Fantasyland

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
by Diana Wynne Jones.
Gollancz, 2004 (1996).

Dark Lord (dread lord). There is always one of these in the background of every Tour, attempting to ruin everything and take over the world. He will be so sinister that he will be seen by you only once or twice, probably near the end of the Tour. Generally he will attack you through MINIONS (forces of Terror, bound to his will), of which he will have large numbers. When you do get to see him at last, you will not be surprised to find he is black […] and shadowy and probably not wholly human. He will make you feel very cold and small. […]

In The Tough Guide to Fantasyland Diana Wynne Jones created an imaginary tourist’s guidebook to a generic world where magic is a given — in fact the kind of world conjured up for almost any example of the epic fantasy genre you can name. Think Middle Earth, Narnia, Earthsea or, less familiarly, the Old Kingdom, Prydain, Zimiamvia or Pellinor. Jones imagines them all perhaps as aspects of Fantasyland, though it’s clear that the Disney version is not really what she has in mind. As pretty much all fantasy is predicated on conflict leading to some sort of resolution the nemesis of each world is thus nearly always some incarnation of a Dark Lord. It’s hard to think of any dread adversary who doesn’t conform in some way to Jones’ description, their motivations exactly those of Milton’s Satan:

One who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

But a Dark Lord alone does not a Fantasyland make.

Jones’ Tough Guide, like any genuine Rough Guide to our world, lists places as well as people, concepts as well as concrete (and not so concrete) objects. Open any page at random and you will find no end of examples of fantasy tropes and clichés: from prophecy (“used by the Management to make sure that no Tourist is unduly surprised by events, and by GODDESSES AND GODS to make sure that people do as the deity wants. All Prophecies come true. This is a Rule…”) to inns (they “exist in TOWNS and CITIES, but seldom outside them, except at crossroads that are miles from anywhere”), from dwell (“used throughout the Tour meaning to live somewhere. The inhabitants are always Dwellers“) to sex (“obligatory at some stage in the Tour. The Rules differ according to whether you are male or female…”). All entries are recognisable to a greater or lesser extent, and for any fantasy writer worth their salt they can be a useful corrective to lazy writing, should they choose to aim at original plots, characters and situations.

Then there is the MAP. All guidebooks have them, and this one is no exception. “No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one.” The Tough Guide‘s map is weird and wonderful, until you realise that it’s our outline map of Europe — with north at the bottom. This is the author’s way of saying that most epic fantasy is basically a topsy-turvy version of life in medieval Europe. The map is peppered with ‘unpronounceable’ names or barely disguised familiar placenames, usually with ominous descriptions. Some versions of this map are based on the first Vista paperback, but the Gollancz edition has both additional and alternative names on its map, redrawn by Dave Senior. An assiduous reader will have fun winkling out the original source of these aberrations.

But rely on the map at your peril. Nothing is as it seems, and where there is nothing on the map it seems there is inevitably something unexpected. Not only is this evident in the maps one sees as a frontispiece in most epic fantasies, DWJ is very specific about their failings: some placenames “may be names of countries, but since most of the Map is bare it is hard to tell […] there is no scale of miles and no way of telling how long you might take on the way to see these places.” Her conclusion? “The Map is useless, but you are advised to keep consulting it, because it is the only one you will get.”

As soon as she was embarked on the Tough Guide Diana must have been thinking of writing narratives set in this landscape. But how to incorporate a spoof born of familiarity and no little affection in stories which, while mocking the conventions of the genre, also reflected her sense of responsibility towards her audience? Two years after the original Tough Guide she produced Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998), and two years after that came Year of the Griffin (2000). In these — to put it bluntly — she excoriated those who wielded power and extracted profit from the general population or who showed a narrow-mindedness where education and creativity are concerned. Don’t expect Victorian morality tales, however; these are subtle fairytales in which, while magic is normal, fine though flawed individuals learn life lessons, most wrongs are eventually righted and a devastated world starts on the road to rebuilding and some kind of happily-ever-after.

But the Tough Guide harboured the germs of a slightly darker vision under its breezy exterior. In an earlier review of the 1996 paperback I gave the impression that this was principally a tongue-in-cheek spoof, and indeed this was the general assessment (Terry Pratchett called it “an indispensable guide for anyone stuck in the realms of fantasy without a magic sword to call their own”). Nevertheless DWJ had always been aware of the fantasy writer’s propensity to play God in their created universe — though she would have argued that it’s actually humans who attribute human creativity to their various deities — and to order characters, situations and events according to their arbitrary will. In Dark Lord she portrays the sinister offworlder Roland Chesney (perhaps a denizen of our own world) fashioning Fantasyland into a giant theme park for earth-based package tourists. Here he forces the unwilling local inhabitants to act out epic fantasy roles such as wizard guides, mercenaries, bards, thieves, starving villagers, enchantresses and so on. After four decades, the strain on Fantasyland and its peoples is proving not only hugely burdensome but also unsustainable, not to forget immoral.

We all know the Roland Chesneys of our world. Whether they are on the more benign end of the spectrum (perhaps DWJ was thinking of Walt Disney and his own Fantasyland) or, less benign, like the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, they peddle entertainment on a global scale while seeking to maximise profits and to acquire the greatest monopoly the law allows. Their rapacious greed outweighs any true concern for the common man, and they may well choose to devastate a planet rather than relinquish any power. These days they may, indeed, govern countries.

For some readers of the Tough Guide in its various manifestations such sombre thoughts mayn’t cast any shadows: this is about magic, isn’t it, make-believe, and we all know that it doesn’t exist, don’t we? This Gollancz hardback includes — instead of the occasional antique illustrations of the Vista paperback — rather more jokey line drawings by Douglas Carrel. Fine in themselves, they remind me a little of the cartoons, by the likes of the UK’s Josh Kirby, of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. But then, we all know by now that underneath the veneer of Pratchett’s sense of the ridiculous there lurked a lot of suppressed anger and subversive polemic. As with Pratchett’s writings, if you scratch the surface of Jones’ writing you’re likely to find rather more than you bargained for.

First posted 2nd June 2017 with this note: “This is the last of a short series of posts on Diana Wynne Jones: the first was by Tamar Lindsay on Fantasyland’s Dark Lord, and the second was a repost of a review of a collection of that author’s non-fiction writings. DWJ (born 16 August 1934, died 26 March 2011) was an intelligent as well as prolific writer of mainly fantasy for readers of all ages.” Now reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Mocking conventions from an armchair

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones.
Vista, 1996.

Discover the laws
governing fantasy worlds.
Beware tongues in cheeks.

Helpful tips for travellers to Fantasyland by the late great Diana Wynne Jones, from which I draw a number of conclusions:

(1) Get immunised by reading a wide range of fantasy, both good and bad: you never know what bugs you will be exposed to in Fantasyland.
(2) Remember to have an up-to-date passport: you’ll need either your own unread fantasy novel (preferably with your own bookplate stuck in the front) or a library book with plenty of entry/exit stamps from previous travellers’ visits.
(3) Obtain a visa (a credit card receipt for a fantasy book from your local bookseller will do).
(4) Have the correct currency ready (any bronze, silver or gold coins will do, so long as it makes a nice clinking sound in your purse).
(5) Finally, don’t forget to pack the Tough Guide: you’ll be lost without it. The author has travelled widely in Fantasyland, knows the terrain intimately and generously shares her insights into its attractions, peculiarities, geography and distinct cultures.

Oh, and don’t speak to any strangers down dark alleyways…

The Tough Guide is a lovely send-up of both the swords-and-sorcery genre and the Rough Guide series of travel books, gently mocking the conventions of the fantasy tome with its maps and symbol-filled book margins along with the places, personages and magic objects that fill the pages of many a Tolkien-inspired title or Dungeons-and-Dragons handbook. Full of truisms that hit you with the shock of recognition, you may find it hard to ever look at a fantasy book the same way again. The Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin, though not sequels as such, follow on from the premise of this book, even to the extent of including one or two geographical sites featured on the map, such as Gna’ash and the Dark Lord’s Citadel.

Not a book to read in one go (it would certainly give me indigestion), the Tough Guide is wonderful to dip into if you’re in need of a grin, a chuckle or even the occasional guffaw, safe in the confines your own armchair.

First published 22nd November 2012, now reposted for #MarchMagics2026. A review of a newer edition appears next.

Snapshots of the author

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins, 2008.

Many of the pieces in Reflections, the collection of writings by and about Diana Wynne Jones, address the question authors often get asked: Where do you get your ideas? And of course there is no single simple answer. She does however offer this suggestion, in an item entitled ‘Some Hints on Writing’:

When I start writing a book, I know the beginning and what probably happens in the end, plus a tiny but extremely bright picture of something going on in the middle. Often this tiny picture is so different from the beginning that I get really excited trying to think how they got from the start to there. This is the way to get a story moving, because I can’t wait to find out.

With House of Many Ways I found it hard to force a plan onto a review, so adopting Jones’ modus operandi for this commentary seemed an appropriate way to go about it. The beginning has been taken care of, and the conclusion is virtually foregone, and now it’s time to move to the images that arise almost unbidden from a second reading of this fantasy. Many of them involve snapshots of the author herself.

Diana was both dyslexic and left-handed, and both these issues come out in the story. One protagonist finds distinguishing left from right a problem and so ties coloured threads to his fingers, a strategy that doesn’t always work out. Another protagonist is shown plans of the different ways in the house but the first is “the most confusing map I ever saw in my life!” while the second, with “swirling lines on the piece of paper … seemed easier”. It struck me that drawing a mindmap with swirly lines or even collaging a mental scrapbook page of the themes and memes in House of Many Ways might be a good key to making sense of the very varied ideas she presents and help with trying to explain them (see the photomontage above).

Let’s start with the main protagonists. One is the young Charmain Baker (whose father is, naturally, a baker). Throughout the book she is constantly being called ‘Miss Charming’ — which is rather sweet, except that she isn’t always diplomatic or even sweet-tempered. Before we assume that this is a totally misplaced epithet we discover that she has natural magic ability, at last rendering ‘charming’ rather appropriate rather than a misnomer.

The other main protagonist (the one with directional issues) is Peter Regis, a wouldbe apprentice wizard with whom Charmain is determined not to get on. Charmain resents Peter’s intrusion into her new life at Great Uncle William’s cottage which she has been expected to house-sit, however weird a place it is. And she is determined not to let Peter get in the way of her new occupation of sorting through old documents for Adolphus X, the King of High Norland, in the library of the Royal Mansion.

You’ll have gathered that this is a world similar to but not the same as ours. The action takes place in place called High Norland, with neighbouring states called Montalbino, Strangia and Ingary. The latter country — with a name at once reminiscent of both Hungary and England — is south of High Norland and has given its name to a series featuring a wizard called Howl: previous titles in the trilogy were Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air. Strangia suggests both somewhere strange and the region straddling Austria and Slovenia called Styria, in which John Ruskin’s literary fairytale The King of the Golden River was set. Finally, Montalbino (“white mountain”) while contrasting with our own Montenegro also reminds us of the snowy Alps, particularly Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco in Italy). We’re firmly in a region that is both Anglophone and yet central Europe, and High Norland brings to mind Switzerland, particularly when we have gnome-like creatures constructing a cuckoo-clock on one point in the story.

Charmain’s Great Uncle William is Wizard Norland. At the start of the tale he is due to disappear from the narrative: his bossy niece Sempronia tells us “He has a growth, you know, on his insides, and only the elves can help him. They have to carry him off to cure him…” (Less than two years after this novel appeared it was announced that Jones had lung cancer, from which she was to die in March 2011, and this detail in House of Many Ways is either very prescient or Jones knew early on that something was badly amiss.) 

William’s illness has meant that Charmain is called upon to be his house-sitter, and she soon finds out that this dilapidated single-storey cottage surrounded by hydrangeas is not what it seems. The title of the book has a very biblical or Taoist ring to it, but it exactly describes what to expect: as with Dr Who’s Tardis time and space are distorted within it. As one exits a door, turning in a different direction or walking backwards through the portal leads to different passages, rooms or even the past. Labyrinthine scarcely begins to describe the House, and even with Peter’s coloured threads as clews (the name given to the ball of thread Ariadne gives to Theseus to follow out of the Minotaur’s maze) Charmain and Peter are always in danger of losing their way in the magical labyrinth.

Another theme that runs through the book is food — how to get it and how to deal with it. Charmain at first gets pastries and pasties from her parents before it turns out the house provides meals when asked, though not always in the form one expects. Later, hot buttered crumpets and cakes feature, heaven for the child in many of us.

Charmain enjoys her comfort food almost as much as she enjoys reading, another link back to Jones’ own childhood where she was literally starved of books, surviving on shared literary rations with her sisters and coping by making up her own stories. Reading matter in the wizard’s house includes spell books such as The Boke of Palimpsests (‘palimpsest’ describes a manuscript where previous writing has been erased to allow new text to be inserted). It is this Boke that leads Charmain into real trouble and precipitates much of the action of the tale.

The Lubbock is perhaps one of Jones’ most frightening creations. What to call it? An insect humanoid? A human insectoid? It’s almost as terrifying as the creature in David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and made more abhorrent by its ability to produce offspring called lubbockins via human hosts. The lubbockins are exploitative, a human characteristic that for Jones was a real bête noir. 

Luckily, lighter relief is provided by kobolds, the traditional gnomes of Central European folklore, who mostly live underground and here make wooden objects (including the aforementioned cuckoo-clock and a sled which is later used by Matilda, the Witch of Montalbino — rather like the sleigh that Jadis, the White Witch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, travels around in like the Snow Queen).

The final animal that Jones introduces into her story is “an extremely small and ragged white dog” called Waif. This dog, as we are told by Jones’ son Colin, is modelled on his own dog: Jones, herself a dog-lover, liked to feature them in many of her books, beginning with her early fantasy Dogsbody (1975). But Waif is more than just a dumb creature — she is magical, almost elemental, rather like a cross between the cat Mogget and the Disreputable Dog of Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series (with which Jones was probably familiar). As Colin Burrows  says, “My old dog Lily is effectively the hero of House of Many Ways,” and there is more to her than meets the eye.

We come now to the figures that link all these Ingary books, namely Wizard Howl Pendragon, Sophie Hatter and the fire demon Calcifer. Howl originally came from Wales (Jones’ own father was Welsh) where he was known as Howell Jenkins; but then, travelling through a magic portal, he became a wizard in Ingary, where he met Sophie Hatter. By the time of House of Many Ways Howl is nowhere in evidence (to the dismay of many young female fans) but a lisping and annoying child Twinkle is, along with Howl and Sophie’s noisy toddler Morgan.

Happily, Sophie is still the lovely bumptious individual we know from before — she “says a bad word” at some point, to which Twinkle says, “Naughty-naughty!” — chivvying her charges and fussing around, because somebody has to. And, of course, we have the famous perambulating Castle, powered by the fire demon, which unlike the marvellous creation of the Miyazaki film is black, foursquare and slightly sinister.

Jones is known for her endings, which are often criticised for being a little pat and where time appears to stand still while the principal players get to their positions. In Reflections Charlie Butler points to “the The Importance of Being Earnest-style multiple revelations of identity and relationship that feature in several of her final chapters” in which all is explained and loose ends firmly tied. Here I’m also reminded of the denouement of, say, a classic detective novel where the perpetrators are publicly confronted with their wickedness; and in fact before the chase arrives in the hall of the Royal Mansion somebody shouts “Not in the library!” and everyone veers away from the traditional venue where the detective unmasks the villain.

I started off by mentioning how Jones got inspiration from tiny, bright pictures which begged to be linked somehow to the opening and conclusion of a book, and I hope to have thrown some light on this process in House of Many Ways. Now may be a good point to mention the line drawings of Tim Stevens that adorn several of her fantasies and which appear here as chapter headings. Not everyone is good at imagining characters and settings, and Stevens’ illustrations help remedy that deficit with what appear to me as faithful and sympathetic interpretations. They have a classic look to them which perfectly captures the traditional character of many of Jones’ fantasies.

Repost of the October 2013 review, first 12 September 2014, now for #MarchMagics2026.

“…I will show you marvels…” #MarchMagics2026 #FireandHemlock

One of the many March reading events is hosted by Chris at Calmgrove Books and it's entitled #MarchMagics. The focus is on the works of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett and I've failed miserably over previous years to take part. However, as I've probably mentioned before, I've been a huge fan of DWJ in the past, going through a phase of devouring her books in my twenties.

https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2026/03/16/i-will-show-you-marvels-marchmagics2026-fireandhemlock/

A magic carpet ride

Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollinsChildrensBooks, 2000 (1990).

This, the sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, begins in an Arabian Nights fashion, which seems light years away from the European land of Ingary.

Genies in bottles and flying carpets have nothing to do with a Welsh wizard and a fire demon called Calcifer powering the moving castle, surely? And many of the other distinctive characters in that famous first instalment must be unrelated to the eastern city of Zanzib in the Sultanates of Rashpuht, mustn’t they?

But appearances are deceiving in this parallel world where magic can and does happen.

The impecunious young carpet-seller Abdullah, so much given to flowery flattery that it becomes mildly irritating, sets his heart on the almost unobtainable Flower-in-the-Night, thereby seemingly setting in motion a series of events that changes his life forever. Unbeknown to him (and to us, as readers) those events have already been kickstarted before the story opens, meaning that the commonplaces of Eastern romances are interwoven with Jones’ verbal comedy and confused identities to create a fabric whose intricate overall pattern is only revealed at the end when we can stand back and admire the whole.

And just at the point where we’ve forgotten that this is a story in a series about the wizard Howl and Sophie, they and their castle turn up in the most unexpected way.

At first I was uncomfortable with the effusive language used by Abdullah, and of course we are sensitive to cultural stereotypes, so is there a sense that Jones’ novel can be regarded as somehow racist or pandering to religious prejudice? No, I think not. What Jones is sending up is the language and stereotypes of the Arabian Nights which, certainly in the form of those early translations (whether original or modulated through the early 18th-century French translation) has its own charm or idiosyncrasies, depending on how you look at it. And, remember, this is an alternate world fantasy, with no mention at all of religion and therefore in no more inciting religious bigotry.

Not as famous and well-loved as the first of the series, I was won over by the clever plotting which expertly tied up all the loose ends in the final pages. Unlike some of Jones’ more ‘difficult’ novels where the storyline is obscure and the ending seems fudged, Castle in the Air draws you along like a needle pulling thread to its final satisfying conclusion.

This must have been as much fun to write as it is to read, while Tim Stevens’ accomplished line drawings heading each chapter in this edition clarified and complemented the author’s text perfectly. And, just as this sequel, while sharing some characters with its predecessor, still manages to cover very different themes, so does the final volume in this sequence, House of Many Ways.

Review first published November 2012, revised and with additions 11th September 2014, and now reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Intimations of mortality

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2009 (1986).

At first sight it might seem strange that of all Diana Wynne Jones’ books (a) this should be chosen to make a film of, and (b) perhaps because of (a) this should be one of her best known titles.

Why does this story, which she notes was inspired by a chance request by a young fan for a story about a castle that moves, strike such a chord with not just younger readers but also adults?

Putting aside the liberties that particularly the second half of the film takes with the story, I think a key to this book’s fascination is the heroine’s premature ageing.

Jones specialised in the young adult fantasy genre despite being no spring chicken herself, and so the apparent way in which the fairytale motif of the youthful protagonist becomes seemingly permanently subverted by the sudden onset of years and the attendant aches and pains must strike a warning chord with older readers too.

You are as old as you feel, the conventional saying goes, along with the belief that youth is wasted on the young. In Howl’s Moving Castle these themes are developed. Sophie (whose name means Wisdom) finds her bright young mind trapped in a decrepit body (a fear many middle-aged individuals feel as old age beckons). How she deals with that, when the fairytale convention says most heroes and heroines must be robustly proactive, is that she uses her wits, her understanding and her innate skills (such as empathy) rather than mere physicality to overcome the obstacles that stand in her way.

While ostensibly about Howl and his mobile dwelling, this book is really (I suspect) about DWJ as Sophie, but with the consolation of a fairytale ending. And while the animated film takes on additional themes that reflect some of its maker’s obsessions, it does at least capture the perennial essence of each human being’s intimations of mortality and built-in obsolescence.

A final note: like all Diana Wynne Jones books (and books by a great many other authors, of course!) the choice of names is often significant. I like the name of Ingary, home to Sophie and her family: reminiscent of Hungary, it must be a closet reference to a parallel England, pronounced Inglund. And Sophie Hatter herself, no Mad Hatter (though she must have felt she was going mad) but a Wise Hatter.

The first of a trio of tales featuring Howl, his moving castle and Sophie. This review was first published July 2012, and again 10th September 2014; reviews of the second and the third will be republished on successive days. If you haven’t seen the film, then this trailer will give you a flavour. In a letter to me in November 2005, Diana told me that the animated film was “well worth seeing, although it is only a little like the book.” The first of two different reviews of this title reposted for #MarchMagics2026.

Return to Dalemark

The Crown Of Dalemark
by Diana Wynne Jones
in the Dalemark Quartet.
Oxford University Press, 2003 (1993).

Finale volume
where past and present meet and,
maybe, all’s resolved.

Young Mitt is from South Dalemark, but when he escapes its politics and intrigues he finds that the North is equally dangerous because he is manoeuvred into an assassination attempt on a pretender to the crown of Dalemark.

This novel’s plot also turns on a present-day girl, Maewen, who gets propelled into Dalemark’s past to play a role not of her own choosing, in a narrative that’s reminiscent of the premise in Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper or Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda.

And the Crown (which is more of a circlet than a fancy coronet)? That turns out to be not just a metaphor for gaining a throne but also part of a theme that mingles together motifs from modern Tarot imagery, the medieval quest for the Grail, and the curse of immortality.

As in the previous titles of the series the reader is here treated to extensive exploration of the troubled realm of Dalemark, particularly the northwestern corner between Adenmouth and Kernsburgh; I loved the chance to further explore the geography of Dalemark and to relate the present-day state of the region with the Late Medieval / Early Modern feel of the chronologically intermediate novels, two centuries before the ‘present day’ – a modern Dalemark which is both familiar and more magical compared to our own world. Above all there is a strong sense of a Northern European milieu, from the mix of Scandinavian- and Celtic-influenced names to the physical features of the polities and emerging industrial innovations.

Characters from The Spellcoats, Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet re-emerge to play crucial parts in the unfolding story. Along with the tying-together of some unresolved threads curiosity grows concerning how characters such as Mitt and Moril, whom we learnt to sympathise with in the intermediate books, will interact with Maewen especially now that they growing from adolescence into adulthood, and whether they will retain our sympathy.

I savoured Jones’ usual little wordgames and puns; typical of these is the entity Kankredin (wonderfully but chillingly conjured up in the novel and reminiscent of a malevolent djinn from The Arabian Nights) whose name has echoes of ‘canker’, a malign growth. Key themes also re-emerge in this novel, such as journeys undertaken with a sense of urgency with danger in pursuit: previously it was on a river in flood, along roads followed by a travelling show, and a desperate journey by sea, but now it’s a quest to find regal objects – ring, cup, sword and crown – where characters’ motivations are always in doubt.

As with so many of Jones’ young adult fantasies there at first appear to be a few apparent inconsistencies, blemishes or loose ends perhaps, that mar her superb story-telling skills: her endings are so often confusing, as when the final resolution involves obscure verbal logic that even several re-readings rarely make clear. She also frequently hints at things without being explicit so that you are left to fill in the gaps without ever being sure that your gut feelings ultimately are correct. This comes largely from her using familiar folk- and fairy-tale types and motifs which raise our expectations, only to have them dashed or circumvented when she subverts the conventional tropes.

And yet, on revisiting all the series in close succession, pretty much all that confusion fades away in the final scenes of this volume; Jones ensures that her early teen heroine has a clear relationship with the Undying – the immortals in this series – to look forward to. As the author said before this novel was published, because “the hero, the protagonist, is the story” she’d had for the previous decade difficulties in completing the series quartet since “the end of [each] book is the end of the important things I have to say about the central character.” Until she’d decided on a new character – Maewen – characters in the previous novels who’d had unfinished stories “several thousand years apart” had to wait to put in their appearance.

I must say I really enjoyed The Crown of Dalemark on several levels. I engaged with the main protagonists, Maewen, Mitt and Moril, all three with their very human strengths and failings, as well with most of the rest of the cast of characters, some of whom we have met previously and whose personalities have evolved (not always for the better). The convoluted plot always draws the reader on – providing of course that they play close attention to what they’re being told and don’t blink at inopportune times. As a finale it’s as engaging as each of its predecessors, and you can’t ask for much more than that.

The quotes are from ‘A Whirlwind Tour of Australia’ (1992) included in Reflections (Greenwillow Books 2012). First read July 2011. Repost of review first published here 7th May 2013, now revised and expanded after a reread for Wyrd and Wonder on 24th May 2022, and reposted for #MarchMagics2026.