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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inevitable "Fate", May 29, 2005
Diana Wynne-Jones returns to the world(s) of Chrestromanci in the fifth full-length book in her most popular series. Though fans of the dapper magician might be disappointed that he is a supporting character, the title "Conrad's Fate" indicates who is the star of this twisty, hilarious fantasy.
Conrad Tesdinic has always been told by his creepy Uncle Alfred that he has bad karma -- apparently he failed to kill someone in a previous life, and will die in a year unless he kills them now. So Conrad finds himself being shipped off to the castle of Stallery, as a servant, to find the person he has to kill. Joining him is Christopher, a smart boy who seems able to work magic, yet doesn't know what a chili pepper is.
Christopher eventually tells Conrad that he is a nine-lived magician, and has run away from his own world to find his friend Millie, who has also run away. She's somewhere in the castle, but he can't find her. Peculiar behavior from the count and his family, a troupe of actors, and strange shifts in reality are plaguing Stallery, and Conrad soon finds that he may have more than bad karma to worry about.
Diana Wynne-Jones' most popular fantasy series is the Chrestomanci one, which predated the Harry Potter series with its organizational magic and twinkly British humor. It's complex, funny and more than a little strange, and fans of "The Lives of Christopher Chant" will enjoy seeing old favorites -- like Millie and Gabriel -- returning to Jones' writing.
Fans of Chrestomanci/Christopher Chant may be slightly disappointed by his secondary role. But then again, the book IS called "Conrad's Fate," so it's hardly surprising that the narrator is Conrad. Conrad himself is a likable kid, with bad luck and a pleasant personality, but who is also plagued by spells and lies from the people around him. And Christopher is showing signs of the dapper, intelligent magician he later becomes.
The last parts of the book become somewhat confusing, with several intertangled plotlines, only to have Jones suddenly snap them taut. It's a credit to her that she is able to have a shifting castle, runaway magicians, a knitting witch, a gold-digger, faux nobility and an assassination plot all come to a head simultaneously. And her dialogue ("You pear-shaped freak!") shows that her sense of humor has not dulled with time.
At the end of "Conrad's Fate," it's hard not to wonder what is going to happen next in the series. Fortunately, in the meantime, this book is a delightful fantasy mystery.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More furn from Diana Wynne Jones, June 26, 2005
This is a new Chrestomanci novel, this time set in a Series Seven world where Christopher Chant has, for various good and sufficient reasons of his own, gone in defiance of his guardian and teacher, Gabriel de Witt.
But this is really the story of Conrad Tesdinic, who has grown up in a bookstore with an inattentive mother who spends all her time writing; an uncle who generously allows his sister and her family to live with him after her husband sold his share of the bookstore to her brother, gambled away the money, and then killed himself; and a sister who is intent on her own very sensible agenda of completing her education and getting out of the house before her magician-uncle realizes what she's doing and takes steps to keep her there permanently.
Conrad, who has his own plans to continue his education and move out, is horrified when his uncle tells him he has bad karma from an important deed left undone in a previous life, and if he doesn't take the opportunity to complete the task immediately in this life, he'll soon die and be forced to start over in his next life. And in order to do this, he has to leave school now, take a job as a servant in Stallery Mansion (home of the local Count), find the person he didn't deal with in the last life, and kill him.
Conrad would almost rather die than leave school and take a job as a servant at the Stallery-but not quite, and he reluctantly boards the tram, armed only with a false name-Conrad Grant-and wine cork and a spell to summon a Walker and get "what he needs" when he's identified the villain and is ready to do the job. Almost the first person he meets, of course, is Christopher Chant, who's looking for his missing and possibly trapped friend Millie, and has also come to take a job at the Stallery in order to look for. From there things get delightfully strange, as Conrad and Christopher attempt to sort out who's who, and who's putting what over on who, and not get caught or killed in the process.
Great fun.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An enjoyable, fun, and exciting Diana Wynne Jones book, May 28, 2005
I love all of Diana Wynne Jones's books, and I was very much looking forward to this "new Chrestomanci book" but was a little disappointed to find that the book was marketed as such when actually the main character is the title character Conrad, and the story is told from Conrad's point-of-view, not Chrestomanci's (Christopher Chant's) point-of-view.
However, the tale is funny and unpredictable and shows off Diana Wynne Jones's writing at its best. The story follows Conrad Tesdinic in one of the worlds on Series Seven, where he lives in a town in the English Alps. Conrad's family sends him to work as a servant in Stallery Mansion, the stately home near their village, so he can find out how to prevent his bad Fate from catching up with him. At Stallery, he runs into Christopher Chant, the future Chrestomanci, who has also come to the mansion in the guise of a servant so he can search for his friend Millie.
Life in the mansion is very well described and because Christopher and Conrad are servants, you get a very funny insider's sort of view of how things might have worked Below Stairs in a large mansion home in the Edwardian era. One of my favorite running descriptions through the book is how the boys learn "to act like furniture" so as not to disturb members of the Family that they wait on.
My one quibble with this book is that I don't think all of the characters are as well developed as they could be. I think that Conrad narrates a fine story, but we never find out much about him as a person. I would have liked to have read more about his sister and the other characters in the mansion such as Hugo, Andrew, and Count Robert. And, for readers aching to know more about how Christopher Chant becomes the vague, glib, clothes-loving adult Chrestomanci of later books, you may be a little disappointed since by the time this story starts he has already picked up some of these characteristics but we don't get much insight into how or why it happened.
I liked this book because it was funny and well written, but my favorite Chrestomanci books are still "Charmed Life" and "The Lives of Christopher Chant." If you are looking for good Diana Wynne Jones books, you can't really go wrong with any of them, but some of my favorites are "Fire and Hemlock" and "Howl's Moving Castle."
And finally, like the previous reviewer mentioned, there is a brief part at the end of this book that talks about some events that could be made into an entire story of their own -- and hopefully they will be soon, as the next Chrestomanci book to look forward to!
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