Any other fans of the late British children’s author Diana Wynne Jones here? I’ve read very widely in the field, and she’s one of the very, very few children’s authors who appeared to understand how magic actually works. (Usula K. LeGuin, in her Earthsea books, is the only other I can think of). Which doesn’t mean DWJ didn’t take liberties to make the plots and details have more action—there’s some spectacular spellwork and things not rooted in reality, though she tends to put those in other worlds that are related to but different from earth, and make the rules of those worlds accommodate it—but her underlying world building and understanding is very prescient and accurate. She gets it, especially how the will and psychology and psychic vampirism intersect with magic.
For example in Charmed Life (one of her best), the main character is a boy who is a very powerful enchanter by birth, but who can’t do magic. (It is set in a world related to ours but different—magic is widely accepted and practiced.) I don’t want to give any spoilers, but the way it is revealed why his magical ability is being suppressed is so real and startling to find in a children’s book. Dion Fortune would approve. It’s emphatically NOT Harry Potter.
Another one of her greats is The Lives of Christopher Chant, in which a boy who can spirit travel gets roped into smuggling illegal magical goods between related worlds. The between-the-worlds locale he passes through owes much to CS Lewis (Jones was his student) but is still original and compelling, and doesn’t feel like a ripoff in the slightest.
Witch Week is another great one by her. It’s set in one of the Earth-related worlds, but this one has banned magic. Magical practitioners who get caught are killed, and their children sent to state-run boarding schools to train them out of magic. Children caught doing magic are sent there as well. The book is set at one of these schools in the aftermath of an anonymous accusation of witchcraft among the students. Hijinks ensue as there is an attempt to sus out the witch (spoiler: there are a lot of magical practitioners!) It’s a serious book but also quite funny.
She wrote so many books, some better than others, but many more are excellent than just the ones I mentioned here. Her most frightening in my opinion is “The Time of the Ghost,” about a trio of neglected young sisters in the English countryside who play around at calling up an ancient earth goddess/spirit/entity at a megalithic site or tomb nearby—and accidentally get very potent results. The unrelated subplots about the girls’ school and family troubles are tedious and less compelling/have some flaws, but WOW does she nail it when it comes to the effects of ignorantly playing around with unfriendly deities.
That book and “Eight Days of Luke,” a more cheerful novel about a boy who accidentally meets the Norse gods, make me wonder if she was a practicing polytheist of some sort.
I did encounter an interview she gave (in the back of a paperback version of one of her books) where she says that she was born understanding how magic worked; she never had to study any of it for her books. Makes me wonder what she was up to in earlier lives!
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-02-05 03:57 pm (UTC)For example in Charmed Life (one of her best), the main character is a boy who is a very powerful enchanter by birth, but who can’t do magic. (It is set in a world related to ours but different—magic is widely accepted and practiced.) I don’t want to give any spoilers, but the way it is revealed why his magical ability is being suppressed is so real and startling to find in a children’s book. Dion Fortune would approve. It’s emphatically NOT Harry Potter.
Another one of her greats is The Lives of Christopher Chant, in which a boy who can spirit travel gets roped into smuggling illegal magical goods between related worlds. The between-the-worlds locale he passes through owes much to CS Lewis (Jones was his student) but is still original and compelling, and doesn’t feel like a ripoff in the slightest.
Witch Week is another great one by her. It’s set in one of the Earth-related worlds, but this one has banned magic. Magical practitioners who get caught are killed, and their children sent to state-run boarding schools to train them out of magic. Children caught doing magic are sent there as well. The book is set at one of these schools in the aftermath of an anonymous accusation of witchcraft among the students. Hijinks ensue as there is an attempt to sus out the witch (spoiler: there are a lot of magical practitioners!) It’s a serious book but also quite funny.
She wrote so many books, some better than others, but many more are excellent than just the ones I mentioned here. Her most frightening in my opinion is “The Time of the Ghost,” about a trio of neglected young sisters in the English countryside who play around at calling up an ancient earth goddess/spirit/entity at a megalithic site or tomb nearby—and accidentally get very potent results. The unrelated subplots about the girls’ school and family troubles are tedious and less compelling/have some flaws, but WOW does she nail it when it comes to the effects of ignorantly playing around with unfriendly deities.
That book and “Eight Days of Luke,” a more cheerful novel about a boy who accidentally meets the Norse gods, make me wonder if she was a practicing polytheist of some sort.
I did encounter an interview she gave (in the back of a paperback version of one of her books) where she says that she was born understanding how magic worked; she never had to study any of it for her books. Makes me wonder what she was up to in earlier lives!