Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories

I thought I was the world's biggest Diana Wynne Jones fan, but apparently even I have my limits. I'm not sure the short form shows her off to best advantage, and after a while (a short while) some of the stories seem awfully repetitive. Yes, I enjoy her style and savour that consistent tone, but so many stories feature difficult characters and exasperated protagonists. It's there in her novels too, but I read those spaced apart. This felt like a cake, where the first slice tasted great, but you shortly realise there are still 12 more slices and no one to help you eat them--by the end, that great cake didn't feel so great.

So read it--but buy it (mine was from the library), and let some time pass between stories. Read one a month, say, show more and after a year and a half you'll have had such a treat. But back-to-back, it's too much of a muchness.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, I'm a bit more ruthless. show less

Rating: 3.5 of 5

Overall, I was delighted with these stories. Most swept me away immediately. My favorites were:

What the Cat Told Me - How could I *not* enjoy a story from a cat's POV? My fave quote, "But Boy wouldn't listen. He had to have Princess. Or else he would go into a trance and see her that way. I understood then. Boy wanted kittens. Very little will stop boys or cats when they do."

The Master - Actually enjoyed this "it was a dream" story because it was more a prophecy aka warning. It was the one story I would've liked to keep on with to see if she listened to that warning.

The Plague of Peacocks - I love it when nosy do-gooders get their comeuppance.

Side note: This was my first exposure to Diana Wynne Jones, literary that show more is. I watched Howl's Moving Castle with my daughter years ago. show less

I had started this collection a few times but hadn't progressed past The Plague of Peacocks. This time through, I skipped a couple of stories that I had just read in another collection, reread a couple of favorites (The Girl Jones, What the Cat Told Me and Dragon Reserve, Home Eight) and took my first trip down Everard's Ride. I adored these stories (and one novella) so much that I can't even find words to explain. My journal has little hearts next to all of the story names. I even think that Jenny's Law (DWJ is always better on reread) is going to be proven wrong for once because there's no way that I could love Everard's Ride more. I already love it the most possible. And why did Dragon Reserve, Home Eight never become a full novel or show more series?!

http://webereading.com/2014/08/short-story-summer-update-two.html show less

Jones has an extremely vivid imagination, which in many stories she applies to mundane starting points that skate off into sheer fantasy. Other stories occur in a more usual fantasy universe. "Everard's Ride" has overtones of "The Faerie Queen" and other classic medieval-heroic fantasies; I found it quite engaging and enjoyed the characters and their relationships.

The title is so apt in both senses, in that in DWJ's worlds anything can happen (and usually does) plus that for the reader the stories can (and do) provide the magic that may be missing in their own more prosaic world.

The stories are a little uneven, as they are aimed at different audiences (those who like whimsy, or cats, or were once in a bygone age bemused by word processors). The novella, Everard's Ride, for me was misplaced in this collection: first, its additional length made the paperback physically awkward to handle and, second, its setting and plot convolutions were a mismatch with the unidirectional flow of the other tales; it should really remain separately published as standing on its own merits.

That all said, my show more favourites were the novella and the autobiographical story, 'The Girl Jones', which opened the collection. show less

Short story collections are usually mixed bags of material in any case, but they tend to be even more so when the stories were written over a long period of time. Such is the case here with Unexpected Magic, since this collects 15 stories and a novella written over the length of Jones's career. It's definitely got some good stuff, but there's some stuff that I could have done without reading.

It's interesting to see her play around with some sci-fi stuff, and some memoir writing, but the strength is generally still in the fantasy stuff. I did enjoy Dragon Reserve, Home Eight, though, which is more sci-fi than anything else. Otherwise, the best stories are the cat ones, which isn't a huge surprise, either. I loved Little Dot, the story of show more a magical cat trying to protect her person from harm, the first time I read it, and I still liked it now. Probably about 2/3 of the stories were at least pretty decent, which isn't a bad batting average.

The novella, on the other hand, feels like one of the first things she'd ever written at that length, and had pacing problems, along with stylistic problems. The plot was interesting enough, and the way it works feels a lot like her later books (things aren't laid out about the world, you just need to figure it out as you go along, and people are stronger and better than you think), but it just didn't feel put together enough. It really dragged for a while.

Anyway, it's worth reading if you're really interested, but I'd ask for a list of stories to skip if you really want to try. show less

Diana Wynn Jones has a knack for writing well crafted stories that appeal to children and adults alike. These stories while aimed at older children since many of them include romance in fairy tale style. A few them, such as "The Girl Who Loved the Sun" actually seem aimed at a teenage crowd (and is one of my favorites in this collection).

I thought the Novella at the end of the book Everard's Ride, was a bit slow going, a bit predictable, and I wasn't very captivated by it.