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An excursion to Dalemark
Aug. 22nd, 2019 07:04 pmI started my reading for the Diana Wynne Jones conference with A Sudden Wild Magic: it had been mentioned at the earlier gathering in Newcastle as her book for adults, and I hadn't been able to place it. The subject matter - a group of women on a mission to disrupt a celibate male society - may justify that 'adult' descriptor, but there's a broadness to the humour which I initially found quite off-putting, and even when I adjusted to that, I didn't feel that I was reading something more grown-up than say, Hexwood, published the following year. Maybe that's why the two had become tangled in my mind. But when I took A Sudden Wild Magic from the shelf, I also dislodged Minor Arcana: one of the stories in this collection was described in the author's introduction as "one of the first adult stories I wrote", so I decided to take the hint and stay with that theme.
That story is The True State of Affairs, and it is quite unlike A Sudden Wild Magic. It is also quite unlike anything else in Minor Arcana. The Sage of Theare is a fun time paradox, featuring Chrestomanci, and a bunch of gods (if you wanted to consider DWJ's treatment of gods, this would be a useful data point). The pleasure of The Master is in the way the tale unfolds, which I wouldn't want to spoiler even if I had anything else to say about it. File The Girl who loved the Sun also under classicism, the Metamorphoses considered from the other side of the glass. Dragon Reserve, Home Eight is SF with dragons, and an interesting family structure - but also the standard fantasy trope of the outlawed talent. What the Cat told me is an equally familiar set-up, the wicked magician, his apprentice and the cat, but this time the cat gets to tell the story. nad and Dan adn Quaffy is widely anthologised; it always reminds me of Only You Can Save Mankind, which it pre-dates. I don't think that the short story is DWJ's medium, but none of these is less than entertaining.
And then there's The True State of Affairs, ( which is something else again. )
That story is The True State of Affairs, and it is quite unlike A Sudden Wild Magic. It is also quite unlike anything else in Minor Arcana. The Sage of Theare is a fun time paradox, featuring Chrestomanci, and a bunch of gods (if you wanted to consider DWJ's treatment of gods, this would be a useful data point). The pleasure of The Master is in the way the tale unfolds, which I wouldn't want to spoiler even if I had anything else to say about it. File The Girl who loved the Sun also under classicism, the Metamorphoses considered from the other side of the glass. Dragon Reserve, Home Eight is SF with dragons, and an interesting family structure - but also the standard fantasy trope of the outlawed talent. What the Cat told me is an equally familiar set-up, the wicked magician, his apprentice and the cat, but this time the cat gets to tell the story. nad and Dan adn Quaffy is widely anthologised; it always reminds me of Only You Can Save Mankind, which it pre-dates. I don't think that the short story is DWJ's medium, but none of these is less than entertaining.
And then there's The True State of Affairs, ( which is something else again. )
