Deep Secret

i am having SUCH a time. i love love love dwj so much it's a little wild lol
this is no HMC and no chrestomanci. i would hesitate to call it a middle grade novel by any means solely bc of some of the things in here. but by GOD if it isn't dwj!!! it's not her best work maybe but i was just sitting there like "YEP this is definitely dwj!" and i am still bewildered by Certain Events but it is how it be. every single moment in the last few chapters was whiplash after whiplash im surprised my neck is still on. im so glad my roommate left the room right before i got to the babylon part because everything after that was me making concerning faces and talking aloud to myself
anyway like, what the HECK!! cant believe this all happened during a show more SF/F FAN CONVENTION!! actually nvm i can in fact believe that that was the most believable part of the book tbh. sounds about right. i think the single most insane reveal was Zwhatsherface in the end bc i was like LMAO UH OH it was so leftfield and unrelated but concerning. also, Andrew. because Of Course. everything else was just like FASTPACED INSANITY BREATHING ROOM WHO LOL?? ??/
i genuinely think the centaur stitching up part was more intense than any fight scene in any fantasy novel. I was so deeply stressed just reading that.
but of course, Babylon. yep. bc nursery rhymes do be like htat.
not terribly sure what i completely think of most of th echaracters bc i can NEVER pin down dwj's characters just because they are Like That and that is the whole deal about them. however i did like them and their selfish stubbornness... all of them. i did really want to punch rupert several times. the whole brothers-as-magids thing was extremely funny tbh i love sibling dynamics in stories. dwj's romances are always so There but not Actually in which i pretty much know exactly who is with who but everytime im like how is this going to happen??? and thne it does and im like HA!!! dwj strikes again!!! (hmc taught me well) (i love punctuation marks sometimes im 11 and not 19 again)

anyway i really REALLY do have to do homework but it is not getting done bc i'm thinking about reading the other magids book now loolllll i really have got to go do my readings for next week i didn't have friday or yesterday to do it bc of home show and i chose to read this wheni woke up today (very late bc of how incredibly sleep deprived i am) instead of my hoemwork thumbsup... gotta go back down to the barn in a couple hours AGAIN too and it's RAINING!! show less

Delightful. I've read a lot of Jones, but this was my first of her fiction aimed at an older audience, and it's awesome to see the same old Jones heart (a sort of sensible empathy for humanity fun multiverse magic) in a new rhetorical context. Particularly love the way misperceptions of others, and the differences between our complex deep experiences and how people see us as we navigate those, are represented here. Also Maree's great.

Jones was a master of dark whimsy - it was fun to visit one of her multi-verse stories taking the piss on science fiction conventions and mixing magic and technology in unexpected ways. A young magid has the task of replacing a deceased colleague and keeping an empire from crumbling with the help of colleague's ghost, his brothers, and some unsuspecting heirs to the empire. Watch out for ugly sweaters.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/deep-secret-by-diana-wynne-jones/

I think it’s the latest published of Jones’ books that I have read, published in 1997, just a year after The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. It entangles a magical dynastic struggle in a parallel world with a science fiction convention in the central England of the 1990s. One of the two protagonists is our Earth’s senior magical guardian, searching for a new junior partner, and arranges for all the potential candidates to attend the convention so that he can vet them, while also trying to resolve the Koryfonic Empire’s problems. Hilarity ensues.

To those of us who know conventions well, there’s a real shock of recognition at the book’s description human side of it; show more the oddest thing is realising how much of the old organisational technology which depended on surface mail has disappeared with the electronic age. But the portrayal of a big name writer guest of honour who is a nightmare to manage at the convention – I suspect that will never go out of date.

And Jones moves the plot very deftly. We think we know what is going to happen from an early stage, but she pulls off some impressive (and entirely fair) twists at the end. We know what is happening to whom, and why, despite the number of balls being juggled. It’s not especially an adult themed book, but I think the humour will appeal more to grown-ups than to younger readers. Definitely a happy return visit for me. show less

A very readable and after a measured start, absorbing multiple world fantasy. The characters are over all a bit high on the quirk scale, but there are reasons. Some of the scenes at PhatasmaCon are screamingly funny, although there is a mild fat phobia on display.

Diana Wynne Jones was one of my favorite authors while I was growing up; the Chrestomanci series and Eight Days of Luke were particular favorites. The last few books of hers that I had read, though, had been pretty disappointing, and so I hadn't read anything by her for rather a while when this book was recommended to me.

She definitely got the hang of it back. This book's got a richly imagined fantasy world, but one that's really only a few steps removed from our own. In fact, this is probably about as much fantasy as, say, Kelley Armstrong or the like are. It's this world, but with a few bits thrown in.

The lead characters, Rupert Venables and Maree Mallory, are both well written, and come off the page in a very lively way. The show more secondary characters fill their roles very well, as well, and good lord, the plot is so tightly put together. Points come up early and come in handy later in a very natural way, but it's still unpredictable enough that you feel like you need to tear through it to find out what's next. And it's got lots of happening: dark magic, assassination, political machinations in the background, romance, and loads of characterization all around.

This book has the author at the top of her game again, and she doesn't seem to have slipped much from the late 1990s when she wrote it. If you're up for fantasy, this is a very, very good pick. show less

I picked this up at the Tompkins County booksale merely because I was enjoying the Chrestomanci books and it was another one by Diana Wynne Jones, and I read it expecting light fun; I ended up liking it marginally better than the Chrestomanci books, for reasons I'm still working out. I was amused to note my initial suspicion about it was on the nose: it's a book for adults, that has been repackaged with a cartoonish cover with "12 and up" put on the back, but it's still very much a book for adults. Not that I think it wouldn't work okay as YA, but there's a lot of really graphic violence in it, more than than Jones' kids' books, and as for YA, books, I think they tend to have young adult protagonists.

Well, this one doesn't. The two show more protagonists, who alternate as first-person narrator, are an angry, melodramatically heartbroken undergraduate called Maree, and a stuffy twentysomething software designer called Rupert. Rupert is a Magid, which seems to be a job very like Chrestomanci's, except he isn't doing it by himself; he, along with a few dozen others, keep magic ticking over in the multiverse. Rupert is a bit uptight, a little unsure of himself, occasionally makes silly mistakes; he's also thoughtful and compassionate, in that fabulous three-dimensional Jones way. Rupert's mentor has just died, and he's looking for a replacement Magid. On his shortlist is Maree, who is, as she puts it, "crossed in love", broke, and tormented by her awful family. She's crass, a bit self-centered, and passionate about books, and cares a lot for her younger cousin, Nick, the third main character in the book. She calls Rupert the Prat. They don't get on.

And so the plot wanders chaotically on, through an SF con that sounds like many cons I have gone to (and it's lovingly depicted - just the right balance of affection and irony), and through the canon's multiverse. It's a love story, of a sort, and a good one; an adventure story of another sort, and a good one. There is a really delightful supporting cast: Rupert's dead mentor, Stan, who haunts him by playing his Scarlatti CDs incessantly at top volume; his ex-girlfriend, Zinka, who is amazing and makes sure the novel passes the Bechdel test on lots of occasions despite having a male first-person narrator for most of it; some extremely vain centaurs (who are Asian - because, of course, their skin is the same colour all over and how many pure white horses do you see, really?), and some fabulous villains.

The thing I don't like, plot-wise, is one thing that also annoys me rather about The Lives of Christopher Chant. Christopher, the narrative tells us and to some extent shows us, is not a nice child at all; he tends to be self-centred, he lacks empathy, etc. Well, maybe, but Christopher is about thirteen, and everyone in his life, including his parents and his uncle and with probably the only exception of Tacroy, has either neglected him or used him mercilessly. I dunno, I'd be self-centred too. Well, the same plot works out to some extent in Deep Secret, and it annoys me.

But that said, I really enjoyed this, and I'm going to try and dig up the sequel. show less