The Lives of Christopher Chant

Best cat descriptions of all time. Seriously, Throgmorten is the heart and soul of this novel. The humans are also engaging and developed, and I care about them too -- they just don't hold a candle to the cats.

You know how a really good book often makes you want to go back to the beginning and start it again, or to read the next book in the series immediately if there is one? The Lives of Christopher Chant makes me want to reread the book before it in the Chrestomanci books (if you read in Jones's preferred order rather than chronologically by either publication or story), Charmed Life. Which is just so Diana Wynne Jones, this extraordinarily satisfying sense of constantly undoing a puzzle, finding little gems of realization, things show more going 'click,' while also sure all along that there's more to be understood and uncovered. show less

Probably one of my favourites from the series, because it is just so compelling and imaginative. Well, of course, they all are quite fantastic and totally out of this world, but I liked seeing young Christopher. Plus, I totally have this thing for the name Christopher.

I think I tried shamelessly imitating it when I was in Grade Seven--or at least tried to. I had a dream where a kid kept dying over and over but had however many lives left over in him, and he'd go to different worlds through at night (SHAMELESS ripoff, though I did, you know, change the names? That should be worth something) because this book totally infected my brain in youth, and still does now.

Basically, I wish I were [author: Diana Wynne Jones]. She writes the best show more male characters ever, making them charming and prissy and vain and dashing and, in the end, always proving to be more selfless than they want people to think.

Additionally, I love the way that Diana works magic. Her characters are so often magical without ever realising it, and the reader doesn't always notice it right away either.

Diana's books are choice, really. I'd pick her over Rowling any day. show less

Wow, this was an excellent book. Christopher Chant is a little boy with nine lives. Because of his nine lives he can travel effortlessly between the Related (and many unrelated) Worlds, and he also happens to be a powerful sorcerer. In spite of his power, however, Christopher's life is constrained by the people around him, all of whom seem to want to manipulate him to some purpose. There's his mother, who wants him to enter Society, his father, who seeks to live vicariously by making Christopher the next Chrestomanci, and his uncle, who manipulates Christopher into smuggling rare artifacts between the Worlds. As Christopher's choices are made for him, the only ones who understand are the Living Asheth, the girl vessel of a vengeful show more Goddess, and Throgmorton, an extremely grumpy temple cat.

There's plenty of straightforward adventure in this book, as well as good coming of age story. Christopher and the people around him could sometimes be annoyingly dense about each other, but the thing that set this book apart was that, dense as he could be, everything about Christopher was explained. We see his development from the beginning and it's clear that, really, things couldn't have happened differently. And in spite of that, the book ends with an affirmation of choice over fate. And it works. This is definitely the best fantasy I've read in a long time, and I will definitely be following the rest of the series. Highly recommended! show less

What delights me about Diana Wynne Jones is her exceptional bravery in making her protagonists unusual, even unappealing, which makes me root for them all the more. And her plots are never linear, never predictable. The Lives of Christopher Chant made me cringe now and then--the protagonist is put in danger repeatedly by adults he most trusts--and again this unsettling feeling of not being sure all would work out in the end is a highly unusual quality in a book written primarily for children. I enjoyed it a great deal.

I never read the Chrestomanci books as a child, having been put off them by Witch Week - I'm not saying that it's not a good book, either, just that its depiction of a child who doesn't fit in at school was too on the nose to read for pleasure.

This book, though, explores the world of Chrestomanci beautifully, and I really really enjoyed the parallel-world set-up, the imagination of it all, and also the character arcs are nicely done. It's an odd theme for a children's book, the idea that people use each other, and sometimes this is a terrible thing, and sometimes people need to allow themselves to be used - that is to say, Christopher's powers as a nine-lived enchanter give him a duty to help - and it gives a distinctly adult tinge to show more the book, which may be why I enjoyed so much, even if I never did read it at seven or whenever it was that I didn't read Witch Week. I really throughly enjoyed it. show less

This Diana Wynne Jones book has an intriguing title: we are used to The Lives of the Caesars (where more than one person is involved) or, on the other extreme, The Life of Brian (which is about just one person). The Lives of Christopher Chant reflects the notion that one person can have, like a cat, more than one life. This notion is an old one, from the transmigration of the soul to the Russian folk-villain Koshchei, whose external soul is hidden away in one object enclosed within another, and so on; most recently the concept has become familiar from the Horcruxes within which Harry Potter's nemesis hides pieces of his soul, but The Lives of Christopher Chant just predates Rowling's series.

Christopher Chant's ownership of nine lives show more makes him something special in the world into which he is born, but it is a destiny which he is reluctant to inherit. He discovers he is a nine-lifed enchanter, with the ability to move between parallel universes (Related Worlds in the terminology of the book). Like many another Chosen One he finds he is a de facto orphan (his parents show little interest in or care for him, rather like Diana's own parents) but also that the fate of the established order is threatened unless he can assume his responsibilities (when all he wants to do is to have friends of his own age and to play cricket). What child really wants to have responsibilities, let alone their world's future fate, resting on their shoulders?

Christopher's response is, of course, to eventually respond appropriately, though his sudden maturity and ability to command after a long period of petulance is the only weak point in the plotting. Other than that this is a wonderfully engrossing read, shot through with humour, memorable characters and, yes, intimations of mortality, set in a period with a late Victorian feel but which is obviously contemporary with our own world in the late 20th century (when Christopher briefly visits it and finds himself caught up in the horror of modern traffic). Conceits, puns, childish whimsies, fairy-tales, observations on the absurdities of social conventions, these and other archetypal Jones motifs appear in their usual profusion to make this simultaneously an easy read but one which remains in the memory. show less

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I think this is my favourite of the Chrestomanci novels, a prequel with some retracing the steps of Charmed Life, but adding some extra wrinkles which I found more satisfying - the parental marriage disintegrating; the young goddess of cats; the boarding school; the interdimensional smuggling racket; and the answer to the question of what happened to Chrestomanci's other lives. Young Christopher's psychological alienation, temptation, and eventual redemption are a very effective story arc. Even though we see even less of the world of Chrestomanci here than we did in Charmed Life, it still feels like a rich and intriguing environment. Like all of the Chrestomanci books it reads perfectly well as show more a standalone, with no knowledge of the rest of the series necessary to enjoy it. show less