Castle in the Air [Mass Market Paperback]

Diana Wynne Jones (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 7, 2001

Abdullah was a young and not very prosperous carpet dealer. His father, who had been disappointed in him, had left him only enough money to open a modest booth in the Bazaar. When he was not selling carpets, Abdullah spent his time daydreaming. In his dreams he was not the son of his father, but the long-lost son of a prince. There was also a princess who had been betrothed to him at birth. He was content with his life and his daydreams until, one day, a stranger sold him a magic carpet.

In this stunning sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones has again created a large-scale, fast-paced fantasy in which people and things are never quite what they seem. There are good and bad djinns, a genie in a bottle, wizards, witches, cats and dogs (but are they cats and dogs?), and a mysterious floating castle filled with kidnapped princesses, as well as two puzzling prophecies. The story speeds along with tantalizing twists and turns until the prophecies are fulfilled, true identities are revealed, and all is resolved in a totally satisfying, breathtaking, surprise-filled ending.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Abdullah the rug merchant leaves his humdrum life far behind when he purchases a threadbare magic carpet from a mysterious stranger. Almost immediately, Abdullah is whisked off on a series of adventures that bear an uncanny resemblance to his own daydreams. He meets the love of his life only to have her kidnapped by a fierce djinn. With the help of the magic carpet--and an ornery genie--Abdullah sets out to rescue his bride-to-be. His travels take him to the fairy tale land of Ingary, the setting of this novel's predecessor, Howl's Moving Castle. As usual, Jones has constructed a wonderfully complicated plot, chock-full of magical mayhem. However, while her other interconnected novels ( Charmed Life , The Magicians of Caprona and The Lives of Christopher Chant ) can be read on their own, the final third of Abdullah's story is likely to confuse readers not already acquainted with the characters introduced in the first book. Those familiar with Ingary will welcome the chance to return and catch up on the doings of its exuberant inhabitants. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

Grade 6 Up-- In this sequel to Howl's Moving Castle (Greenwillow, 1986), Jones once again exercises her talent for humor in a lively fantasy adventure. It is not necessary to read Howl first; the story stands strongly on its own. In fact, fans of Jones' earlier book may be puzzled at first as to what the connection could be . . . until they glimpse hovering on the horizon a castlelike cloud . . . or is it a cloudlike castle? At any rate, the story begins as Abdullah, a humble carpet merchant in the marketplace of Zanzib, acquires a flying carpet and lands in the midst of a series of fantastic adventures. The cast of characters includes an evil djinn, beautiful princesses, a genie in a bottle, women-turned-cats, and soldiers-turned-frogs. This is the Arabian Nights with a twist. Readers may be breathless from the rapid changes of scene and quick pace of events, but they won't put down the book until they figure out all its secrets. --Ruth S. Vose, San Francisco Public Library
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books (August 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0064473457
• ISBN-13: 978-0064473453
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #395,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

In a career spanning four decades, award-winning author Diana Wynne Jones wrote more than forty books of fantasy for young readers. Characterized by magic, multiple universes, witches and wizards--and a charismatic nine-lived enchanter--her books were filled with unlimited imagination, dazzling plots, and an effervescent sense of humor that earned her legendary status in the world of fantasy. From the very beginning, Diana Wynne Jones's books garnered literary accolades: her novel Dogsbody was a runner-up for the 1975 Carnegie Medal, and Charmed Life won the esteemed Guardian children's fiction prize in 1977. Since then, in addition to being translated into more than twenty languages, her books have earned a wide array of honors--including two Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honors--and appeared on countless best-of-the-year lists. Her work also found commercial success: in 1992 the BBC adapted her novel Archer's Goon into a six-part miniseries, and her best-selling Howl's Moving Castle was made into an animated film by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki in 2004. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006, and became one of the most financially successful Japanese films in history. The author herself has also been honored with many prestigious awards for the body of her work. She was given the British Fantasy Society's Karl Edward Wagner Award in 1999 for having made a significant impact on fantasy, received a D.Lit from Bristol University in 2006, and won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Convention in 2007.

Born just outside London in 1934, Diana Wynne Jones had a childhood that was "very vivid and often very distressing"--one that became the fertile ground where her tremendous imagination took root. When the raids of World War II reached London in 1939, the five-year-old girl and her two younger sisters were torn from their suburban life and sent to Wales to live with their grandparents. This was to be the first of many migrations, one of which brought her family to Lane Head, a large manor in the author-populated Lake District and former residence of John Ruskin's secretary, W.G. Collingwood. This time marked an important moment in Diana Wynne Jones's life, where her writing ambitions were magnified by, in her own words, "early marginal contacts with the Great." She confesses to having "offending Arthur Ransome by making a noise on the shore beside his houseboat," erasing a stack of drawings by the late Ruskin himself in order to reuse the paper, and causing Beatrix Potter (who also lived nearby) to complain about her and her sister's behavior. "It struck me," Jones said, "that the Great were remarkably touchy and unpleasant, and I thought I would like to be the same, without the unpleasantness." Prompted by her penny-pinching father's refusal to buy the children any books, Diana Wynne Jones wrote her first novel at age twelve and entertained her sisters with readings of her stories. Those early stories--and much of her future work--were inspired by a limited but crucial foundation of classics: Malory's Morte D'Arthur, The Arabian Nights, and Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages. Fantasy was Jones's passion from the start, despite receiving little support from her often neglectful parents. This passion was fueled further during her tenure at St. Anne's College in Oxford, where lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis increased her fascination with myth and legend. She married Medievalist John Burrow in 1956; the couple have three sons and six grandchildren.

After a decade of rejections, Diana Wynne Jones's first novel, Changeover, was published in 1970. In 1973, she joined forces with her lifelong literary agent, Laura Cecil, and in the four decades to follow, Diana Wynne Jones wrote prodigiously, sometimes completing three titles in a single year. Along the way she gained a fiercely loyal following; many of her admirers became successful authors themselves, including Newbery Award winners Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman, and Newbery Honor Book author Megan Whalen Turner. A conference dedicated solely to her work was held at the University of West England, Bristol, in 2009. Diana Wynne Jones continued to write during her battle with lung cancer, which ultimately took her life in March 2011. Her last book, Earwig and the Witch, will be published by Greenwillow Books in 2012.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 82 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars There is a castle on a cloud, I like to go there in my dreams August 15, 2005

By E. R. Bird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Having a favorite obscure British children's fantasy author is a bit like having a favorite obscure British band. At first, they're your own private secret. The kind of thing you try to get all your friends into. You get all their best work. You belong to their fan club. And you wonder why no else has ever been as intelligent as you are in finding them. Then, one day out of the blue, they hit it big. At first you're elated. FINALLY, the world has come around to your point of view. You feel utterly vindicated. This feeling lasts for about three days, then comes crashing down around your ankles as you come to realize that now everybody and their mother wants a piece of YOUR discovery. Such was the case with me and Diana Wynne Jones. I was perfectly content to keep a large Diana Wynne Jones section in the children's library where I work. I'd recommend her to any child who was suffering from Harry Potter withdrawl. Then "Howl's Moving Castle" was made into a film and everything changed. Now she's the hottest item since sliced bread and everyone wants a piece of her. I wouldn't be surprised if "Archer's Goon" gets turned into a mini-series and "Dogsbody" ends up animated on Saturday morning cartoons. Until that happens, however, I'll continue to read and recommend her works. "Castle In the Air" is actually the sequel to "Howl's Moving Castle", and is in many ways more readable than its predecessor. There's nothing quite as delightful as discovering a new book by your favorite author. Even if everyone else in the world thinks that author's cool too.

Abdullah leads an unremarkable life. He's one of many carpet dealers in the city of Zanzib and he does what he does rather well. He never makes a profit, but his stock has been getting more and more impressive as the years have gone by. Mostly Abdullah dreams, though. He wishes he was a prince or had a beautiful princess to love. It seems that everything's going to stay the same until one day a shifty looking fella sells him a magic flying carpet. While asleep on it one night, the carpet takes him to the beautiful Princess Flower-in-the-Night, with whom he falls instantly in love. It's really just his bad luck that a passing djinn steals her soon thereafter. To rescue his princess, Abdullah must match wits with genies, desert ruffians, cats, soldiers, wizards, and roughly thirty kidnapped take-no-prisoners princesses. Fortunately, he has the cast of "Howl's Moving Castle" to help him.

I don't mean to start conjuring conspiracy theories, but it seems to me that the 1992 Disney film "Aladdin" definitely swiped a few of its better ideas from this 1990 publication. The flying carpet belonging to Abdullah has a great deal of personality and charm about it. The genie is prone to as much mischief as it can muster. You have a handsome young hero who lies to a princess about being a prince himself and a princess who's not afraid to take charge when needs be. But here the comparisons fall short. "Aladdin" for all its charms is a very simplistic movie. "Castle In the Air", by comparison, is complex. It has the obligatory Jonesian twist endings (one that fans of its predecessor will appreciate immensely) and a hero that remains a nice guy in spite of all the nasty critters, creatures, and heavenly beings about him. I especially enjoyed Jones' attention to djinn details. This book doesn't delve into the matter of genii and their kin as deeply as Jonathan Stroud's, "Bartimaeus Trilogy", but she's at least familiar with her King Solomon.

The real question here is whether or not fans of "Howl's Moving Castle" will consider this a sequel or not. After all, even though the characters from the previous book really do appear in this one from page eight onwards, they're not particularly recognizable until page 195. This is bound to disturb those readers that want something identical to "Howl's". To them I say, tough beans. Jones isn't the kind of author you can pin down and ask to do something as dull and rote as a mindless sequel. If she's going to continue a story then she's going to do it in her own inimitable way. Those readers who've not read "Howl's" may find "Castle In the Air" to be less to their liking than if they had read it. A word of warning to those who care to listen.

If anything, I was a little worried as to how the Middle Eastern community would feel about this book. Though Zanzib is obviously a fictional location, it borrows heavily from "Arabian Nights" and other tales of that nature. People like Abdullah are prone to flowery language and lofty speech. This may not be to everyone's liking, but since I've looked through every single review of this book on Amazon.com one by one and not found anyone else seeing this as a problem, I must assume that this is, if anything, a small flaw.

In the end, this is a truly enjoyable book and one that stands on its own two feet with little difficulty. Unlike other reviewers, I didn't find the ending trite or too neatly tied together. I just thought the book was a truly enjoyable tale with people you enjoyed reading about and a some descriptive passages that play out beautifully. Maybe it's not Jones' best book ever written, but it's certainly one of the most fun.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "Castle" spins very well July 17, 2002

By E. A Solinas HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

One of Diana Wynne-Jones' less impressive works, "Castle in the Air" is nevertheless a funny and entertaining read, full of memorable characters and tight plotting. A little too tight in places, but never quite becoming irritating. Mediocre Diana Wynne-Jones is still exceptional.

Abdullah is a dreamy young carpet merchant with a slew of nosy, overbearing relatives and a prophecy made at his birth; they see him as wasting his life, which is quite humble to say the least. But his fortunes change when he is sold a magic carpet by a mysterious stranger. The carpet takes him as he sleeps to a secluded garden, where a naive, beautiful young woman called Flower-in-the-Night is. Unsurprisingly, Abdullah and Flower-in-the-Night fall deeply in love. Unfortunately, her rich father wants to marry her off to a prince.

Abdullah tries to elope with Flower-in-the-Night, only to see her carried off by a hideous djinn. He ends up on the run from her father with a mercenary soldier, the flattery-hungry carpet, a malicious genie who makes every wish go wrong somehow, and a mother cat and her kitten. Soon they end up enmeshed in a bizarre tangle involving wizards, djinns, demons, genies, dogs smelling of squid, and a slew of princesses with minds of their own.

Though this is a sequel to "Howl's Moving Castle," the characters from that book take over half the book to show up. Instead, we are treated to Wynne-Jones' entertainingly skewed version of the "Arabian Nights," with the hapless and sweet-spoken Abdullah slogging to the castle. Jones manages to affectionately poke the Middle-Eastern setting and its various customs, while spinning the story outward to encompass "Howl's Moving Castle" as well. Her humor is especially present here, with the revolt of the many princesses, Flower-in-the-Night insisting that Abdullah is a woman, the ultra-sensible Princess Beatrice, Abdullah's constant gushing over the carpet, Abdullah's intended brides, and many other amusing items.

Abdullah is the Everyman hero, who simply wants to marry a princess and live a life of luxury; evidently he never expected to have to work so hard for it. The genie is crabbily endearing, especially when one considers that he will try to turn every wish against the one who makes it. The unnamed soldier is a gruff Han Solo character with a weak spot for cats. Flower-in-the-Night is a great heroine: despite her initial naivete, she has a quick brain and the ability to cow even a demon. And as you read this, remember that no one in it is quite who they appear.

What are the problems? Well, the extended sequence with the soldier and Abdullah caring for the cats is rather dull in places. Also, the ending is just a little too neat and happy. While I don't like dangling threads that are simply left, it seemed like every thread was tightly wrapped up at the expense of realism.

However, "Castle" is an amusing and endearing read. A delightful read for fans of fantasy, wizards, and the Arabian Nights.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "He Shines with Dishonesty..." April 15, 2005

By R. M. Fisher TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Mass Market Paperback

"Castle in the Air" is the sequel to "Howl's Moving Castle", both of which are two of my favourite Diana Wynne Jones books (and according to an interview "Howl's Moving Castle" is one of hers). I strongly suggest reading this preceding novel before tacking the sequel as several of the characters and plot twists found here will not be fully appreciated without knowing the previous story (which is a mistake I made).

Diana Wynne Jones takes the setting and atmosphere of "Arabian Nights" and creates her own story filled with flying carpets, deserts, exotic princesses, genies and djinns (although what the difference between these last two species are, she unfortunately never clarifies - I think that genies are contained within an object of some kind, whilst djinns are more god-like). Abdullah is a humble young carpet merchant, with meddling relatives and a strange prophesy recorded at his birth. But Abdullah has no such interest in these things; his favourite past time is day-dreaming about his pretend royal lineage, beautiful princesses and luxurious surroundings.

But once a stranger sells Abdullah a so-called magical carpet, things begin to change. After sleeping on the carpet, he awakes in a night garden in the company of the lovely Flower-in-the-Night. Needless to say, the two fall in love and whilst trying to figure out the logistics of the carpet, they plan an elopement. But on the intended night, Abdullah is horrified to witness Flower's kidnapping at the hands of a hideous djinn. Being pursued by the Sultan and all his guards, and still finding that his daydreams are coming true, Abdullah soon finds himself in strange company: traversing the northern land of Ingary (the setting of "Howl's Moving Castle") with a dishonest soldier, a tricky genie and a rather strange cat and her kitten.

He soon finds out that Flower-in-the-Night is being held in a castle in the air (once the former moving castle of the wizard Howl) by a wicked djinn named Dalzel who is sending his captive brother Hasruel out to collect all the princesses in the world for potential wives. The princesses of course, are not going to put up with this - but it's up to Abdullah and the previous cast of "Howl's Moving Castle" to put everything right.

Some other reviewers have complained that the characters of the previous books do not appear until after halfway through - odd, since Sophia, Howl and Calcifer are present almost right from the beginning: not in the forms that you might expect, but they're there and their personalities are just as strong. Suliman and Lettie are there as well and play a small, but vital role in the playing out of the story. Abdullah is a pleasant enough character, but Flower-in-the-Night is a gem: someone intensely naive and sheltered, but intelligent and educational. The brother djinns are also fascinating in terms of their relationship and predicament - I just wish there was more of them, and the soldier is an intriguing enigma.

Touches of Diana Wynne Jones's wonderful humour are sprinkled throughout, from the soldier's near-worship of the two cats, to Flower-in-the-Night's insistence that Abdullah is a female. The climax is a little rushed, and I'm not exactly sure how the genie discovered that where Hasruel's life was, but over all "Castle in the Air" is a great sequel, and a great book. But read "Howl's Moving Castle" first!