Jamie stumbles into a game played by powerful non-humans. The players sweep Jamie into the game as a pawn and he finds himself popped from world possibility to world possibility. He is desperate to find his way home in this nightmare version of Groundhog Day.

I picked this book up because it was on a list somewhere (I forget what the list was even for) and I had placed it on my long list of books I ought to check out. When I finally found a copy of the book it looked (the cover) cheesy and the plot line discussed on the back of the book wasn’t any more appealing. However, because the cover contained endorsements from other authors I admire and because several Librarythingers had said that Jones was a great author, I decided to give it a try. I’m so glad I did. This book was superb. It grabbed me from the beginning and made me want to read more and more. The plotline was interesting, the characters felt quite real, and the concept behind the story was fantastic.

I loved the way Jones seamlessly wove characters from various myths and legends into the book. It reminded me of Neil Gaiman’s books but I actually thought Jones did a better job of using the myths. (Not that I think that Gaiman does a bad job.) She did this in spite of the fact that he characters were not always in worlds which might not seem to connect with these kinds of famous characters. Jones also did a great job of building mystery. From almost the start of the book she creates a sense that the world will not always be what it seems. This lack of balance keeps the reader dashing forward to discover more and more of what the book really is about.

Homeward Bounders was quite an enjoyable and thought provoking read. I would recommend it to any reader who enjoys novels which take a step beyond reality. For any adult who has read and liked this book, I would recommend checking out “The End of Mr. Y”. “Y” is not the same but it has a similar feel and the ideas within the book has some strong similarities.

Diana Wynne Jones is someone I often admire for having a seemingly endless quiver of pretty original ideas. At first glance, this isn't really one of them; the story is driven by the initial idea of there being a race of Them, pairs or groups of whom play games with different worlds, controlling events and manipulating them in vast war games. These worlds, of course, include Earth, but many others as well.

I still have to hand it to her for the creativity, though. The main character's a boy who finds out about Them playing on Earth, circa about 1879 or so. They then kick him out of the game, to roam the boundaries of the world, thus having to travel from one to another, and there Jones gets to describe a wide range of societies that are interesting in different ways. Warring societies, party societies, nomadic, religious, scientific... they're all here.

Jamie, the main character, provides a sympathetic view of what it is to be dragged from place to place, and how lonely it is. In the end, he does meet up with various others who travel with him, and in the end, attempt to take down the whole system. The secondary characters, beyond the first one introduced, aren't particularly well fleshed out, but they do provide a better focus, and Jones does do fairly well with broad strokes.

The book suffers from somewhat poor pacing, and the aforementioned lack of character development, but I still did quite like it. It's ultimately about hope and the lack of it, and personal sacrifice, and Jones does a good job of getting a nuanced view of each into a early young adult book. And, as she often does, she integrates mythological characters (Prometheus, the Wandering Jew, the Flying Dutchman) into the narrative in a way that works. I don't think it's her finest work, but if you're a fan, you're not going to be disappointed, really. ( )

One of my favourite books. The basic conception is interesting, the story ranging through time, worlds and myths is fascinating, and the end is bitter-sweet. ( )

Strange, supernatural game playing beings are at the heart of this book. They like to play games on a very large scale, as in planet to planet, and are not particularly nice.

A young boy gets involved, and is made into one of the participants. He meets others, and they decide to do something about it, as well as running into the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew and Prometheus.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/04... ( )