Customer Reviews

Conrad's Fate (The Chrestomanci)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

The most glaring deficiency of Conrad's Fate is the fact that it ends and leaves you wanting more--even with the tidy ending and sense of closure for this particular episode.
In this Chrestomanci tale we get a first person narrative from Conrad; a twelve-year-old who provides an interesting, thoughtful viewpoint and gives us an exciting look into Series Seven. Accompanying this magical plot are plenty of amusing new characters, well-described places, and enjoyable witticisms. Again, one of the few complaints I have is that a teenaged Christopher (who is yet to become the fabulous Chrestomanci we know in a Charmed Life) becomes a secondary character, and thus we are not as able to know his thoughts as much as one might like. My last complaint is that near the end--no spoilers included--when everything is being neatly wrapped up, we get a glimspe of other events that definetly deserve a book of their own!

Finally, a Chrestomanci story that deals with young Christopher, rather than dealing with Cat (when Christopher is the grown-up Chrestomanci). I have been quite intrigued with Christopher and Millie since reading "The Lives of Christopher Chant" about, oh, 10 years ago, and was delighted to read this book and find it was about their teenage years. Of course it is mostly about Conrad, a new character in one of the Related Worlds, but it's got plenty of Christopher to satisfy me. The story was brisk and enjoyable.

As usual, one tiny niggle...sometimes in Ms. Jones' books, when she is building up to the climax, a bunch of people come into the story (as with the King's Summoners, police, Gabriel de Witt, etc. near the end of this book) and a lot of things are explained very quickly. I don't consider myself "slow" but I have often felt that Ms. Jones rushes through these explanation scenes a bit too quickly. This book is no exception. The officials all show up, it is quickly announced that some of the people we've been learning about are not what they seem, and then things wind up pretty quickly (people getting taken away, etc.). I always have to go back and carefully reread the parts like that, because they are always a bit sketchy and they seem a bit hastily done. However, that's not going to detract from my 5-star rating, because it only takes a little while to go back and reread that.

"Year of the Griffin" used to be my favorite DWJ book because I laughed so much while reading it, but "Conrad's Fate" now has that honor. I laughed a lot with this one, too, plus...it has Christopher Chant... :-)

Diana Wynne Jones has of late returned to her popular Chrestomanci milieu. Her 2005 novel, Conrad's Fate, features Christopher Chant and his eventual wife Millie as teenagers. But the main character is Conrad Tesdinic, who lives in a village dominated by nearby Stallery Mansion. Conrad's father is dead, and his mother is rather ineffectually a fire-breathing feminist writer, so the family is maintained by his uncle, who runs a bookstore. The uncle is convinced the people in the mansion are manipulating reality to their advantage, so he takes Conrad out of school and sends him to the mansion to work as a servant. He tells Conrad that something bad he did in a previous life has saddled him with a terrible fate, and he can only escape that fate by making up for the previous life's mistake -- by killing someone.

At the castle Conrad meets another boy, Christopher Chant, who is clearly up to something. The two begin training, eventually to be valets. Christopher, however, is more interested in exploring, and Conrad soon learns that he is looking for a friend, Millie, who is trapped in an alternate version of the mansion. Soon Conrad and Christopher both are wandering through alternate mansions, and meanwhile learning some of the secrets of the mansion's probability alterations. Not to mention some dark secrets about the family that owns the mansion, and about Conrad's own family, including his sister, who seems to be in love with the new heir to Stallery.

It's quite an enjoyable novel, as are most of Diana Wynne Jones's books. The Chrestomanci books are among my favorites of hers, and this book fits very well within that varied sequence.

A hugely welcome return to Wynne-Jones's fabulous Christopher Chant - he and Millie are amongst my favourite of her creations. Some probably feel that the author is re-treading a lot of very familiar territory - parallel universes, layered happenings and dastardly plots - but that is why this is such a nice book: it's familiar and comforting like your favourite pudding. It loses a star only because the baddies aren't quite bad enough - but I do have an insatiable appetite for her books.

Conrad's Fate is one of two of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books, the other of which being The Lives of Christopher Chant. This book is full of the fun and wit that I have come to expect of Diana Wynne Jones. Here entertaining and varied characters keep this story rolling. She has managed to skillfully spin together a story full of twists and turns that I was not expecting, especially at the end. Diana Wynne Jones' use of description and dialogue are extraordinarily funny, yet not in such a way that they don't allow for the book to be taken as a serious novel.

I have come upon plenty of books written from the perspective of the rich who live in extravagant mansions, but rarely do I find one written from the perspective of a servant in such a house. It was fascinating to read a book that spoke from the servants' point of view.

The only criticism that I can come up with is that if one has not read some of the other Chrestomanci books first, this book may be a bit confusing and some of the characters that are in it can not be properly appreciated if one does not know them from the other books. However, putting that aside, I found this book to be a wonderful read that I would recommend it to anyone wishing for a refreshing and original fantasy book.

This is the fourth book in the Chrestomanci series. Like the rest of her books, this book has excellent character devlopment and easy to follow, yet exciting, plot lines. Her books fully create the worlds they take place in and carry me away from the mundane. For these reasons, she has been a favourite author of mine for years. Don't get me wrong, this book was really good. I couldn't put it down and it was finished too soon for my tastes, but it just isn't quite the same caliber as some of her others. Deep Secret, The Merlyn Conspiracy, The Nine Lives of Christopher Chant, and Charmed Life just have a quality this book doesn't. It just wasn't quite as magical.

i know people who disagree are going to bring me down on the votes, but this is my honest (and i think helpful) opinion. first off, i'm about as avid a DWJ fan as anyone and have read pretty much all her books. this book started off well, but after a while it feels just way too familiar. the main character is a pale imitation of sophie from howl's moving castle (cursed, put-upon, but decent and talented); the mother is distant and uncaring (like in fire and hemlock); i could go on. for long-time fans of DWJ there are several things that would make this worthwhile: if you are a big fan of upstairs/downstairs stories (i.e. nobility and their servants) there's a lot of that here (too much in my opinion). also, if you're a big fan of the chrestomanci books this is part of the series, although prob. my least fav. of the bunch (although christopher chant is one of my fav characters of the series, he's just not that interesting here). newbies should def. skip this and head for one of the classics first, like archer's goon and howl's moving castle.