The Spellcoats (Dalemark Quartet) [Turtleback]

Diana Wynne Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995 | Series: Dalemark Quartet (Book 3)

Tanqui discovers she has the only means to conquer the evil Kankredin who threatens her own people and the Heathens who have invaded prehistoric Dalemark.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

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.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Turtleback: 279 pages
• Publisher: Demco Media; 1st Beech Tree Ed edition (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0606081917
• ISBN-13: 978-0606081917
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

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

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the less acclaimed but most beautiful, April 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Spellcoats (Dalemark Quartet, Book 3) (Hardcover)

Although this may not be Diana Wynne Jones's most glitzy or famous book, I think it is one of her most poetic, along with Cart and Cwidder. She writes so masterfully of the desolate river, the power of Tanaqui's weaving, and the way humans are godlike and the gods are human-like. These are books that you can live with as you grow older because you learn everytime you read them. Yes, this is a funny book, because she is always funny, but it is also a book that teaches you to fight the way Tanaqui fights, with words. As always, the characters are so clear. This is such a beautiful book!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, magical, breathtaking...but not for most children, August 11, 2002

By 

Ella (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Spellcoats (The Dalemark Quartet, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)

When I first began this book (many years ago) I found it confusing at best, and terribly boring at worst. I recently picked it up at my local bookstore by chance over the summer and decided to give it another try, thinking it would pass the time before I returned to college. I found myself enchanted from the first page. The story (as others have mentioned) follows Tanaqui and her siblings as they travel down the River until their final confrontation with the evil Kankredin. As a child I couldn't really appreciate the humor and subtle narrative skill found in Diana Wynne Jones's writing. If you allow yourself to delve into the book, though, the words wash over you like the river in the novel and you become immersed in the world Ms. Jones has created. Just be warned, the narrative style is first person limited and the story itself is unlike most in contemporary youth fiction. It isn't as fast paced as most youth novels today, so if your children are looking for something with a lot of action, stick to Harry Potter. Even so, this book absolutely begs to be read aloud before bedtime, so give it a try and if the kids don't like it, read it yourself! The style and pacing take some getting used to, but this novel is absolutely worth the effort. Though appropriate for all ages, I think this book can be best appreciated by adults (both young and old).

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep magic from the dawn of time, March 12, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: The Spellcoats (The Dalemark Quartet, Book 3) (Mass Market 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.

The third volume is the true heart of the series, epic and mysterious, bright-lit and misty, awash in magical happenings and still more magical lyricism. "The Spellcoats" is the only book in the Quartet which is told in the first person. The voice we hear belongs to a young girl named Tanaqui, living with her family and her family's collection of gods on the banks of the great River. She doesn't speak her story, or write it - she weaves the words into an intricately detailed "rugcoat", a kind of wearable diary. The time is many centuries before the Dalemark of the first two volumes. There are no guns or bombs, scarcely any musical instruments, and the continent has a different shape, dominated by the one huge brown north-flowing river, worshipped by Tanaqui's neighbors as a god in its own right.

The surprising mythology of this dawn world comes slowly into focus for us as Tanaqui weaves her story. Neither her family, nor the river-worshipers, nor the "Heathens" with whom her whole country is at war, quite understand what the "gods" really are, or the predicament those gods are in. Their religions all have a piece of the truth, and the whole truth must be pieced together to defend the land from the evil mage Kankredin, who imprisons the souls of the dead in his far-flung nets.

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.