A book I really liked.
May. 5th, 2007 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraExcept for the fact that it's too short.
Diana Wynne Jones, The Game. I've loved Diana Wynne Jones' work since I picked Eight Days of Luke off a library shelf more than twenty years ago (eek!). For the last ten years or so I haven't liked her books as much (actually, since she started doing adult books - I really didn't like A Sudden Wild Magic), but there was still The Lives of Christopher Chant in that time, and some of the stories, and even when she's not as good, she's still better than a lot of the alternatives.
Hayley gets into trouble at her grandparents (who have raised her since the mysterious deaths of her parents) and is sent to her aunts in Ireland, complete with a huge assortment of cousins. All of the cousins play the game, organised by Harmony, where participants are sent out through the mythosphere on mysterious quests, and as Hayley plays she begins to find out more about herself than she expected...
It's rich, inventive, fast and funny, and doesn't shy away from many of the less pleasant parts of myth. The ending feels abrupt and not quite earned, but it's entirely possible that this is just because I wanted a longer book.
Mostly back up to date. There's a bunch of manga (am unsure of correct collective noun!) and Justine Larbelestier's Magic's Child to go, plus my incisive comments on Dorothy Dunnett's Johnson series ("Wow.") after another 160 pages of Moroccan Traffic (retitled from one of my personal appalling title favourites, Send a Fax to the Kasbah).
Diana Wynne Jones, The Game. I've loved Diana Wynne Jones' work since I picked Eight Days of Luke off a library shelf more than twenty years ago (eek!). For the last ten years or so I haven't liked her books as much (actually, since she started doing adult books - I really didn't like A Sudden Wild Magic), but there was still The Lives of Christopher Chant in that time, and some of the stories, and even when she's not as good, she's still better than a lot of the alternatives.
Hayley gets into trouble at her grandparents (who have raised her since the mysterious deaths of her parents) and is sent to her aunts in Ireland, complete with a huge assortment of cousins. All of the cousins play the game, organised by Harmony, where participants are sent out through the mythosphere on mysterious quests, and as Hayley plays she begins to find out more about herself than she expected...
It's rich, inventive, fast and funny, and doesn't shy away from many of the less pleasant parts of myth. The ending feels abrupt and not quite earned, but it's entirely possible that this is just because I wanted a longer book.
Mostly back up to date. There's a bunch of manga (am unsure of correct collective noun!) and Justine Larbelestier's Magic's Child to go, plus my incisive comments on Dorothy Dunnett's Johnson series ("Wow.") after another 160 pages of Moroccan Traffic (retitled from one of my personal appalling title favourites, Send a Fax to the Kasbah).
