Dianna Wynne Jones, Conrad's Fate
May. 22nd, 2007 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedBritish fantasy author Dianna Wynne Jones is the theme for the second issue of Maybe Sparrow and I just finished two DWJ paperbacks last week. Good timing. :D One was Unexpected Magic, a collection of early short stories which I have volunteered to review minus the novella Everard's Ride. The other was Conrad's Fate.
Conrad's Fate, from comments:
I think this might be my favorite Chrestomanci book. Not only do you have Karma as an instrument of oppression, not only do you have Conrad's feminist-writer mother who is too distracted to notice how her own daughter is being exploited, not only do you have the Evil Uncle and Petty Evil Countess -- there's also a huge castle to explore, and actors hired to play butlers, and shifting probabilities, and not one but two main characters! Conrad is hardworking but gullible, Christopher is charming but flippant, together they are awesome.
This book was seriously like one long highlight reel for me. XDD There's a great scene where Conrad is reunited with his sister in the library. She orders him to tell her what happened in this really bossy voice, and Christopher kind of stands in the background looking smug because he thinks he knows what's going on -- only to double-take when in the next breath, she shows that she really does care about Conrad. ^_^ Though the scene would have worked better if it had been Cat looking smug in the background rather than Christopher (since Cat's the one with the evil bossy sister).
I think I know what inspired this book. I think it was Diana Wynne Jones staring at the "Shift" key on her keyboard and thinking, what if it that was literal? ^^; SO LAME. I flashed back to Nad and Dan adn Quaffy[1]. But she got a good story out of it, so I can't really complain.
Unfortunately I don't have the book in front of me right now so I can't really go into which other parts I liked. The Countess was great. Christopher was great. Conrad was great. Conrad and Christopher together were really great. The sudden reveals at the end were really really great, although as always, there were at least a few glaring logical inconsistencies. (Like, why was it the Real Count had to become the butler to gain entry to the wine cellar? As the master of the house, couldn't he have ordered an extra copy of the key made? Or did he stand too much on ceremony and proper form for that. (I wouldn't put it past him.))
For a while there I was convinced that what's his name, the leader of the theater troupe, was the king in disguise. XD
[1]Short story in Unexpected Magic, orginally printed in Digital Dreams and reprinted in Everard's Ride and Seeing is Believing. In that story, a computer-inept sci fi novelist with a teenaged son makes a living pretending her keyboard is the console of a spaceship and that she is its bleary-eyed, caffine-addicted female captain. Except that what she's drinking isn't coffee, it's Quaffy or whatever. Hey, I read Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, I laughed.
And I said I'd do Unexpected Magic without Everard's Ride but I seem to have written an 800-word essay on Everard's Ride and it's passably formal-literary so can I ask a favor? Are any of you willing to look it over? Mostly for style and then I'll email the re-written review to Tin (more than a month early, shock gasp horror.)
Conrad's Fate, from comments:
I think this might be my favorite Chrestomanci book. Not only do you have Karma as an instrument of oppression, not only do you have Conrad's feminist-writer mother who is too distracted to notice how her own daughter is being exploited, not only do you have the Evil Uncle and Petty Evil Countess -- there's also a huge castle to explore, and actors hired to play butlers, and shifting probabilities, and not one but two main characters! Conrad is hardworking but gullible, Christopher is charming but flippant, together they are awesome.
This book was seriously like one long highlight reel for me. XDD There's a great scene where Conrad is reunited with his sister in the library. She orders him to tell her what happened in this really bossy voice, and Christopher kind of stands in the background looking smug because he thinks he knows what's going on -- only to double-take when in the next breath, she shows that she really does care about Conrad. ^_^ Though the scene would have worked better if it had been Cat looking smug in the background rather than Christopher (since Cat's the one with the evil bossy sister).
I think I know what inspired this book. I think it was Diana Wynne Jones staring at the "Shift" key on her keyboard and thinking, what if it that was literal? ^^; SO LAME. I flashed back to Nad and Dan adn Quaffy[1]. But she got a good story out of it, so I can't really complain.
Unfortunately I don't have the book in front of me right now so I can't really go into which other parts I liked. The Countess was great. Christopher was great. Conrad was great. Conrad and Christopher together were really great. The sudden reveals at the end were really really great, although as always, there were at least a few glaring logical inconsistencies. (Like, why was it the Real Count had to become the butler to gain entry to the wine cellar? As the master of the house, couldn't he have ordered an extra copy of the key made? Or did he stand too much on ceremony and proper form for that. (I wouldn't put it past him.))
For a while there I was convinced that what's his name, the leader of the theater troupe, was the king in disguise. XD
[1]Short story in Unexpected Magic, orginally printed in Digital Dreams and reprinted in Everard's Ride and Seeing is Believing. In that story, a computer-inept sci fi novelist with a teenaged son makes a living pretending her keyboard is the console of a spaceship and that she is its bleary-eyed, caffine-addicted female captain. Except that what she's drinking isn't coffee, it's Quaffy or whatever. Hey, I read Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, I laughed.
And I said I'd do Unexpected Magic without Everard's Ride but I seem to have written an 800-word essay on Everard's Ride and it's passably formal-literary so can I ask a favor? Are any of you willing to look it over? Mostly for style and then I'll email the re-written review to Tin (more than a month early, shock gasp horror.)