Diana Wynne Jones! Oh my lord!

Love DWJ, Fire & Hemlock I have returned to often. Charmed Life was the first one I discovered in a library at about age 7.

Sadly my bookworm DS (8) has proved stubbornly resistant to her. He is Harry Potter fan, and they just aren't as good...

I always wish there was a third Dark Lord of Derkholm book. I love Year of the Griffin - I want to be Querida when I grow up. Also love Deep Secret. The Merlin Conspiracy doesn't quite deliver as a sequel. Howl is so good. I also can't quite comprehend Hexwood - it's too head-hurty!

My favourite Chrestomanci ones are Conrad's Fate and The Pinhoe Egg. My favourite character is Millie.

Fire and Hemlock and Time of the Ghost...wow. Saddest one, though: Dogsbody.

Thanks for this thread, just picked up Fire and Hemlock in the charity shop!

Archer's Goon! One of my favourite books ever.

It was about 1989 so googling wasn't an option! I'd have to look at it again to know how- I wonder if I even still could?

Red Shift is the Alan Garner with the code at the end.

So how did you solve it ?

I googled it.

DWJ is probably the best children's writer, ever, who isn't Antonia Forest.

Loved the Chrestomanci & Spellcoats series best as a child, but it's the darker ones I feel drawn to as an adult - must re-read The Homeward Bounders.

For me it's 'Archers Goon' and 'The Lives Of Christopher Chant'. I read them when I was around 8 and lived them then. Have Teresa's them as an adult and they are still fabulous.

The Spellcoats is one of my favourite DWJ, though I am less keen on Drowned Amnet.

I think I also generally prefer her earlier work, Power of 3 was my favourite book full stop for about 3 years as a preteen; and Howl is a genuine masterpiece. Charmed Life and Archers Goon also incredible books.

Oddly I can't bear Black Maria, I think of it as written by someone else entirely! Also think the dark lord of Derkholme didn't quite come off as it should have, though I enjoyed it.

Agree with the above poster who said she never wrote the same book twice!

Was red shift the Alan garner with the code at the end, or was that the owl service? I remember being dead chuffed when me and a couple of friends succeeded in solving it!

I didn't enjoy The Pinhoe Egg or DWJ's later works so much. I liked Conrad's Fate simply for the sight of Christopher Chant pretending to be a servitor and burning iron-shaped holes in people's shirts.

The Spellcoats is just bizarre and difficult to get into the mythology - I like Cart & Cwidder the most of the Dalemark quartet.

Red Shift and Fire & Hemlock - my top YA reads, I think, simply for being non-genre, incredibly demanding on all levels, and they pay to be re-read many many times. I agree about Peter Dickinson; Westall's 'Devil on the Road' is another Seventies one which asks a lot of its readership, though its setting has dated more than the other two.

I agree about Ocean. It's very DWJ. Especially how people view things in different circumstances. What you see may not be what is. Has anyone mentioned The Pinhoe Egg? I thought at the time that there was a lot of insight into how people see things, but I can't remember now - time for reread!

Igneococcus I was just about to post that Neil Gaiman piece. They were really good friends and it shows in his writing I think.

I read Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman last year and it is hugely reminiscent of DWJ.

My reading life has been unbelievably enriched because Diana Wynne Jones was once in the world. I'm so pleased that ds1 is now enjoying her books.

I found a huge stack of obviously never even opened DWJ books at the local Oxfam shop just before Christmas last year. I was very sad that someone would give them away unread but dd was a very happy girl that Christmas morning.
Neil Gaiman remembering DWJ is worth reading for every DWJ fan.

The Time of The Ghost was my favourite book as a teenager. Brilliant book.

Another Fire & Hemlock fan here -- I think her absolutely best book (though she sets the bar so high).

I had the pleasure of introducing a group of students to DWJ when I taught Fire and Hemlock recently .

I'm reading The Spellcoats from the Dalemark quartet at the moment. As strange as anything I have ever read.

(Also, by the way, another person obsessed by Red Shift as a teenager. And a huge fan of Peter Dickinson, another completely compelling writer who never wrote the same book twice unlike so many children's/teen authors.)

Thanks for the links, Dan! I really want to re-read Fire and Hemlock now, have always struggled a bit to work out what's really going on at the end so it's really interesting to read other perspectives on it.

I love these books!

I don't think I can read Homeward Bounders again. So sad.

But the animation movie of Howl's Moving Castle is the only Studio Ghibli film that disappoints.

Fascinating stuff, Dan, thank you so much.

It appears that the DWJ one is no longer freely available online, only by subscription, but the Catherine Butler one is here - but again, is no longer available in many places, so read it while you can -

<a class="break-all" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021105172231/members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon/tl.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20021105172231/members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon/tl.html

(of course Red Shift is another superb and complex YA book, light years away from the guff that is being published these days)

More Fire & Hemlock stuff here from the generally brilliant Red Hen (if you like Harry Potter, her analysis essays were some of the best written during the era) - www.redhen-publications.com/hemlock.html

This one here is also good - www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/cl1fire.htm

I think Hexwood is the hardest to understand.

I have some good articles on Fire & Hemlock which explain it a good deal. One is by Dr Catherine Butler of UWE university, an expert on DWJ, and one is by Diana herself on the subject of Heroes.

Two things are useful when exploring ideas about it: the ballads of Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer; and TS Eliot's Four Quartets.

The one that I've never been able to get my head around is Hexwood.

I'm another person who's never understood the ending to Fire & Hemlock. Mind you, reading it as an adult I do think the relationship borders on the creepy.

An earlier thread about DWJ was about a 1970s cover for The Time of the Ghost - the poster had been a model for the artist, and her profile was the centre of the cover picture. I was very jealous wasn't jealous at all .

I read A Tale of Time City about a billion times when I was younger. The Spellcoats quartet is brilliant and epic. But I will always have a soft spot for Chrestomanci.

Diana Wynne Jones' output was astonishing. So many, and all great. Except The Time of the Ghost, I found it too weird, which is funny seeing as it was based on her early life.

Oh and there are actually two follow-ups to Howl- the third is called House of Many Ways.

I bloody love DWJ. Think Archer's Goon is probably my favourite but I do also love Fire and Hemlock. A Sudden Wild Magic is another great one for older readers, very feministy too.