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Title:
Charmed Life
Series: Chrestomanci #1
Author:
Diana Jones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Middlegrade Fantasy
Pages: 195
Words:
70K
While
I thoroughly enjoyed this, I can see why it didn’t take off like a
certain young wizard with a scar on his forehead. Cat doesn’t start
off as the main character and even when he’s pushed to the
forefront by circumstances, he is a very passive guy and just lets
things happen to him. I thought his older sister was going to be the
main character, but she turns out to be a main villain and is so bad
that she’s willing to sacrifice her brother for her own ends.
That’s some bad family dynamics right there.
Chrestomanci
is a magician of great power with a wonderful wife and two children
Cat’s age and he’s the obligatory powerful good adult in the
stories. While The
World of Howl books are still middle grade, they are
ostensibly about the adults. Here, the children are the main
characters. That changes the dynamics of the story. Part of that is
that Jones allows her children characters to BE children, to think
and act like children, which means they do some really stupid things
even when they are trying to do the right thing. At times it was very
frustrating for me, as an adult, to watch Cat do exactly the wrong
thing but it fit so I just gritted my teeth and held on. And it all
turned out ok in the end, as good middlegrade fantasy should.
When
I posted the Currently
Reading & Quote post last month, the humor hit me just right.
The Howl books were semi-humorous and I enjoyed them, but I wasn’t
sure if it would work in another series. While not exactly a
laughathon, the humor displayed in the CR&Q post was indicative
of what the story contained as a whole and it really worked for me.
I didn’t give this the “humor” tag because everything wasn’t
funny (like say, the Discworld books were meant to be) but there was
humor interwoven so nothing was too drear and dark.
On
a final note, the synopsis behind the details code is almost 1600
words. Read at your own risk. I know I wouldn’t!
★★★✬☆
From
Dianawynnejones.fandom.com/wiki
While on a summer
outing with their parents, Cat and Gwendolen Chant are orphaned when
the ferry their family is riding crashes. The two siblings are among
the few survivors; Cat believes this is because Gwendolen is a witch,
so she can't drown, and Cat himself clung to Gwendolen. The town sets
up a trust fund for them, and they are taken in by Mrs. Sharp, a
kindly older woman who lived downstairs from them. Mrs. Sharp is an
Certified Witch, and she senses Gwendolen's innate talent. They go
through the siblings' parents' belongings and find three letters from
Chrestomanci, which Mrs. Sharp barters to Mr. Nostrum, the
necromancer next door, for magic lessons for Gwendolen.
Gwendolen excels in
her studies and becomes the darling of the neighborhood, who dote on
her and give her presents. Cat takes violin lessons to balance
Gwendolen's magic lessons, but his playing is horrible and Gwendolen
turns his violin into a cat the neighborhood adopts and calls Fiddle.
A Fortune-Teller reads Gwendolen her fortune and predicts she'll rule
the world someday if she goes about it the right way. Miss Larkins,
the neighborhood favorite before Gwendolen, tries to predict Cat's
fortune out of jealousy. She goes into a trance, and a man's voice
tells Cat how glad he is to have found him, but that he must be more
careful: four are gone already, and he's in danger from at least two
directions. That evening, Gwendolen writes to Chrestomanci.
Soon after,
Chrestomanci himself comes in person and expresses a wish to have
Gwendolen and Cat come live with him in his castle. Gwendolen is
exultant, believing she's off to rule the world; Cat, who loves his
home in Wolvercote, is morose. They set off a week later by train in
grand style and travel to the far countryside, where they're greeted
by a man named Michael Saunders, who introduces himself as their
tutor. Michael drives them from the platform to Chrestomanci Castle,
where he brings them through a side door and hands them off to the
housekeeper, Miss Bessemer. That evening they dine with the Family
and meet Chrestomanci's wife, Millie, and their children, Roger and
Julia.
Next morning, Cat
and Gwendolen begin lessons with Roger and Julia. Gwendolen and Julia
get into a small magic duel over breakfast, after which lessons
commence. Cat, who is left-handed, does as usual and pretends to be
right-handed when Michael isn't looking, and Gwendolen shows she
knows next to nothing about anything that isn't magic. Michael loses
his temper when he discovers Cat writing with his right hand, and
dismisses them both from the schoolroom before lunch so Roger and
Julia can have their magic lesson: Chrestomanci, he says, has
forbidden them both from learning magic for the time being.
Gwendolen, feeling
she's not begin given the attention she deserves, grows steadily more
and more furious and determines to make Chrestomanci notice her. On
Wednesday, when they get their pocket money and a free afternoon to
go down to the village, Gwendolen visits a seedy magic provisions
supplier named Mr. Baslam to buy magic ingredients and some illegal
dragon's blood. During dinner, she summons ghouls to loom at the
windows, but Chrestomanci merely asks the butler to close the
curtains.
Gwendolen declares
magical war on Chrestomanci and casts one problematic spell after
another as the days pass, but still no one acknowledges even that.
She receives a letter from Mr. Nostrum, only to find that
Chrestomanci already opened and read it, to her further fury. Her
feud with Julia turns into a second war when she turns Julia's skirt
to snakes during supper. On Sunday, when the go to church, Gwendolen
bespells the figures and saints in the stained glass windows to run
from pane to pane, causing mischief and raising a disturbance among
the congregation. Chrestomanci still pays her no mind, but Millie is
furious.
That Wednesday,
Gwendolen's dragon's blood arrives in time for Chrestomanci's dinner
party. The children eat dinner separately and are told to stay in
their rooms. Gwendolen obliges and returns to her room, where she
uses her dragon's blood to grow insects to monstrous sizes, summon
skeletons, and conjure the same ghouls from before, and send them all
to interrupt the party. Chrestomanci and Michael force their way into
her room before she finishes; Chrestomanci boxes Cat's ears for not
interfering, and Michael spanks Gwendolen and strips her of her
magic.
Next morning, Cat
wakes up and goes to Gwendolen's room, only to find that Gwendolen
has disappeared and left an exact look-alike in her place. This
strange girl, Janet,
comes from a parallel world that has no magic and is much more
modern. Terrified of what Chrestomanci will do or say when he
discovers what Gwendolen has done, Cat and Janet agree to keep the
switch a secret. Janet relies on Cat as struggles to pretend to be
Gwendolen, and they both must deal with the messes Gwendolen has left
behind: a spell turning the maid Euphemia into a toad, twenty pounds
owed to Mr. Baslam for illegal dragon's blood, an outstanding feud
with Julia, and a secret plan of the Nostrums in which Gwendolen and
Cat are both involved.
Janet and Cat
resolve to run away to Janet's world, where Janet promises Cat he can
live with her and her parents as her brother. As they make their
plans, Janet discovers a matchbook tucked among Cat and Gwendolen's
parents' belongings and deduces the nine matches held inside are
Cat's nine lives. Cat, in disbelief, attempts to prove her wrong by
striking one of the matches. Before Janet can stop him, Cat erupts
into flames, and Janet does the only thing she can think to do: call
for Chrestomanci. He arrives immediately and douses the fire, then
explains to Cat that he did, in fact, have nine lives, but now he
only has three. Cat realizes it was Chrestomanci's voice he heard
Miss Larkins speaking with back in Wolvercote.
The next day,
Sunday--two weeks after Gwendolen and Cat arrived at the Castle--Cat
and Janet stay home while the rest of the Castle Family and staff go
to church. They take the opportunity to filch a bit of dragon's blood
from Michael Saunders's workshop, then sneak into Chrestomanci's
garden, which serves as a gateway to other worlds. At the center
there is an arch, and when they sprinkle a bit of dragon's blood
before it, its middle become window-like, displaying an image of
Gwendolen as queen in another world. She notices them, but before Cat
and Janet can escape to Janet's world, the Nostrums appear in the
garden using Cat's signature from one of his school essays to
teleport to his exact location. They are followed by more witches and
warlocks, many of whom Cat recognizes from Wolvercote, and once
they're all arrived, the Nostrums summon Chrestomanci.
Chrestomanci appears
instantly, and immediately the Nostrums seize upon him and bind him
with silver, his weakness, preventing him from using magic. They
immobilize Cat and tie him to the stone before the arch, revealing
that their plan with Gwendolen is to kill an innocent
child--Cat--before the arch, breaking Chrestomanci's magic and
opening the way to other worlds. But before they can kill Cat, Janet
vanishes, and Gwendolen appears in her place. Gwendolen reveals to
the Nostrums that Cat has nine lives and recounts what she did with
some of them, explaining that they'll have to kill him several times;
this infuriates the Nostrums, because it means Cat is a powerful
enchanter in his own right, and to kill him they'll first need to
discover his weakness. Before Gwendolen offers to leave so they can
use her double, Chrestomanci tells them the cat, Fiddle, which
Gwendolen had turned from a violin using one of Cat's lives, is in
the garden. All the witches and warlocks set off through the
maze-like garden to search for the cat, leaving Chrestomanci and Cat
alone at the center.
Cat is shocked and
heartbroken by his sister's betrayal and at how very little she cares
for him. Chrestomanci galvanizes him to action, telling Cat how to
use his magic to break them both free of their restraints. Cat
manages to free Chrestomanci just as they're discovered, and
Chrestomanci holds the returning witches and warlocks off and begins
to summon the Family and Castle staff. Cat realizes Gwendolen is
using his magic against them, preventing Chrestomanci from summoning
Millie. He takes his magic back and joins in the battle as Millie
arrives.
The Family round up
the members of the conspiracy, but Gwendolen escapes and seals
herself off from the rest of the world, dragging Janet back into the
garden in her place. The Family holds an impromptu picnic in the
garden. Chrestomanci explains that they brought Cat there to train
him as the next Chrestomanci, but they didn't know if Cat knew of his
magic or not, or whether he was just as amoral as his sister, which
was why they'd kept him out of the loop. He offers to find a way to
send Janet back to her world, but Janet says the double who
replaced her was happier there than in her own world, and
Chrestomanci admits that the rest are just as better off in their new
worlds. He and Millie offer to adopt Janet and let her remain at
Chrestomanci Castle as their legal ward.
-
All of My
“Diana Jones” Reviews
