Amazon.co.uk Review
Every saga has a beginning. Every journey has a first step...And so it is with the magical "Worlds of Chrestomanci" which English fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones began so many years ago with her own episode one--
Charmed Life.
Winner of the Guardian Award for Children's Books, Charmed Life has been a favourite escape to parallel fantastical worlds since 1977, and remains refreshingly captivating and reassuringly addictive in its latest paperback edition with a wonderful new jacket illustration.
The adventure begins in a strange and not-quite contemporary England that is still peppered with paddle steamers, horse-drawn carriages and girls wearing petticoats. Orphans Eric Chant (nicknamed Cat) and his sister Gwendolen, a gifted witch, are whisked away to live in a castle with Chrestromanci, a much-revered man of magic, wealth and mysterious ways. Their new life is full of the surreal and unexpected, and there are several crazy new rules to master--not least by Gwendolen who must learn to channel her astonishing powers for good instead of mischief as she forever seems determined to do!
Chrestomanci is a truly original creation, and Charmed Life introduces this dandy nine-lived enchanter--the king of the regal dressing gown--and his associated colourful characters in a story of pace and substance, twists and turns, treachery and bravado. There's also humour amid the author's very immediate writing, and enough puzzles and mystery to keep an inquisitive mind captivated until the very end.
Charmed Life is followed by three more full-length Chrestromanci novels--The Magicians of Caprona, Witch Week, The Lives of Christopher Chant and by a collection of short stories, Mixed Magics. All are equally inventive. (Ages 10 and over) --John McLay
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Orphaned Gwendoline (already studying for Advanced Magic) and her brother Cat are carried off to Chrestomanci Castle, where sinister magic is practised by the wizard. From then on the magic is part of their daily life. Inventive and absurd - a charmed read. (11-14 yrs) (Kirkus UK)
Younger brother of a talented witch, Cat seems to be the only guy on the block - and, later, the only resident of the strange castle to which the two orphaned children are transported - who can't do magic. For a while after their move, Sister Gwendolen raises all sorts of supernatural hell in protest against her less-than-fawning treatment at the hands of Chrestomanci, the aristocratic lord of the castle. But she's no match for the powers there, and when she finds she can't rule this world, she takes off for another. (There are nine worlds in all, we learn, and Cat's is a bit different from ours.) And after Gwendolen's disappearance, Cat learns that he is one of a very rare breed of nine-lived enchanters, that his special gifts have marked him as a future Chrestomanci, and that Gwendolen has been using his powers all along to perform her wicked tricks. Jones' talents are slighted in a synopsis, for she writes with exceptional finesse - whether establishing the atmosphere of the castle, orchestrating large confrontations, or filling in the domestic scene with vital incidentals. But the framing ideas are weak. The notion of alternate worlds with duplicate populations is commonplace, if functional, and not worth all her meticulous, anticlimactic unraveling. And the revelation that the enigmatic Chrestomanci is a "government employee," charged with keeping other witches in check so they don't muck up the world (this in a world where only the rich have cars), is both disappointingly tame and disturbingly paternalistic. (Kirkus Reviews)
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by Diana Wynne Jones
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