonging to Woraug, a dragon who was changed into a frog in the previous book.

It doesn’t take the two of them long to realize that the wizards are back to their old tricks and scheming.  However, what would they really have to gain by setting the Enchanted Forest and the dragons against each other?  And where is Kazul?

Like the other books in this series, this book is full of humor and a touch of mystery.  There are many parodies on fairy tale tropes, including an Wicked Uncle who’s not very wicked and does both a favor and an evil deed for his nephew by sending him to boarding school instead of abandoning him in the forest to have an adventure, as he’d hoped.  There is also romance between Cimorene and Mendanbar.  As you might have guessed, Cimorene is just the kind of practical princess Mendanbar needs to help him manage the magical chaos that is the Enchanted Forest and Mendanbar is the kind of king who is happy to find an intelligent princess who can do magic and rescue dragons.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Magician’s Ward

Magician’s Ward by Patricia C. Wrede, 1998.

This is the sequel to Mairelon the Magician.  When the book begins, it has been about a year since Kim and Mairelon’s previous adventures.  Kim has been living with Mairelon as his apprentice, and he has been teaching her both reading and magic.  (In the previous book, Kim was living on the streets of early 19th century London.  She did not know how to read, and at the end of the previous book, she learned that she had the ability to become a wizard, prompting Mairelon to take her on for training.)  Although Kim enjoys spending time with Mairelon and appreciates what he’s teaching her, other aspects of life with Mairelon’s wealthy family are less appealing.  Kim gets bored reading by herself while Mairelon continues his work with the Royal College of Wizards, and Mairelon’s aunt, Mrs. Lowe, is trying to turn Kim into a proper young lady.  The pressures of the social niceties and obligations wear on Kim, and even more worryingly, Mrs. Lowe has been considering Kim’s marriage prospects.

In order to be socially-acceptable, Mrs. Lowe thinks that Kim should be considering a socially-acceptable marriage for her future.  For most of her life, marriage was about the last thing on Kim’s mind.  She spent most of her youth pretending to be a boy in order to be safer on the streets.  Since she became Mairelon’s apprentice, the challenges of reading and magic have occupied most of her time.  When Mrs. Lowe brings up the subject of marriage, the idea seems ridiculous to Kim.  With her poor background, she can’t imagine what kind of “respectable” man would want to marry her, and she can’t imagine anyone among the upper-class people of London she would want to marry.  However, she sees Mrs. Lowe’s point that she won’t be able to stay Mairelon’s apprentice and ward forever.  At some point, she will need to decide what to do once her training with Mairelon is complete.  It’s a little worrying to her that Mairelon (known to most people by his real name, Richard Merrill) hasn’t discussed the future with her and doesn’t seem to be making any plans.

Then, one night, Kim overhears someone breaking into the library in their house.  At first, Kim can’t imagine what someone would want in the library.  She interrupts the thief, and he manages to escape.  After colliding with her in the hallway, the thief leaves behind one of his buttons and a small piece of wood that seems to be magic.  When Mairelon examines the wood, he says that it appears that someone stored a spell inside it temporarily, to be used by someone else.  Also, whoever put the spell together didn’t do a very good job and probably didn’t really know what they were doing.

As for what the thief was looking for in the library, Mairelon discovers that he was particularly looking through a collection of books that his father purchased years ago from a French wizard who had come to England after fleeing the French Revolution.  In particular, the thief seems to be trying to obtain the memory book that belonged to the wizard’s wife.  A memory book is exactly what it sounds like – a book that that keeper would carry around with him or her and use to record certain things that he or she would particular want to remember, a little like a journal but often containing bits of important instructions, like notes about favorite recipes or cold remedies (not necessarily the entire recipe, just general reminder notes) or, in the case of a wizard, notes about important spells.

As they investigate further, they learn that the wizard and his wife were part of a larger society of wizards in France before the Revolution and that someone has been trying acquire all of their old books and notes to learn the secret of one of their spells, specifically a spell for sharing magical power.  The person who wants this knowledge has a nefarious purpose for it, and when Mairelon tries to interfere with his plans, he uses the knowledge he has acquired to block Mairelon’s own magic!  This spell and its power-hungry master has already harmed other magicians, and now, Mairelon is in danger, too.

Meanwhile, Mairelon and his family have decided that, in order for Kim to truly be accepted in society, she must have a coming out party.  The mystery and intrigue of the story mix with Kim’s new lesson in dancing, fashion, and social etiquette and the unexpected attention that she receives from young men as she begins truly mingling with the upper classes of society.  Part of the mystery actually does involve the tensions between social classes, social mobility, and the extent to which birth and natural ability influence both.  As Kim discovers that she is more acceptable in society and desirable to at least some of the upper-class young men, she also finds herself becoming jealous of the attention that Mairelon receives from young women in search of a good husband.

Like the first Mairelon book, this one is a nice mixture of mystery, fantasy, history, and comedy of manners.  Both of the Mairelon books are a fun mixture of intrigue and humor, and this one also has a nice romantic element as Kim realizes that the only man she could ever see herself marrying is Mairelon.  He’s eccentric and sometimes aggravating, but she loves him, and he has loved her all along, from the time when she was just a thief in the marketplace to her beginnings as a wizard and her transformation into a young lady. The book ends with Kim and Mairelon engaged to be married, and I’m sorry to say that there are no more books in the series after that. I really wish that there were because I think that there’s a lot more room for character development.

The villain’s plot in this book hinges on the earlier established principle that wizards are born, not made.  Only certain people have the ability to use magic.  For some people, like Kim, the ability to use magic can lift them to higher positions in life, and it can be a source of real power.  For a person who is unable to use magic, there aren’t as many options.  The villain in this book thinks that he’s found a way around the problem, but as Mairelon guessed from the first, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.

Even though this book has been a favorite of mine for years, I noticed something this time that hadn’t really occurred to me before.  Mairelon’s aunt and mother in the book look at fashion and social obligations in a similar manner to people in high society and the business and legal professions (categories that overlap) in modern society, whereas Mairelon, who is considered pretty eccentric for a man of his family’s social standing, and other wizards seem to look at fashion and social obligations more like modern day academics, engineers, computer programmers, and other tech experts (at least, the ones I know because those are the kind of circles I tend to move in).  Within each of these categories, some of these characters are more knowledgeable about fashion or more socially adroit or intuitive, but I noticed that there are two basic schools of thought going on here.  For the high society types, fashion is essential and social activities are their main focus in life because that is how they build their connections, make the best possible marriage matches, gain support from others, and generally move up the social scale, always aiming to do a little better that they did before or set the stage for their children to move up.  For the wizards and academic types, fashion and social obligations are of secondary importance because what makes the biggest difference in their lives is knowledge and skill.  They even say that wizards are always considered socially acceptable because of their abilities and professional standing.  Because of that, they’re socially allowed some eccentricities in personal habits and dress, and many of them take those liberties as much as possible because most of them are kind of socially introverted and prefer either the privacy of their own studies or the company of others who share their professions and interests. 

At first, Mairelon doesn’t do much about Kim’s social education because it is not a subject that’s important to him and he knows that she can go pretty far in the field of magic by putting most of her efforts into building her magical skills.  However, what Mairelon’s mother and aunt try to impress upon both Mairelon and Kim is that they both need some social skills in order to function in wider society.  This is kind of like how tech experts may have some great ideas for creating new software or a new form of online business, but in order to get their ideas off the ground, they have to have some business knowledge or connections.  Wizards may be allowed to be a little less social or more eccentric than other people, and it’s generally understood and expected, but they do much better if they learn to balance their preferences with society’s expectations.  Because the people who normally occupy high society love the latest fashions and attending prestigious social events, they can’t understand why other people don’t. As the story says, they would leap to the assumption that a wizard, who is always acceptable in society, would naturally want to participate in society, and if the wizard didn’t, it must be that they are either not really a wizard or at least not a good one.  In other words, they would assume that something was wrong with the person or their skills, not recognizing that their choices are simply a matter of personal taste.  In order for Kim and Mairelon to truly rise in their professions, they also have to learn to manage their social obligations.

In the book, Renee is an example of a character who has learned this type of social, professional, and personal balance.  She is a wizard, and as a single female, is regarded as something of an eccentric, but she understands that social skills are important.  She is a longtime friend of Mairelon’s, and she lectures him somewhat on his social obligations and acts as something of a big sister/fashion mentor to Kim, along with Mairelon’s female relatives.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.