The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 3 (Conrad's Fate / The Pinhoe Egg) [Mass Market Paperback]

Diana Wynne Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2008

In the multiple parallel universes of the Twelve Related Worlds, only an enchanter with nine lives is powerful enough to control the rampant misuse of magic—and to hold the title Chrestomanci. . . .

Cat and Christopher Chant make the most unusual friends. Christopher befriends a boy with terrible karma in a mansion where everything keeps changing. Cat meets a girl whose family of rogue witches is hiding shocking secrets. Will the Chrestomanci be able to sort out the tangle of mysteries and magic?

Editorial Reviews

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 bestselling 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.

Diana Wynne Jones 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.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books (April 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061148326
• ISBN-13: 978-0061148323
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #112,624 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Diana Wynne Jones spent her childhood in Essex and has been writing fantasy novels for children since 1973. With her unique combination of magic, humour and imagination, she has been enthralling children and adults with her work ever since. She won the Guardian Award in 1977 with Charmed Life, was runner-up for the Children's Book Award in 1981, and was twice runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. She is married with three sons, and lives in Bristol with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tales of the Chrestomanci, April 22, 2008

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 3 (Conrad's Fate / The Pinhoe Egg) (Mass Market Paperback)

Long before Harry Potter was even dreamed of, Diana Wynne Jones was penning stories about her magical alternate worlds, and the nine-lived enchanter Chrestomanci.

Fortuntely, the last few years have seen a return for Chrestomanci. "The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume III" compiles the latest two books, one set in the past and one in the present. And both of them have everything you'd expect of a Chrestomanci novel -- eccentric humor, oddball characters, strange magic, mysterious happenings, and plenty of cats.

According to Conrad Tesdinic's uncle, "Conrad's Fate" involves deadly bad karma, which he can only rid himself of by killing someone at Stallery Mansion. With only an enchanted cork, Conrad is sent to Stallery as one of the new footmen, and soon befriends a strangely aristocratic older boy, Christopher "Smith," who turns out to be at Stallery for his own reasons -- and turns out to be an enchanter as well.

But Christopher isn't the only oddity at Stallery -- Conrad is left to question just who is "pulling the possibilities," aka changing details of the world via magic. Also there's a witch, an acting troupe, a dog, and his own sister, all making things more complicated. Now Conrad is forced to decide his OWN fate...

Then, having revisited Christopher Chant's teenage years, we lurch back into Chrestomanci's adult life.

Gammer Pinhoe has gone unexpectedly mad -- but her successor Marianne doesn't entirely believe that she has. While the Pinhoes and Farleighs have always conspired to keep their "dwimmer" magic a secret from Chrestomanci, suddenly they are sending unpleasant curses at one another, and Marianne suspects that it's Gammer's doing. Unfortunately, none of the adults around her will believe that Gammer -- even a crazed Gammer -- would ever do such a thing.

To make matters even more complicated, she and her brother have befriended the future Chrestomanci, Cat Chant -- and while they're exploring Gammer's old house, she gives him an old egg in the attic. But suddenly Cat is receiving nighttime visits from a great shadowy monster -- and the egg hatches. As Chrestomanci begins to investigate the strange matter of the Pinhoes, it turns out that Marianne has unwittingly revealed a conspiracy from centuries back...

Returning to the worlds of Chrestomanci is a little like slipping on a pair of well-worn fuzzy socks. Diana Wynne-Jones has thankfully lost none of her quirky talent, or her ability to spin up a world that is very much like early twentieth-century England, but then add something unique to it -- like deep-rooted "dwimmer" or the idea of making small changes to the universe to bring about big ones.

Her twinkly British humor and detailed style bring plenty of atmosphere, whether it's the polished creepiness of Stallery or the stifled chaos of Chrestomanci Castle and its surrounding villages. Jones spins up some dark and creepy moments (such as the ruined Stallery), but the plots are mostly saturated with lighthearted dialogue ("You pear-shaped FREAK!") and some very funny moments, like the crazy-looking flying machine.

And she intertwines lots of little subplots -- including quite a few mysteries -- that sort of float around loosely until she snaps them taut at the end. Just read carefully to avoid losing track of the details.

We also get to see Chrestomanci in two time periods here -- as a charming, confident teenager, and as a more responsible but still quirky adult. Other favorites such as Millie and Gabriel return, and Cat Chant gets plenty of expansion -- we get to see him truly acting as the future Chrestomanci, as well as dealing with his adorable new pet Klartch.

And most of the new characters are also pretty solid, particularly the kids who are having trouble with their families. Marianne is a likable girl who dreams of being a writer, and struggles with family legacies and prejudices that nobody bothered to explain. And despite his gullibility, Conrad is a pleasant sidekick for Christopher and a fairly clever kid.

And don't worry, the trademark cats are still very much in the series. Of particular note: Nutcase, a suitably named feline who seems to have the ability to walk through walls.

"The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume III" brings together two more of Diana Wynne-Jones' clever, complex fantasy stories, and it's a welcome return to the multiverse of the nine-lifed enchanter. Definitely a good read.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good deal, May 21, 2008

By 

Judith B. McCarron "Judy in NE Ohio" (Brimfield, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 3 (Conrad's Fate / The Pinhoe Egg) (Mass Market Paperback)

This volume contains two books: "Conrad's Fate" and "The Pinhoe Egg". It costs just a little more than each of them, so it's a very good deal. I wish I'd known this before.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smart Fiction for Kids (and Grownups Who Like Kid's Fiction), June 9, 2008

By 

J. Huffaker (Idaho Falls, Idaho) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 3 (Conrad's Fate / The Pinhoe Egg) (Mass Market Paperback)

I've ready many Diana Wynne Jones books, some better, some worse. The two stories in this volume are excellent. I bought it late in the afternoon, reluctantly put it down in the middle of Conrad's Fate to go to bed, then finished the rest the next day. I scarcely noticed the time passing, and I look forward to another reread.

One thing I love about both of these stories is that consequences always exist for the actions of the characters--whether they're young or old, no one gets off scott-free. There may be elements of mercy, but there's not getting off without a consequence of some kind, and the adults are just as smart as the children. And yet the children don't expect the adults to do everything--they're quite independent and each tries to solve problems on their own--sometimes in the face of enormous pressure and disapproval, from fellow children and adults both. And when rewards come, in the form of advanced education or activities, they're nearly always influenced by (if not the direct result of) something the children did. Which is very satisfying, to me. It's always a disappointment when the ending is entirely made up by an adult demigod coming in and resolving everything.

The magical world(s) are thoroughly created and I never once got a feeling as if any element of the story was out of place.