Tag: diana wynne jones

Teaser Tuesday #12

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

-Grab your current read
-Open to a random page
-Share two teaser sentences from that page!

I took a pretty long (a week) break from books. I am halfway done with Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut, but then I decided to read something else for now. So my teaser this week is from a fantasy novel called House of Many Ways, a sequel to Diana Wynne Jones‘s Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s a magical book!

“The fat book she had in her hand was called The Book of Void and Nothingness. Not surprisingly, when she opened it, the pages were blank. But she could feel under her fingers each empty page sort of purring and writhing with hidden magics.”

Teaser Tuesday #9

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

    • This week, I have two teasers from two books from the Chronicles of Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones. I love the series!


    Witch Week by Dianna Wynne Jones:
    “She held the end of the broom handle in both hands and tried to point it at the town. But the broom had other ideas. It wanted to go around the edge of the town.
    Larwood House is a children’s boarding school. Many students are supposedly witch orphans, but no one knows who the witches are. In this alternate world, witchcraft is illegal and witches are burnt at stake. This story begins when someone in class 6B writes a note to one of the teachers: “Someone in this class is a witch.
    _______________________________________________________________________________

    Conrad’s Fate by Dianna Wynne Jones:
    “I hate Gregor,” I said while we were going down in the lift with the shoe basket. “You couldn’t do some magic to make him fall face first into the sandwiches at Tea, could you?”
    (…) “It’s tempting,” Christopher said.
    Conrad Tesdinic is told that he has bad karma, and sent to work at the Stallery Mansion to cure it. There, he befriends a certain Christopher Smith. Christopher has a secret – he is a powerful nine lived enchanter from another world, here in search of his friend Millie. Together, Conrad and Christopher find her, and while doing that expose a big fraud going on at the Mansion.

    The Chronicles of Chrestomanci

    The Chrestomanci Chronicles is an awesome fantasy series by British writer Diana Wynne Jonnes. I started and finished with Volume I (first two novels) yesterday, and I’m reading Volume II right now! And you know a book has got to be awesome, when Neil Gaiman calls it “…always perfectly magical.”



    If anything big happens in history, like a war or an earthquake; something that might have two or more possible outcomes, reality splits and two or more worlds are created! Presently, there are hundreds of such parallel worlds existing together. Volume I is set in a world pretty much like ours, except that magic is freely practised and it is a bit old fashioned. Chrestomanci is the title given to the nine lived magician/ enchanter who controls the magic of all the parallel/related worlds.


    The first novel is called Charmed Life, and it is about two little siblings, Cat and Gwendolen and the time they spend at the Chrestomanci Castle. Gwendolen is a powerful but stubborn witch, whereas Cat seems to be just a normal boy, who has to suffer because of his sister’s ill-doings. Soon she runs to another world, and sends back her counterpart from that world as a replacement – leaving Cat to deal with her mess. While the story is pretty exciting, we get to know little about the Chrestomanci.


    The next novel makes up for it. The Lives of Christopher Chant is about the little boy who is an enchanter, has nine lives, and can travel to the related worlds in his dreams. And he has no idea what a powerful magician he is! We see him get involved in a gang of wizards who smuggle rare magical materials from the other worlds, befriend a goddess, and eventually, study to grow up and become the next Chrestomanci (the same mysterious man we first see in the Charmed Life).


    Reading this was almost like Harry Potter all over again. It is funny, the characters are fascinating, the plots are exciting and the imagery is just magical! The stories are full of twists and turns and surprises, and though the book seems a teenie bit childish at times, it is pretty fun! I’d recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat!!