Drowned Ammet (Dalemark Quartet, Book 2) [Paperback]

Diana Wynne Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2001 | Series: Dalemark Quartet (Book 2)

Stunning new paperback editions of Diana Wynne Jones's spellbinding Dalemark Quartet designed for crossover appeal to the adult fantasy audience as well as young Harry Potter fans. In Drowned Ammet. a young man joins in a plot to assassinate a tyrannical earl.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is set in the repressive South of Dalemark, scene of Jones' Cart and Cwiddr (1977), and though it features all new characters, it leaves no doubt that we'll be meeting this lot again. Central among them is young Mitt, who hates both the ruling Earl and the revolutionaries whom he believes to have informed on his father, now presumably dead. Mitt in fact has been brought up to avenge his father, planning to destroy both sides with one bomb on the day of a strange festival, whose significance everyone has forgotten, during which symbolic dummies inexplicably named Old Ammet and Libby Beer are to be dumped into the sea. But the plan backfires and Mitt flees, taking off to sea in gunpoint command of a pleasure boat owned and operated by the old Earl's independent-minded young grandchildren. The wary relationship that develops among the three young people is especially well done, and there is a pulse-racing storm at sea during which Ammet and Libby come subtly, impressively to the rescue. Then the trio saves a brutal, cynical thug from another, smaller boat. That he turns out to be the double-dealing assassin who had stolen Mitt's thunder at the festival seems reasonable, but the revelation later on that he is Mitt's missing father as well puts a strain on readers' willing credulity. And the effectiveness of Mitt's ultimate selection by gods (yes, gods) Ammet and Libby, and of the wondrous earth-raising feats those two at last perform on behalf of Mitt and the two threatened children, must depend on readers' receptivity to awe-invoking high fantasy. A well-wrought adventure, in any case. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Diana Wynne Jones was raised in the village of Thaxted, in Essex, England. She has been a compulsive storyteller for as long as she can remember enjoying most ardently those tales dealing with witches, hobgoblins, and the like. Ms. Jones lives in Bristol, England, with her husband, a professor of English at Bristol University. They have three sons and two granddaughters. In Her Own Words...

"I decided to be a writer at the age of eight, but I did not receive any encouragement in this ambition until thirty years later. I think this ambition was fired-or perhaps exacerbated is a better word-by early marginal contacts with the Great, when we were evacuated to the English Lakes during the war. The house we were in had belonged to Ruskin's secretary and had also been the home of the children in the books of Arthur Ransome. One day, finding I had no paper to draw on, I stole from the attic a stack of exquisite flower-drawings, almost certainly by Ruskin himself, and proceeded to rub them out. I was punished for this. Soon after, we children offended Arthur Ransome by making a noise on the shore beside his houseboat. He complained. So likewise did Beatrix Potter, who lived nearby. It struck me then that the Great were remarkably touchy and unpleasant (even if, in Ruskin's case, it was posthumous), and I thought I would like to be the same, without the unpleasantness.

"I started writing children's books when we moved to a village in Essex where there were almost no books. The main activities there were hand-weaving, hand-making pottery, and singing madrigals, for none of which I had either taste or talent. So, in intervals between trying to haunt the church and sitting on roofs hoping to learn to fly, I wrote enormous epic adventure stories which I read to my sisters instead of the real books we did not have. This writing was stopped, though, when it was decided I must be coached to go to University. A local philosopher was engaged to teach me Greek and philosophy in exchange for a dollhouse (my family never did things normally), and I eventually got a place at Oxford.

"At this stage, despite attending lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, I did not expect to be writing fantasy. But that was what I started to write when I was married and had children of my own. It was what they liked best. But small children do not allow you the use of your brain. They used to jump on my feet to stop me thinking. And I had not realized how much I needed to teach myself about writing. I took years to learn, and it was not until my youngest child began school that I was able to produce a book which a publisher did not send straight back.

"As soon as my books began to be published, they started coming true. Fantastic things that I thought I had made up keep happening to me. The most spectacular was Drowned Ammet. The first time I went on a boat after writing that book, an island grew up out of the sea and stranded us. This sort of thing, combined with the fact that I have a travel jinx, means that my life is never dull."

Diana Wynne Jones is the author of many highly praised books for young readers, as well as three plays for children and a novel for adults. She lives in Bristol, England, with her husband, a professor of English at Bristol University. They have three sons.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books; First Thus edition (April 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0064473147
• ISBN-13: 978-0064473149
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,774,604 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

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Good, the Bad and the Undying, May 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Drowned Ammet (Dalemark Quartet) (Paperback)

A young dissident flees his home town in an earldom downtrodden by a harsh ruler and his martial forces, and winds up trying to survive at sea with the grand niece and nephew of that very Earl. And then, the mysterious Undying take a hand and you realize that nothing is as it seemed. There are more things at stake than were clear at first. Out of all her fantastic books, this one is my all-time favorite. Mitt, the hero, is in a situation of such inner and outer difficulty and truly walks the lonely knife edge between right and wrong. And all the while, he is so familiar and likeable that you feel you have been friends for years. I respect this author so much for not being treacly or saccharin, but still being so compassionate and wise. She never falls for a stereotype & fully promotes the good mystery in life. What is not to love? I always wished there was a Mitt to really meet. If only all authors kept such high standards!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The plots thicken and the magic deepens, March 12, 2002

By 

Royce E. Buehler "figvine" (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Drowned Ammet (Dalemark Quartet, Book 2) (Paperback)

Unlike the standard fantasy series, in which each volume follows the continuing adventures of a single cast of characters - a series of tunes played on the same set of instruments - this one really is designed as a "quartet". Each of the first three books is all but independent of the rest, told in its own distinct voice. They interlock, but in subtle ways - through common geography, family names that link with the long history of Dalemark and its peculiar "gods". Diana Wynne Jones always provides the pleasure of well-told, formula-busting stories. In her Quartet, she also provides the pleasure of watching an intricate pattern unfold behind the stories.

In this second volume, we meet at last the main character of the series, Mitt, raised in poverty under the grinding heel of the despotic Earls of South Dalemark, grown up too soon, and recruited early to the dangers and exhilarations of a revolutionary underground in the seaport of Holand. The plots and counterplots he's embroiled in come to a head at the port's spring festival, when all the nobles must take part in a grand procession to the sea, carrying the festival effigies of Drowned Ammet and Libby Beer to be cast into the harbor. No one remembers why the ritual has to be performed, but no one dares to alter the tradition.

Well, Drowned Ammet may remember. And perhaps that's why everyone's best laid plans start going queer...

Family drama, peril on the high seas, ancient magics awakened - there's a lot of action packed into these pages. Young adults will love it, and Ms. Jones proves once again to her crossover adult audience that YA doesn't *always* stand for Yawns Assured.

Just for rousing storytelling, I give volumes 1 and 3 four and a half stars, volumes 2 and 4 four stars. But the Quartet is more than the sum of its parts, and the series as a whole merits five.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine continuation to the Dalemark Quartet, September 21, 2001

By 

Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Drowned Ammet (Dalemark Quartet, Book 2) (Paperback)

_Drowned Ammet_ is the second in Diana Wynne Jones' _Dalemark Quartet_. It is set roughly contemporaneously with the first book, _Cart and Cwidder_. In this book we meet Alhammitt, or Mitt, a poor boy from the far southern town of Holand, who becomes somewhat radicalized when his father and mother are thrown out of their farm for capricious reasons by the tax collector for the evil Earl Hadd. Later his father's involvement with the Free Holanders goes terribly wrong, leaving Mitt and his feckless mother alone. Mitt grows up a sailor and later a gunsmith's apprentice, and plots to gain revenge on both the Free Holanders (for betraying his father) and on Earl Hadd (for pretty much everything) by killing the Earl and implicating the Free Holanders. But this plot too goes terribly wrong, and Mitt ends up on a yacht with the two of the Earl's grandchildren, heading for the North.

I liked this book quite a bit -- Jones' puts her characters (Mitt and the two noble children) under great stress -- not just physical danger but she pushes them to see their own severe personal faults, and this works very well. The fantastical elements, involving the mysterious godlike figures of Ammet and Libby Beer, are very nicely evoked. The political situation is also well described and realistic. The plot is well resolved, albeit with a bit of convenience, maybe with a bit more magical help than I like, and with a plot twist that even though I saw it coming, I could hardly believe she had the effrontery to exercise. (And I thought it just a shade unfair.) All told, though, a very nice book, and coupled with the first clearly part of a series, but reasonably well contained too.