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The Dalemark Quartet #4
The Crown of Dalemark
The final book in the epic fantasy-adventure series from ‘the Godmother of Fantasy’, Diana Wynne Jones. Now back in print!
‘Mitt arrived at the top of the steps, panting, and pushed open the door. “Oh, there you are,” said the Countess. “We want you to kill someone.”’
Since his arrival in the North of Dalemark Mitt has become disillusioned. The North seems no more free than the Holand he fled, a fugitive accused of attempted murder. And now he is trapped by the order to kill someone he doesn’t know or else risk the lives of his friends. Forced once more to flee, Mitt is joined by Moril, the quietly powerful musician, and Maewen – out of her time, but mysteriously fated to play a part in their quest. For the evil powers of the mage Kankredin are re-assembling, and only the Adon’s gifts – the ring, sword and cup – can once more unit Dalemark.
‘Mitt arrived at the top of the steps, panting, and pushed open the door. “Oh, there you are,” said the Countess. “We want you to kill someone.”’
Since his arrival in the North of Dalemark Mitt has become disillusioned. The North seems no more free than the Holand he fled, a fugitive accused of attempted murder. And now he is trapped by the order to kill someone he doesn’t know or else risk the lives of his friends. Forced once more to flee, Mitt is joined by Moril, the quietly powerful musician, and Maewen – out of her time, but mysteriously fated to play a part in their quest. For the evil powers of the mage Kankredin are re-assembling, and only the Adon’s gifts – the ring, sword and cup – can once more unit Dalemark.
459 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
67 people are currently reading
2108 people want to read
About the author
Diana Wynne Jones
149 books12k followersDiana Wynne Jones was a celebrated British writer best known for her inventive and influential works of fantasy for children and young adults. Her stories often combined magical worlds with science fiction elements, parallel universes, and a sharp sense of humor. Among her most beloved books are Howl's Moving Castle, the Chrestomanci series, The Dalemark Quartet, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and the satirical The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. Her work gained renewed attention and readership with the popularity of the Harry Potter series, to which her books have frequently been compared.
Admired by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, and J.K. Rowling, Jones was a major influence on the landscape of modern fantasy. She received numerous accolades throughout her career, including the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, two Mythopoeic Awards, the Karl Edward Wagner Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. In 2004, Howl's Moving Castle was adapted into an acclaimed animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, further expanding her global audience.
Jones studied at Oxford, where she attended lectures by both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. She began writing professionally in the 1960s and remained active until her death in 2011. Her final novel, The Islands of Chaldea, was completed posthumously by her sister Ursula Jones.
Admired by authors such as Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, and J.K. Rowling, Jones was a major influence on the landscape of modern fantasy. She received numerous accolades throughout her career, including the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, two Mythopoeic Awards, the Karl Edward Wagner Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. In 2004, Howl's Moving Castle was adapted into an acclaimed animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, further expanding her global audience.
Jones studied at Oxford, where she attended lectures by both C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. She began writing professionally in the 1960s and remained active until her death in 2011. Her final novel, The Islands of Chaldea, was completed posthumously by her sister Ursula Jones.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 186 reviews
January 11, 2016
This is a long ‘un, folks.
Let me begin this with a confession: I am rating this book more by nostalgia than truth. It’s a horrible choice, I know. It inflates the rating and gives first-time readers a false impression. But, frankly my dears, I don’t give a damn.
I read the Dalemark Quartet when I was in my early teens, and I ADORED them with every fiber of my sheltered, book-obsessed being. I re-read them three or four times in that year alone. But oh, how the mighty have fallen! Why, OH WHY did I feel I needed to re-read these a decade later? Why couldn’t I just be happy with my vague but joyful recollections? Maybe it’s because my memory is like a sieve, and all I could remember was that I liked them. Or maybe because re-reading books is, for me, like cuddling a blankie and sucking my thumb. A little of column a, a little of column b, perhaps.
To the point, this last volume is problematic, in many ways that can all pretty much be summed up in a simple statement: Diana Wynne Jones, for all her talent, just didn’t know how to end what she had started. After discussing her work with some friends who have read her as well, I’ve come to the realization that Jones’ endings are nearly always weak in comparison to her other abilities. Dalemark is a beautifully constructed world, with a realistic political and historical structure supporting it, and the stories are populated with believable characters that grow and change before our eyes. But the execution of the plot, particularly in important, revelatory moments and conclusions, is lacking.
The overall series is constructed, as the name implies, in four parts. Rather than building a straightforward, “part 1, part 2 etc.” story arc structure, Jones divided the books into “types.” What I mean is each volume has a particular function to play in the overall story beyond merely propelling it forward. Like any introductory installment, Cart and Cwidder is responsible for easing readers into an unfamiliar (but not too unfamiliar) world and allowing us to meet characters without being plunged headfirst into the deep end. We meet a starring character and his family, learn about the basic divisions of Dalemark, and see what kind of state the land and its people are in. We also get a brief glimpse into the belief structure of the culture, but only in snatches and never with any deep understanding. Moving on to Drowned Ammet, we meet more important characters, like Mitt, who I adore, and see a different portion of the world, but the character types are remarkably different than in the preceding volume and this is the installment that really opens up the mythological and political aspects of the story that will be important later on. And then Jones throws us a curveball. The third part of the tale, The Spellcoats, is a prequel, going way back into prehistoric times to both clarify what we have already learned, and set-up the larger struggle of the last volume. Some people have complained that this sudden reversal in the arc is disorienting. I disagree; I thought it was rather brilliant.
Now, after all this set-up, all the world building and intricate weaving of character and destiny, we arrive at the Crown of Dalemark to see how it will all end. When I was younger, I thought this book was a revelation. You see, I had never experienced a story told in quite this way before. Three tenuously connected volumes brought magically and completely together in a grand dénouement? It was like looking at the back of a tapestry through three books, only to turn it over and see pictures that suddenly made sense. It was like that back then, anyway. Now? There are still moments of brilliance and originality. This book is still worth reading, I mean it! But the weaknesses, the threadbare patches and dropped stitches (if we beat this tapestry comparison to death), are glaringly obvious to me in a way they couldn’t have been then.
Crown brings Moril from Cart & Cwidder, Mitt, Navin, Hildy and Ynen from Drowned Ammet, and even a few characters from The Spellcoats that I won’t spoil here, together with a new addition to the dramatis personae in the form of Noreth, a young girl who may be the key to uniting Dalemark after 200 years of division. Or she may be a raving lunatic with powerful friends, it’s hard to say. Regardless of who Noreth really is, the earls have held power too long to give it up to anyone, so Mitt is coerced into being a reluctant assassin and sent to travel with her on her journey to collect the fabled items that are to support her claim to the long-vacant throne of Dalemark. Of course, in true fantasy form, the objects are a ring, a cup and a crown. And then things get very odd indeed. The story thus far has had magic and myth aplenty, but Jones shakes things up even further by introducing time travel.
A visitor from the future joins the motley band on their search for the mythic objects that will give Noreth a chance at the throne. Now, this is where some of those problematic things I mentioned come into play. Time travel is always tricky; the magic system “explains” away all of the problems I may have had with the overall logistics of the process, but not the bizarre and poorly explained results. Take someone from the modern day, plop them 200 years in the past and no one blinks an eye? Ok, there are some mitigating circumstances, what with the traveler looking exactly like someone else and having a historian father with a treasure trove of knowledge in his head and a propensity for lecturing, but I’m still not completely buying it. Things are smoothed over too quickly by Jones, especially with the particular characters she has chosen to unite in this great quest.
There are some great bonding moments between the characters, as each learns to trust the other, and even the emergence of a love story. Honestly, the real power and appeal of the story lies in the characters; nearly every vital plot component in this volume was poorly handled, from the too-easy acquisition of the quest objects, to the rushed discovery of Noreth’s “true” identity, and especially the bizarrely sudden and anti-climactic ending. The basic premise is very good, so good that it deserved a lot more attention than it received from the author. However, that being said, I also chalk the “failures” of this volume up to several non-authorial issues: my age (I am not the target audience, and these were written long before it became acceptable for YA to bridge the kid-adult audience gap), the removal of my rose-tinted reading glasses, and the fact that these were written very early in Diana Wynne Jones’ career.
Still, I love it because I loved it. This series was a significant contributor to my love of reading all those years ago, and if that doesn’t deserve 5 stars, I don’t know what does.
January 14, 2021
One of the things I like best about Diana Wynne Jones which no one else does, is that she can create these characters who exist in the gap between human and god and make them both big and broken as well as awkward and confused and normal. And humans can interact with them, as humans, and be just as big and important, or, perhaps, moreso, because they are of the world in the way the others aren't. Or they can be just quiet and normal. Or, in fact, both at the same time.
I feel like a lot of the time when people talk about kids books or YA they talk about 'agency' and whether or not the main character has it. But in books like these, I think that's missing the point. The point is not what a young person can do, the point is ~what the world is~ and in finding that out and living in it, the young person has all the agency they need.
I feel like a lot of the time when people talk about kids books or YA they talk about 'agency' and whether or not the main character has it. But in books like these, I think that's missing the point. The point is not what a young person can do, the point is ~what the world is~ and in finding that out and living in it, the young person has all the agency they need.
January 21, 2009
Narrated in the first chapter by Mitt, this at first seems like a continuance of Drowned Ammet, but then it continues into Maewen's fish-out-of-water tale, which is a great way to end this series.
One of the great fun of reading series, I always think, is finding out what has become of the characters you grew to know and love in previous books. Even as I become attached to new characters -- such as Maewen (and, surprisingly, Navis, who is not new but gets more narrative time in this book) -- I like to hear about events and characters from the past. And who better to show the future of these old friends, and of Dalemark, than someone who lives 200 years beyond the events in Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet? This is one of the great strengths of this series: the entire world's past and its future are included, from the primitive prehistory of The Spellcoats to the planes-trains-and-automobiles of The Crown of Dalemark.
DWJ brings all of the interwoven narratives together into a splendid, and rather unexpected, conclusion. This volume in the series, above all the others, makes me feel as though she could continue to write books set in Dalemark for ages and ages -- there is so much that is only hinted at. The Great Uprising and power-gathering of Amil the Great, for instance. Or the Continuing Adventures of Mitt and Maewen -- which, of course, is what I really want to read. The glossary is filled with intriguing little tidbits which fill in some of the gaps. It's a very satisfying end to the series, which is not to say that I don't want more. This is without a doubt one of my favorite-favorites.
One of the great fun of reading series, I always think, is finding out what has become of the characters you grew to know and love in previous books. Even as I become attached to new characters -- such as Maewen (and, surprisingly, Navis, who is not new but gets more narrative time in this book) -- I like to hear about events and characters from the past. And who better to show the future of these old friends, and of Dalemark, than someone who lives 200 years beyond the events in Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet? This is one of the great strengths of this series: the entire world's past and its future are included, from the primitive prehistory of The Spellcoats to the planes-trains-and-automobiles of The Crown of Dalemark.
DWJ brings all of the interwoven narratives together into a splendid, and rather unexpected, conclusion. This volume in the series, above all the others, makes me feel as though she could continue to write books set in Dalemark for ages and ages -- there is so much that is only hinted at. The Great Uprising and power-gathering of Amil the Great, for instance. Or the Continuing Adventures of Mitt and Maewen -- which, of course, is what I really want to read. The glossary is filled with intriguing little tidbits which fill in some of the gaps. It's a very satisfying end to the series, which is not to say that I don't want more. This is without a doubt one of my favorite-favorites.
July 9, 2008
Interesting, if not entirely successful, conclusion to the Dalemark Quartet. This novel concludes the overall series arc that really fell into place in The Spellcoats and finally brings together characters from multiple books, particularly Moril and Kialan from Cart and Cwidder and Mitt and Ynen from Drowned Ammet, while introducing a new lead as well, Maewyn. The main problem, I think, is that none of the characters were strong enough to carry the weight of the narrative, either on their own or as an ensemble. We'd seen so little from Ynen or Kialan's perspectives, for example, that their inclusion in the final five was not very interesting. Meanwhile, Mitt's importance was far too obvious, but he was perhaps too consciously abrasive. Jones's recent work has moved away from this sort of epic toward an emphasis on wit and plot twists; if she ever returned to this particular form, I'd be interested in seeing how it was different.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 23, 2022
Finale volume | where past and present meet and, | maybe, all’s resolved.Young Mitt is from South Dalemark, but when he escapes its politics and intrigues he finds that the North is equally dangerous because he is manoeuvred into an assassination attempt on a pretender to the crown of Dalemark.
This novel’s plot also turns on a present-day girl, Maewen, who gets propelled into Dalemark’s past to play a role not of her own choosing, in a narrative that’s reminiscent of the premise in Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper or Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda.
And the Crown (which is more of a circlet than a fancy coronet)? That turns out to be not just a metaphor for gaining a throne but also part of a theme that mingles together motifs from modern Tarot imagery, the medieval quest for the Grail, and the curse of immortality.
As in the previous titles of the series the reader is here treated to extensive exploration of the troubled realm of Dalemark, particularly the northwestern corner between Adenmouth and Kernsburgh; I loved the chance to further explore the geography of Dalemark and to relate the present-day state of the region with the Late Medieval / Early Modern feel of the chronologically intermediate novels, two centuries before the ‘present day’ – a modern Dalemark which is both familiar and more magical compared to our own world. Above all there is a strong sense of a Northern European milieu, from the mix of Scandinavian- and Celtic-influenced names to the physical features of the polities and emerging industrial innovations.
Characters from The Spellcoats, Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet re-emerge to play crucial parts in the unfolding story. Along with the tying-together of some unresolved threads curiosity grows concerning how characters such as Mitt and Moril, whom we learnt to sympathise with in the intermediate books, will interact with Maewen especially now that they growing from adolescence into adulthood, and whether they will retain our sympathy.
I savoured Jones’ usual little wordgames and puns; typical of these is the entity Kankredin (wonderfully but chillingly conjured up in the novel and reminiscent of a malevolent djinn from The Arabian Nights) whose name has echoes of ‘canker’, a malign growth. Key themes also re-emerge in this novel, such as journeys undertaken with a sense of urgency with danger in pursuit: previously it was on a river in flood, along roads followed by a travelling show, and a desperate journey by sea, but now it’s a quest to find regal objects – ring, cup, sword and crown – where characters’ motivations are always in doubt.
As with so many of Jones’ young adult fantasies there at first appear to be a few apparent inconsistencies, blemishes or loose ends perhaps, that mar her superb story-telling skills: her endings are so often confusing, as when the final resolution involves obscure verbal logic that even several re-readings rarely make clear. She also frequently hints at things without being explicit so that you are left to fill in the gaps without ever being sure that your gut feelings ultimately are correct. This comes largely from her using familiar folk- and fairy-tale types and motifs which raise our expectations, only to have them dashed or circumvented when she subverts the conventional tropes.
And yet, on revisiting all the series in close succession, pretty much all that confusion fades away in the final scenes of this volume; Jones ensures that her early teen heroine has a clear relationship with the Undying – the immortals in this series – to look forward to. As the author said before this novel was published, because "the hero, the protagonist, is the story" she'd had for the previous decade difficulties in completing the series quartet since "the end of [each] book is the end of the important things I have to say about the central character." Until she'd decided on a new character – Maewen – characters in the previous novels who'd had unfinished stories "several thousand years apart" had to wait to put in their appearance.
I must say I really enjoyed The Crown of Dalemark on several levels. I engaged with the main protagonists, Maewen, Mitt and Moril, all three with their very human strengths and failings, as well with most of the rest of the cast of characters, some of whom we have met previously and whose personalities have evolved (not always for the better). The convoluted plot always draws the reader on, providing of course that they play close attention to what they’re being told and not blink at inopportune times. As a finale it’s as as engaging as each of its predecessors, and you can’t ask for more than that.
http://wp.me/p2oNj1-n6
[The quotes are from ‘A Whirlwind Tour of Australia’ (1992) included in Reflections (Greenwillow Books 2012)]
August 22, 2010
YA Fantasy. When I picked this up, I was ready for Jones to show me that she did have a master plan, that here, in the last book, she would pull together all the loose threads and dish out some serious resolution, making up for the fact that each of the previous books ended about a chapter too soon.
That didn't happen.
I had to force myself to read this. It's slow and boring. The perspective is sloppy. Like the other three books, this one centers around a journey, but it's muddled. There's nothing at stake for the first two hundred pages. It even lacks the strong sense of place the other novels display. There's still plenty of descriptions of hills and stuff; they just don't feel relevant in the same way.
This book is the culmination of hundreds of years of Dalemark history -- complete with the inevitable conflation of people and events, and the way names change over time -- which can make things difficult to follow. This edition comes with a glossary in the back which I found to be sadly necessary in remembering who all these earls were, or Wend's fifteen different names.
There are some nice character moments, little treats for people who have been paying attention, like Dagner looking at his shopping in dismay, but I was disappointed in this. It lacks tension, the plot is weak, and I wasn't impressed with, or interested in, Maewen, our befuddled new protagonist. I wanted more time with the characters we already knew, in a story that was meaningful to them. But what I got was a story that wasn't even meaningful to the protagonist because it wasn't her story; she was just filling in for someone else.
Two stars. A disappointing end to this series. These books are about journeys and I feel like I didn't get to see the end of any of them.
That didn't happen.
I had to force myself to read this. It's slow and boring. The perspective is sloppy. Like the other three books, this one centers around a journey, but it's muddled. There's nothing at stake for the first two hundred pages. It even lacks the strong sense of place the other novels display. There's still plenty of descriptions of hills and stuff; they just don't feel relevant in the same way.
This book is the culmination of hundreds of years of Dalemark history -- complete with the inevitable conflation of people and events, and the way names change over time -- which can make things difficult to follow. This edition comes with a glossary in the back which I found to be sadly necessary in remembering who all these earls were, or Wend's fifteen different names.
There are some nice character moments, little treats for people who have been paying attention, like Dagner looking at his shopping in dismay, but I was disappointed in this. It lacks tension, the plot is weak, and I wasn't impressed with, or interested in, Maewen, our befuddled new protagonist. I wanted more time with the characters we already knew, in a story that was meaningful to them. But what I got was a story that wasn't even meaningful to the protagonist because it wasn't her story; she was just filling in for someone else.
Two stars. A disappointing end to this series. These books are about journeys and I feel like I didn't get to see the end of any of them.
June 28, 2014
Huh. I said of a previous book in this series that I didn't really understand what DWJ was doing; having finished it, I'm not sure DWJ understood what DWJ was doing.
This was supposed to pull everything together. And it tried to, I think – structurally this series is supposed to be woven (like a story coat) with characters moving through time, taking each other's places, etc. etc. And it just . . . didn't. The threads swapped out too many times and I was never sure who I was supposed to be caring about at any moment.
And, well, file this under 'thinking about it too much,' but this is epic fantasy of the sort where "revolution" is actually an incredibly conservative act that shores up the system of power rather than reordering it. You know, the evil king is bad, so we fix it by replacing him with the good king. All the problems of hierarchical hereditary political dictatorships being contained in the caliber of the dictator, you know. Here its evil barons replaced with the good king, but same damn thing. I'm not asking for the great democratization of fantasy land – that has its own perils, and they are many – it's just that let's not pretend here. Books like this play with the emotional rush of political uprising while never, for a second, meaningfully threatening the social order they spend so long calling corrupt. It's not like people aren't still writing this sort of political fantasy that parades around in the trappings of radicalism while actually being intensely conservative. I just happen not to read it that much anymore.
This was supposed to pull everything together. And it tried to, I think – structurally this series is supposed to be woven (like a story coat) with characters moving through time, taking each other's places, etc. etc. And it just . . . didn't. The threads swapped out too many times and I was never sure who I was supposed to be caring about at any moment.
And, well, file this under 'thinking about it too much,' but this is epic fantasy of the sort where "revolution" is actually an incredibly conservative act that shores up the system of power rather than reordering it. You know, the evil king is bad, so we fix it by replacing him with the good king. All the problems of hierarchical hereditary political dictatorships being contained in the caliber of the dictator, you know. Here its evil barons replaced with the good king, but same damn thing. I'm not asking for the great democratization of fantasy land – that has its own perils, and they are many – it's just that let's not pretend here. Books like this play with the emotional rush of political uprising while never, for a second, meaningfully threatening the social order they spend so long calling corrupt. It's not like people aren't still writing this sort of political fantasy that parades around in the trappings of radicalism while actually being intensely conservative. I just happen not to read it that much anymore.
October 5, 2023
Reread March-April 2023 for #MarchMagics
Gets even more delightful at each read. *hugs book*
Reread December 2018
I love this book SO VERY MUCH!!!!! <3
Original Review, September 2014
Wait.
What.
Excuse me while I go around in a mind-blown haze of post-Diana-Wynne-Jones-book-ness for the next few days.
You don't know the meaning of mind-blown until you've read this series and finished reading The Crown of Dalemark.
In fact I need to read them all over again.
Like now.
No one had better expect me to be coherent for some time.
I can't word.
***
(Only slightly more coherent review from my top-reads-of-2014-blog-post)
This is my favorite book I read in 2014.
Ohhhhhh my goodness. I CANNOT EVEN WORD WITH THE AMAZINGNESS OF THIS THING’S CONCLUSION. So it’s book 4 in a series, wrapping up The Dalemark Quartet… Which means I’m sort of including all four books when I say this is the best, because part of the amazing was how the separate storylines of the first three books came together so epically in this one. BUT STILL. It was just… I CAN’T, OKAY.
When I finished it I was literally incapacitated for several minutes. All I could do was some combination of sitting there in awesome-book-ending-shock, and flail around and babble incoherently at my sister who had to put up with me. XD
BUT BUT FANTASY WORLD, WITH MUSKETS, BUT ALSO QUITE MEDIEVAL, BUT ALSO MODERN-ISH BECAUSE TRAINS. AND TIME TRAVEL. IN A FANTASY WORLD. WHY DOES THIS NOT HAPPEN MORE OFTEN? IT WAS ALSKDJFLKJDFL POSITIVELY BRILLIANT. AND THE CHARACTERS WHO I LOVED WHO WERE AWESOME. <3<3 AND THE HUMOR. AND EVERYTHING. AND DIANA WYNNE JONES. And. Just. I CAN’T EVENNNNNN.
THAT. ENDING. *flaiiiil*
Gets even more delightful at each read. *hugs book*
Reread December 2018
I love this book SO VERY MUCH!!!!! <3
Original Review, September 2014
Wait.
What.
Excuse me while I go around in a mind-blown haze of post-Diana-Wynne-Jones-book-ness for the next few days.
You don't know the meaning of mind-blown until you've read this series and finished reading The Crown of Dalemark.
In fact I need to read them all over again.
Like now.
No one had better expect me to be coherent for some time.
I can't word.
***
(Only slightly more coherent review from my top-reads-of-2014-blog-post)
This is my favorite book I read in 2014.
Ohhhhhh my goodness. I CANNOT EVEN WORD WITH THE AMAZINGNESS OF THIS THING’S CONCLUSION. So it’s book 4 in a series, wrapping up The Dalemark Quartet… Which means I’m sort of including all four books when I say this is the best, because part of the amazing was how the separate storylines of the first three books came together so epically in this one. BUT STILL. It was just… I CAN’T, OKAY.
When I finished it I was literally incapacitated for several minutes. All I could do was some combination of sitting there in awesome-book-ending-shock, and flail around and babble incoherently at my sister who had to put up with me. XD
BUT BUT FANTASY WORLD, WITH MUSKETS, BUT ALSO QUITE MEDIEVAL, BUT ALSO MODERN-ISH BECAUSE TRAINS. AND TIME TRAVEL. IN A FANTASY WORLD. WHY DOES THIS NOT HAPPEN MORE OFTEN? IT WAS ALSKDJFLKJDFL POSITIVELY BRILLIANT. AND THE CHARACTERS WHO I LOVED WHO WERE AWESOME. <3<3 AND THE HUMOR. AND EVERYTHING. AND DIANA WYNNE JONES. And. Just. I CAN’T EVENNNNNN.
THAT. ENDING. *flaiiiil*
March 26, 2013
Finally got round to reading the last Dalemark book, and I don't regret it. It is very characteristically Diana Wynne Jones, but it's also the fourth book of a quartet, which I don't recall happening very much at all with Jones' other work -- so the gap before I read it wasn't a good idea. It took me some time to get back into it.
But when I did, I had a lot of fun. Jones' work often makes me feel a bit stupid because her characters seem to know what she's doing a lot better than I do and understand things faster than I do -- e.g. So then I stop and go, wuh? for a moment. But that's not really a bad thing. I like being kept on my toes.
But when I did, I had a lot of fun. Jones' work often makes me feel a bit stupid because her characters seem to know what she's doing a lot better than I do and understand things faster than I do -- e.g. So then I stop and go, wuh? for a moment. But that's not really a bad thing. I like being kept on my toes.
February 1, 2016
skipping spellcoats and reading this first, cause Beth said so!! :) and i need something good right now
read spellcoats first, which was a very good idea and thanks beth and katie. really, really liked alot of it, maybe just not the parts when the one got involved, the other undying i really liked, the one was too concrete and all powerful and not human this time.
all in all though really liked all four books in the series and super happy that i've read them, super sad that this is the last one.
read spellcoats first, which was a very good idea and thanks beth and katie. really, really liked alot of it, maybe just not the parts when the one got involved, the other undying i really liked, the one was too concrete and all powerful and not human this time.
all in all though really liked all four books in the series and super happy that i've read them, super sad that this is the last one.
March 23, 2019
THIS SERIES IS A FREAKING MASTERPIECE, TELL YOUR FRIENDS
September 16, 2011
Fourteen years after The Spellcoats, Diana Wynne Jones finally ended the series with The Crown of Dalemark. She claimed it took her that long to conceptualize how she wanted to put all the pieces from the previous three standalones together, and unfortunately that struggle basically shows in the final product. For one, there’s simply too many characters to do all of them, or even most of them justice. Though thankfully Moril and Mitt remain central* to the story, it’s a bit of a case of anything goes to all the other returning characters, some significantly changing and some gaining new prominence (or being shifted to the side). While I intellectually appreciate Jones’s willingness to keep the characters dynamic, it’s really an exercise that requires a lot of finesse and plain-old page-devouring development-- which is really lacking here. Subsequently some characters appear to undergo plain old character assassination rather than change, or are simply forgotten rather than continuing on in the background.
*and both stay interestingly unconventional leads. I totally admit them odd-coupling it around revolutionary Dalemark would be a read I would totally be into.
This faltering is particularly disappointing in the wake of The Spellcoats, which had a climax that lifted the mist from the true goal of the series (mainly by setting all the individual journeys into the context of a centuries-long battle against a single enemy of Dalemark). The further addition of Maewen, her modern-day/”future” context, and time travel don’t really add any further resonance to the conflict that wasn’t already there, and contributes the unnecessary busyness of the plot. It's not that I have anything against Maewen in particular, it's just that her stakes in this battle are nebulous or even nonexistent at best, and plopping her down amongst a bevy of returning characters with very high stakes just highlights her unnecessariness of her viewpoint character.
As a whole, The Crown of Dalemark just feels simply disjointed, and I ended putting down the Dalemark Quartet as a textbook case of the parts being greater than the whole. Rating: 2 stars (Reread 4/3/2011)
*and both stay interestingly unconventional leads. I totally admit them odd-coupling it around revolutionary Dalemark would be a read I would totally be into.
This faltering is particularly disappointing in the wake of The Spellcoats, which had a climax that lifted the mist from the true goal of the series (mainly by setting all the individual journeys into the context of a centuries-long battle against a single enemy of Dalemark). The further addition of Maewen, her modern-day/”future” context, and time travel don’t really add any further resonance to the conflict that wasn’t already there, and contributes the unnecessary busyness of the plot. It's not that I have anything against Maewen in particular, it's just that her stakes in this battle are nebulous or even nonexistent at best, and plopping her down amongst a bevy of returning characters with very high stakes just highlights her unnecessariness of her viewpoint character.
As a whole, The Crown of Dalemark just feels simply disjointed, and I ended putting down the Dalemark Quartet as a textbook case of the parts being greater than the whole. Rating: 2 stars (Reread 4/3/2011)
July 10, 2017
WELL. That was an adventure.
While I haven't managed to put my Drowned Ammet feels down in writing yet, at the close of that book Mitt was one of my least favorite protagonists. Possibly ever. (Well. Second to Holden Caulfield.) It was so terrible that when I opened Crown of Dalemark and saw his POV, I almost wrote the book off as a lost cause. BUT THEN. Maewen appears like a glorious freckled breath of fresh air. Time travel is one of my most very favorite tropes in fiction, so as soon as I realized that was where the plot was headed, I just had this huge grin on my face and was swept away from there.
The presence of an encyclopedia in this volume was much appreciated and made the reading experience so much more pleasant than in the previous works. Trying to keep all the earls straight is tricky business.
But yes! Loved loved loved just about everything about this book. Even Mitt. I was downright fond of him by the last pages.
While I haven't managed to put my Drowned Ammet feels down in writing yet, at the close of that book Mitt was one of my least favorite protagonists. Possibly ever. (Well. Second to Holden Caulfield.) It was so terrible that when I opened Crown of Dalemark and saw his POV, I almost wrote the book off as a lost cause. BUT THEN. Maewen appears like a glorious freckled breath of fresh air. Time travel is one of my most very favorite tropes in fiction, so as soon as I realized that was where the plot was headed, I just had this huge grin on my face and was swept away from there.
The presence of an encyclopedia in this volume was much appreciated and made the reading experience so much more pleasant than in the previous works. Trying to keep all the earls straight is tricky business.
But yes! Loved loved loved just about everything about this book. Even Mitt. I was downright fond of him by the last pages.
November 17, 2019
Not my favorite out of all the books of the Dalemark Quartet, but still a really good story. This would be how I would rank the Dalemark Quartet books according to how much I liked them:
1. Drowned Ammett (Book 2)
2. Cart and Cwidder (Book 1)
3. The Crown of Dalemark (Book 4)
4. The Spellcoats (Book 3)
In my review of the Spellcoats, I had mentioned that you probably didn't need to read it to go on to the next book. But I admit that reading Spellcoats somehow helped me with The Crown of Dalemark. The index at the end of this book is helpful and I wish I knew about it before I actually finished the entire book.
A good read but Drowned Ammett is still my favorite!!!
1. Drowned Ammett (Book 2)
2. Cart and Cwidder (Book 1)
3. The Crown of Dalemark (Book 4)
4. The Spellcoats (Book 3)
In my review of the Spellcoats, I had mentioned that you probably didn't need to read it to go on to the next book. But I admit that reading Spellcoats somehow helped me with The Crown of Dalemark. The index at the end of this book is helpful and I wish I knew about it before I actually finished the entire book.
A good read but Drowned Ammett is still my favorite!!!
October 15, 2025
This was I think my favorite of the quartet. I really love how all the threads from all the previous books were woven together and how seamlessly it all just worked. The time travel threw me for a loop when I first encountered it, but in the end I think I like how it played out. Kankreddin's reveal was my favorite part and the most shocking. If you know you know lol. I do think Maewen should have done something--as it was she was mostly just a placeholder. I really liked how all the characters from the previous books were banded together in this one. That worked well. I was surprised that Hildy was such a snob, and so dislikeable, and that she had such a small role. in this one. I'm kinda glad she wasn't hanging around being annoying though.
unfinished
June 3, 2021I was told this book stands alone, even though it's fourth in a sequence. I didn't find that to be true: the characters appear in earlier volumes, and there's clearly a lot of world-building I'm not privy to. I got about half-way through, but felt too at-sea. I'm going to read the earlier instalments before attempting this again.
March 31, 2025
Probably a 3.5 for me, mostly because I just don't like Mitt and didn't much like his story earlier in the series either. Also... not digging the underage love story even if nothing much comes of it. Otherwise, it ties up threads from the other three books well enough. If I'm being honest, the true standout from this series is 'The Spellcoats' and I really wish the series had continued that journey more closely rather than weaving in different time periods and characters. Perhaps the series is guilty of trying to do too many things and not quite pulling them off, or perhaps I'm just salty because it didn't follow the path I would have chosen. Very intriguing world-building though, and definitely worth gifting to a young person who enjoys fantasy with elements of mythology.
January 22, 2016
My review of the series, taken from my blog: http://gamwyn.blogspot.com/2016/01/bo...
The Dalemark Quartet is comprised of CART AND CWIDDER, DROWNED AMMET, THE SPELLCOATS, and THE CROWN OF DALEMARK.
The genius of these books is that the first three are set in the same world and reference the same landscapes and mythology, mostly centering around the god-like figures known as the Undying. CART AND CWIDDER and DROWNED AMMET are set in the same time but follow two completely different heroes. THE SPELLCOATS dips back into Dalemark's prehistory. THE CROWN OF DALEMARK brilliantly ties the threads of the previous three stories together, whilst adding the additional element of time travel. You guys, it's NUTS. Amazingly, marvelously, beautifully NUTS.
But I'll try and make more sense here.
CART AND CWIDDER follows Moril, the youngest son of a family of traveling Singers. He inherits his father's cwidder (a lute-like instrument), which is supposed to have belonged to one of the Undying, a famous ancestor who used the cwidder to move mountains (among other things). Moril finds himself caught up in the North/South conflict that plagues the country of Dalemark. Includes: siblings. music. tragedy. magic.
DROWNED AMMET follows a new character, Mitt, who lives in the South and throws his lot in with a bunch of misguided wannabe revolutionaries who are unhappy under the rule of the (admittedly extremely terrible) Earl Hadd. He winds up in a boat with two grandchildren of that very Earl, and the three have adventures at sea including encounters with two of the mysterious Undying: Old Ammet and Libby Beer.
THE SPELLCOATS, as previously mentioned, takes us into Dalemark's prehistory, and is told using a super interesting story-device: the protagonist, Tanaqui, is weaving the story into two rugcoats. This book follows a rambunctious and stunningly-characterized group of five siblings on their journey down an ancient river. It sheds more light on the mysterious Undying—even explaining a few of their origins—and introduces the evil, undead mage Krankredin. This is the only book written in first person and it definitely feels very different from the first two.
THE CROWN OF DALEMARK is the culmination of the first three books. It rejoins Mitt, who eventually meets up with Moril (hooray!!) as they journey with a group of people following Noreth, a young lady who claims to be the daughter of the oldest of the Undying, the One, and therefore the rightful heir to the long-absent crown. Flash-forward to two hundred years later, and we're introduced to Maewen, a lovely freckled and thoughtful heroine who gets sent back in time to take Noreth's place on the journey to find the crown. There's a twist near the end that for some reason I wasn't expecting but I dearly, dearly loved (and found was completely perfect when I thought back on the story). The way DWJ ties everything together is brilliant and satisfying. It makes you go oh!!!! and want to scramble back to the beginning of the series with your pencil so you can underline everything that you didn't know was important!
This series probably isn't for everyone. DWJ definitely doesn't spell everything out for you—it gets confusing at times, and you have to sit and ponder for a bit to reconcile all her threads you think at first she's left to dangle. As I've grown used to with her books, her endings are never quite ENOUGH. She seems to end two scenes too soon, which make her stories linger on in your mind in a way I don't think they would if she gave her readers just a little more. CROWN definitely had more of an ending than the first three, but it still left me desperate for a fifth volume that doesn't exist. The world she created in Dalemark is so rich and deep—so much only hinted at, so much life teeming under the surface. These books are brilliant and thought-provoking, tragic and deep and funny too. Highly recommended if you don't mind a bit of a think!
The Dalemark Quartet is comprised of CART AND CWIDDER, DROWNED AMMET, THE SPELLCOATS, and THE CROWN OF DALEMARK.
The genius of these books is that the first three are set in the same world and reference the same landscapes and mythology, mostly centering around the god-like figures known as the Undying. CART AND CWIDDER and DROWNED AMMET are set in the same time but follow two completely different heroes. THE SPELLCOATS dips back into Dalemark's prehistory. THE CROWN OF DALEMARK brilliantly ties the threads of the previous three stories together, whilst adding the additional element of time travel. You guys, it's NUTS. Amazingly, marvelously, beautifully NUTS.
But I'll try and make more sense here.
CART AND CWIDDER follows Moril, the youngest son of a family of traveling Singers. He inherits his father's cwidder (a lute-like instrument), which is supposed to have belonged to one of the Undying, a famous ancestor who used the cwidder to move mountains (among other things). Moril finds himself caught up in the North/South conflict that plagues the country of Dalemark. Includes: siblings. music. tragedy. magic.
DROWNED AMMET follows a new character, Mitt, who lives in the South and throws his lot in with a bunch of misguided wannabe revolutionaries who are unhappy under the rule of the (admittedly extremely terrible) Earl Hadd. He winds up in a boat with two grandchildren of that very Earl, and the three have adventures at sea including encounters with two of the mysterious Undying: Old Ammet and Libby Beer.
THE SPELLCOATS, as previously mentioned, takes us into Dalemark's prehistory, and is told using a super interesting story-device: the protagonist, Tanaqui, is weaving the story into two rugcoats. This book follows a rambunctious and stunningly-characterized group of five siblings on their journey down an ancient river. It sheds more light on the mysterious Undying—even explaining a few of their origins—and introduces the evil, undead mage Krankredin. This is the only book written in first person and it definitely feels very different from the first two.
THE CROWN OF DALEMARK is the culmination of the first three books. It rejoins Mitt, who eventually meets up with Moril (hooray!!) as they journey with a group of people following Noreth, a young lady who claims to be the daughter of the oldest of the Undying, the One, and therefore the rightful heir to the long-absent crown. Flash-forward to two hundred years later, and we're introduced to Maewen, a lovely freckled and thoughtful heroine who gets sent back in time to take Noreth's place on the journey to find the crown. There's a twist near the end that for some reason I wasn't expecting but I dearly, dearly loved (and found was completely perfect when I thought back on the story). The way DWJ ties everything together is brilliant and satisfying. It makes you go oh!!!! and want to scramble back to the beginning of the series with your pencil so you can underline everything that you didn't know was important!
This series probably isn't for everyone. DWJ definitely doesn't spell everything out for you—it gets confusing at times, and you have to sit and ponder for a bit to reconcile all her threads you think at first she's left to dangle. As I've grown used to with her books, her endings are never quite ENOUGH. She seems to end two scenes too soon, which make her stories linger on in your mind in a way I don't think they would if she gave her readers just a little more. CROWN definitely had more of an ending than the first three, but it still left me desperate for a fifth volume that doesn't exist. The world she created in Dalemark is so rich and deep—so much only hinted at, so much life teeming under the surface. These books are brilliant and thought-provoking, tragic and deep and funny too. Highly recommended if you don't mind a bit of a think!
August 12, 2019
The completely brilliant conclusion to the Dalemark Quartet (8+)
*Please note: this review is meant as a recommendation only. If you use it in any marketing material, online or anywhere on a published book without asking permission from me first, I will ask you to remove that use immediately. Thank you!*
*Please note: this review is meant as a recommendation only. If you use it in any marketing material, online or anywhere on a published book without asking permission from me first, I will ask you to remove that use immediately. Thank you!*
January 27, 2022
Publication order is the best order, it just gives you a more organic build up.
November 26, 2016
Don't do what I did the first time I read this book - that is, read it in isolation. It makes a lot more sense if you read the other books in the series first!
June 22, 2020
Quartet completed! Diana Wynne Jones is truly tops at children's fantasy--these books had all the thought and background put into them as some of the heavy-duty fantasy tomes on the classics shelves, but with an efficiency that let's you get right down to the story. She does middle-grade readers the courtesy of trusting their intellects and stomachs (a few violent moments) without tipping into the melodramatic seriousness (and unlikely romantic obsessions) that quite a few teen authors seem to fall into. Still questioning the exact rules of the magic here--some of it seemed like a stretch--as well as the arcs and motivations of characters that seem off-kilter from what we know of them previously. But I enjoyed it and adored being able to immerse myself in the legends and history of Dalemark just the same.
July 6, 2020
Between Spellcoats and this one (FOURTEEN YEARS) DWJ wrote most of her best books - Time of the Ghost, Homeward Bounders, Witch Week, Archer's Goon, Fire and Hemlock, Howl's Moving Castle - and oh my god, it shows. Crown of Dalemark is glorious. It's about history and folklore and the way stories and characters change over hundreds and hundreds of years and I love every bit of it - including the ending, which I gather from goodreads reviews was controversial but I give it: 1 chef's kiss. That last chapter simultaneously warmed me to my core and also broke my heart.
Navis is a champion and Mitt is so grown up and the Spellcoats cameos made me shout real loud, and I love love love Maewen.
Navis is a champion and Mitt is so grown up and the Spellcoats cameos made me shout real loud, and I love love love Maewen.
April 1, 2021
Okay, this volume justified the whole series. Ties together all the disparate threads in a grand epic feel. I'm glad Diana moved away from mythmaking fantasy towards quotidian grumpiness combined with massive magical responsibility but wow she really invented a cohesive epic universe, religion, revolution, and unlikely/eventually inspiring hero. Also the choice to sprinkle post-series updates in the glossary...! Never seen that before.
Recommended especially for middle school fans of both LOTR and Lloyd Alexander. The coda is a deft, bittersweet touch.
Recommended especially for middle school fans of both LOTR and Lloyd Alexander. The coda is a deft, bittersweet touch.
March 16, 2013
Originally posted at A Novel Idea Reviews
Rating: 5/5
Modern Dalemark has come a long way from the time of Tanaqui and The Spellcoats. It is now a bustling industrial nation, with north and south united for over 200 years. Maewen Singer, whose parents are divorced, is on her way to visit her father in Kernsburgh for the first time. As the train makes its way through the landscape of Dalemark, which has changed but still possesses the grandeur of ages past, Maewen has no idea what lies in store for her. Because the young man her father hired to guard her on her passage is not who he says he is, and she herself has more of a role in history than she could ever have guessed. Two hundred years ago, a young woman called Noreth Onesdaughter declared herself the rightful Queen of all Dalemark, and embarked upon the Royal Road. However, Noreth disappeared from the pages of history, and Maewen finds herself discovering firsthand exactly what happened. Joining her are Mitt and Moril, whose roles in the tale of Dalemark are far from finished.
AJSDHFKSJDHF I LOVED THIS BOOK. I always talk about how much I enjoy meeting characters again, and this book brought all of them back for one last journey together. That cast of characters spanned all three other books in the Dalemark Quartet, which pleased me to no end. I didn’t really realize how absurdly fond I had become of all of them until I saw them all in this final book and found myself so excited that they were all in the story in some shape or form. True sequels bring closure, and this book really tied up all the threads. It gave me a sense of the big, big, big picture that is at the heart of these books. Each individual journey told of in the first three books was a step towards what culminated in the Crown of Dalemark, so that its history unfolded before my eyes. Maewen was a pretty decent heroine, but her faults were more than made up for by HOW MUCH I LOVE MITT. And while the ending was bittersweet, it still had me completely satisfied. In fact, I wish she would write more, even though I know there isn’t really a better way to end the quartet than the way she ended it here. Did I mention my omnibus edition had a glossary/guide to Dalemark in the back? It had little tidbits about what happened to some of the characters even beyond this last chapter of the saga, which really had me thrilled. I was happy with most everyone’s endings, except possibly Hildrida, because I never could decide if she was likeable or not. (DOESN’T MATTER, MITT IS MY FAVORITE)
If you have yet to discover for yourself the insanely epic world of Dalemark, I will warn you that it is not always an easy read. It has taken me several re-reads to make sense of a few pieces here and there (Moril’s story in Cart & Cwidder was really very abstract at times, but with good reason), but each one is a worthwhile read. Diana Wynne Jones can certainly do lighthearted fantasy full of dashingly handsome wizards and comical fire demons, but she can also create truly amazing high fantasy that gives even The Prydain Chronicles a run for its money. The world she creates is complete, down to the last detail, and it’s really worth admiring how all her characters (even the ones that aren’t supposed to be all that important) never fail to reach your heart in some way. The series couldn’t get a higher recommendation from me.
Rating: 5/5
Modern Dalemark has come a long way from the time of Tanaqui and The Spellcoats. It is now a bustling industrial nation, with north and south united for over 200 years. Maewen Singer, whose parents are divorced, is on her way to visit her father in Kernsburgh for the first time. As the train makes its way through the landscape of Dalemark, which has changed but still possesses the grandeur of ages past, Maewen has no idea what lies in store for her. Because the young man her father hired to guard her on her passage is not who he says he is, and she herself has more of a role in history than she could ever have guessed. Two hundred years ago, a young woman called Noreth Onesdaughter declared herself the rightful Queen of all Dalemark, and embarked upon the Royal Road. However, Noreth disappeared from the pages of history, and Maewen finds herself discovering firsthand exactly what happened. Joining her are Mitt and Moril, whose roles in the tale of Dalemark are far from finished.
AJSDHFKSJDHF I LOVED THIS BOOK. I always talk about how much I enjoy meeting characters again, and this book brought all of them back for one last journey together. That cast of characters spanned all three other books in the Dalemark Quartet, which pleased me to no end. I didn’t really realize how absurdly fond I had become of all of them until I saw them all in this final book and found myself so excited that they were all in the story in some shape or form. True sequels bring closure, and this book really tied up all the threads. It gave me a sense of the big, big, big picture that is at the heart of these books. Each individual journey told of in the first three books was a step towards what culminated in the Crown of Dalemark, so that its history unfolded before my eyes. Maewen was a pretty decent heroine, but her faults were more than made up for by HOW MUCH I LOVE MITT. And while the ending was bittersweet, it still had me completely satisfied. In fact, I wish she would write more, even though I know there isn’t really a better way to end the quartet than the way she ended it here. Did I mention my omnibus edition had a glossary/guide to Dalemark in the back? It had little tidbits about what happened to some of the characters even beyond this last chapter of the saga, which really had me thrilled. I was happy with most everyone’s endings, except possibly Hildrida, because I never could decide if she was likeable or not. (DOESN’T MATTER, MITT IS MY FAVORITE)
If you have yet to discover for yourself the insanely epic world of Dalemark, I will warn you that it is not always an easy read. It has taken me several re-reads to make sense of a few pieces here and there (Moril’s story in Cart & Cwidder was really very abstract at times, but with good reason), but each one is a worthwhile read. Diana Wynne Jones can certainly do lighthearted fantasy full of dashingly handsome wizards and comical fire demons, but she can also create truly amazing high fantasy that gives even The Prydain Chronicles a run for its money. The world she creates is complete, down to the last detail, and it’s really worth admiring how all her characters (even the ones that aren’t supposed to be all that important) never fail to reach your heart in some way. The series couldn’t get a higher recommendation from me.
October 9, 2024
This is going to be a longer review for sure, tying together my thoughts on the series as a whole... but the TL:DR is that you should definitely give this series a try! It's a good way to get into Diana Wynne Jones, and if you've read a lot of hers but not this series, it is definitely unique among her works. Just be ready for some mental juggling!
Sometimes I feel like Diana Wynne Jones had a bigger image in her mind than she could put into words, not through any artistic lack, but that what she wanted to write was larger than life, and necessarily would either require absolutely loads of explanation, or a bare-bones explanation that the reader would have to fill in with imagination. She almost always goes for the latter. I feel like this quartet was her foray into more typical YA adventure fare, but in her typical style, she puts a unique spin on it that makes you grasp for the pieces. As a result, it either comes together beautifully for you, or you're left trying to figure out how all the pieces even fit together. To be honest, it reminds me a bit of a Christopher Nolan move such as Tenet or Dunkirk; she could have told the story in a linear, traditional way, but that's just not her style.
Maybe it's just that that Dalemark Quartet has been a series of stories all set in the same world but told from radically different points-of-view and in different times, ending with "The Crown of Dalemark" combining these characters AND a time jump. On top of that Jones starts telling the story from one character's POV, switches to a brand new character, and then as these two people come together, constantly flips between the two of them so that the narration will tells us they are wondering what the other is thinking, but makes sure we know what each one is thinking.
Do you see the "Tenet" or "Interstellar" similarities yet?
Let's try a plot overview... some spoilers below.
Plot Overview: The story picks up with Mitt, the main character of book #2 Drowned Ammet, who has been living as a refugee in North Dalemark after his escape from the South. However, his patrons are not exactly kindly... they force him to take on a mission for them to assassinate Noreth, a young Northern girl who has recently gained popularity as she claims to be the daughter of the One and heir to the ancient throne of united Dalemark. Mitt is extremely reluctant to do this, especially once he meets her, and meets up with Navis (also from Drowned Ammet) to find a way around this.
Noreth announces that she plans to travel the ancient king's roads and search for the lost crown of Dalemark, accompanied by anyone who believes in her. Mitt and Navis join, albeit for their own ends, and so does Moril Singer from Cart and Cwidder as well as another singer.
At this point, however, we get a time jump two hundred years into the future into a modern Dalemark. Here we meet Maewen, who is staying with her father, a historian, in the royal palace. She meets someone who is more than what he seems, and he sends her back to take Noreth's place, since they look so much alike, and she finds herself leading the expedition to find the crown of Dalemark. Hoping to just get it over with, Maewen adopts the new identity and leads the way, trying to make history play out as she remembers it.
Review: This book does require a bit of mental grappling. As I mentioned before, we are juggling a lot of elements, and several characters, none of whom know each other, some of whom are from different centuries, and even more who know things that we have NEVER been informed of. On top of that, several characters have multiple names, or are referred to with different titles. The simplest of these is that Maewen is called Maewen in narration, but all the other characters refer to her as Noreth.
And then there is the fact that we now know that some of the Spellcoats characters are of the Undying, so they also match up with the legends we've heard in the previous books, but it's hard to keep straight who's-who.
That being said, I found I did enjoy this book, once we got through all that. I enjoyed seeing the different characters have to mesh together in a way that only happens in a Diana Wynne Jones book. When reading a series, we get so used to the way the MC sees things and interprets them, but in this series we are invited to see things through multiple perspectives. This book does alternate between Mitt and Maewen, but we also do know a lot about Moril as well. I found myself enjoying the teamwork between these three (granted, it did take a while.)
I also liked the juxtaposition of past and future. Maewen was constantly trying to reconcile the country she was seeing with the future she knew and make it work out, which felt like a much more realistic way for time travel to work. If we suddenly were sent back into the past, even a history professor would struggle because not every single detail or name is recorded in history, and even if it is, who says it is correct?
As a whole, I really did feel like this book was a puzzle, and we had been given all the pieces in the previous books and it was now up to us to try to fit them together (or see how it worked.) I remember that the first time I read it, I was somewhat disappointed with the ending but this time around I really liked how it all worked out.
What I really wish now was that Jones had come back to this series! At the end of my copy of "The Crown of Dalemark," there are pages and pages of glossary of characters, concepts, and places, showing how much thought went into this series. She even had planned out how many steps to the front door are typical in the South, where flooding is more common! I wish she had come back to this series and fleshed it out more, giving us more of the legends alive (like the tale of the original Adon, telling us more about King Amil the Great's feats, or the Spellcoats as adults.) And I think it's a good thing to leave the reader wanting more! I wonder if she'd ever planned to come back.
It almost makes me want to do it myself!
Sometimes I feel like Diana Wynne Jones had a bigger image in her mind than she could put into words, not through any artistic lack, but that what she wanted to write was larger than life, and necessarily would either require absolutely loads of explanation, or a bare-bones explanation that the reader would have to fill in with imagination. She almost always goes for the latter. I feel like this quartet was her foray into more typical YA adventure fare, but in her typical style, she puts a unique spin on it that makes you grasp for the pieces. As a result, it either comes together beautifully for you, or you're left trying to figure out how all the pieces even fit together. To be honest, it reminds me a bit of a Christopher Nolan move such as Tenet or Dunkirk; she could have told the story in a linear, traditional way, but that's just not her style.
Maybe it's just that that Dalemark Quartet has been a series of stories all set in the same world but told from radically different points-of-view and in different times, ending with "The Crown of Dalemark" combining these characters AND a time jump. On top of that Jones starts telling the story from one character's POV, switches to a brand new character, and then as these two people come together, constantly flips between the two of them so that the narration will tells us they are wondering what the other is thinking, but makes sure we know what each one is thinking.
Do you see the "Tenet" or "Interstellar" similarities yet?
Let's try a plot overview... some spoilers below.
Plot Overview: The story picks up with Mitt, the main character of book #2 Drowned Ammet, who has been living as a refugee in North Dalemark after his escape from the South. However, his patrons are not exactly kindly... they force him to take on a mission for them to assassinate Noreth, a young Northern girl who has recently gained popularity as she claims to be the daughter of the One and heir to the ancient throne of united Dalemark. Mitt is extremely reluctant to do this, especially once he meets her, and meets up with Navis (also from Drowned Ammet) to find a way around this.
Noreth announces that she plans to travel the ancient king's roads and search for the lost crown of Dalemark, accompanied by anyone who believes in her. Mitt and Navis join, albeit for their own ends, and so does Moril Singer from Cart and Cwidder as well as another singer.
At this point, however, we get a time jump two hundred years into the future into a modern Dalemark. Here we meet Maewen, who is staying with her father, a historian, in the royal palace. She meets someone who is more than what he seems, and he sends her back to take Noreth's place, since they look so much alike, and she finds herself leading the expedition to find the crown of Dalemark. Hoping to just get it over with, Maewen adopts the new identity and leads the way, trying to make history play out as she remembers it.
Review: This book does require a bit of mental grappling. As I mentioned before, we are juggling a lot of elements, and several characters, none of whom know each other, some of whom are from different centuries, and even more who know things that we have NEVER been informed of. On top of that, several characters have multiple names, or are referred to with different titles. The simplest of these is that Maewen is called Maewen in narration, but all the other characters refer to her as Noreth.
And then there is the fact that we now know that some of the Spellcoats characters are of the Undying, so they also match up with the legends we've heard in the previous books, but it's hard to keep straight who's-who.
That being said, I found I did enjoy this book, once we got through all that. I enjoyed seeing the different characters have to mesh together in a way that only happens in a Diana Wynne Jones book. When reading a series, we get so used to the way the MC sees things and interprets them, but in this series we are invited to see things through multiple perspectives. This book does alternate between Mitt and Maewen, but we also do know a lot about Moril as well. I found myself enjoying the teamwork between these three (granted, it did take a while.)
I also liked the juxtaposition of past and future. Maewen was constantly trying to reconcile the country she was seeing with the future she knew and make it work out, which felt like a much more realistic way for time travel to work. If we suddenly were sent back into the past, even a history professor would struggle because not every single detail or name is recorded in history, and even if it is, who says it is correct?
As a whole, I really did feel like this book was a puzzle, and we had been given all the pieces in the previous books and it was now up to us to try to fit them together (or see how it worked.) I remember that the first time I read it, I was somewhat disappointed with the ending but this time around I really liked how it all worked out.
What I really wish now was that Jones had come back to this series! At the end of my copy of "The Crown of Dalemark," there are pages and pages of glossary of characters, concepts, and places, showing how much thought went into this series. She even had planned out how many steps to the front door are typical in the South, where flooding is more common! I wish she had come back to this series and fleshed it out more, giving us more of the legends alive (like the tale of the original Adon, telling us more about King Amil the Great's feats, or the Spellcoats as adults.) And I think it's a good thing to leave the reader wanting more! I wonder if she'd ever planned to come back.
It almost makes me want to do it myself!
October 1, 2015
It's taken me ten years to get into the Dalemark Quartet enough to finish it, but here I am, finally, at the end. I really enjoyed this book but some things bothered me about it which is why I downgraded my rating to 4 stars. It's a fun and engaging read with lots of tension and twists along the way. Like most Diana Wynne Jones books, I couldn't put it down, partly because I was desperate to know who ended up as King (though I had a suspicion, which turned out to be correct). I also wanted to know how all the threads from the previous books would be drawn together. I think Diana Wynne Jones put in a good effort, but I'm not sure it was entirely successful.
So, onto the things that bothered me.
So, onto the things that bothered me.
October 21, 2009
The Crown of Dalemark really doesn't have a good cover, which is a pity.*
This is the best I could do, and if I didn't know any better I would guess it was supposed to be for Cart and Cwidder. Bah.
The Crown of Dalemark is where all the disparate threads start to finally come together. Mitt, Moril, a new character named Maewen, Navis, Ynen, Kialan--all of a sudden they reappear and their stories combine.** Maewen comes from Dalemark's future, which looks suspiciously like our present. I love the way Jones frames the story within the idea of "history" suddenly coming out of the picture frames and textbooks and becoming real. I also love the fact that all of these characters don't instantly get along. Even the ones we've (okay I've) liked right from the beginning. Some of the characters I'd grown to like in previous books suddenly aren't as likable.
One of the threads I noticed running thoughout all four books is the theme of great epic*** adventures undertaken by very normal people who don't seem to even notice anything being different. Well, that isn't entirely accurate. They do notice things being different, but it's always too late. Even Navis, who is an Earl's son and quite impenetrable all through Drowned Ammet suddenly becomes human and rather nice in the last book.
Anyway, I'm quite satisfied, having finished the series and been pleased by the ending.
* I know all this discussion of covers might get boring/annoying. Sorry. When I love a book, I want it to have a good cover and all too many of them don't.
** Several characters from The Spellcoats reappear as well, but I can't tell you how or I'd spoil several bits.
*** And I mean it in its original sense, before it turned into a bit of annoying slang.
This is the best I could do, and if I didn't know any better I would guess it was supposed to be for Cart and Cwidder. Bah. The Crown of Dalemark is where all the disparate threads start to finally come together. Mitt, Moril, a new character named Maewen, Navis, Ynen, Kialan--all of a sudden they reappear and their stories combine.** Maewen comes from Dalemark's future, which looks suspiciously like our present. I love the way Jones frames the story within the idea of "history" suddenly coming out of the picture frames and textbooks and becoming real. I also love the fact that all of these characters don't instantly get along. Even the ones we've (okay I've) liked right from the beginning. Some of the characters I'd grown to like in previous books suddenly aren't as likable.
One of the threads I noticed running thoughout all four books is the theme of great epic*** adventures undertaken by very normal people who don't seem to even notice anything being different. Well, that isn't entirely accurate. They do notice things being different, but it's always too late. Even Navis, who is an Earl's son and quite impenetrable all through Drowned Ammet suddenly becomes human and rather nice in the last book.
Anyway, I'm quite satisfied, having finished the series and been pleased by the ending.
* I know all this discussion of covers might get boring/annoying. Sorry. When I love a book, I want it to have a good cover and all too many of them don't.
** Several characters from The Spellcoats reappear as well, but I can't tell you how or I'd spoil several bits.
*** And I mean it in its original sense, before it turned into a bit of annoying slang.
July 12, 2015
Lord help me with these DWJ endings PLEASE. I'm starting to get used to them and learning to recognize the cliff but the doesn't mean I like them at all.
Damnit. I enjoyed this. But not as much as the 3rd book, which is by far the best if the series, most likely because of the first person voice. I did enjoy seeing how all the characters from all the previous books came together along with Maewen the new arrival 200 yyears from the future.
I cant give a proper review I just cant. This style of DWJ which isnt bad to read but personally a chore to describe can be fuzzy (as there are layers of narrative from truth to lies seen as truth at the time), jumping from many perspectives. Its pretty enjoyable but at the same time there are lots of leaps to be made.
I enjoyed how all the history of Dalemark and the Undying came together.
Mitt is probably my favorite character, mainly because he was so confused and misunderstood. I was quite upset about Hildy. There was no explanation about her behavior more a resignation that some people are just horrible. Her and a few other characters were portrayed differently here than in previous stories. I think that was probably the most interesting thing about the book.
You realize that when you read each book its told from one side against the other and then you have to reevaluate who is right or wrong or if there is a more greater evil.
I still think she should have sorted out her endings because it is NOT a nice feeling and muddles my ideas of how much I enjoyed this and the other books. Lol I sound like a a brat. But honestly you get so carried away it brings you up short!
Also I really wanted to see what happened with Maewan and Mitt in the future
EDIT: Realised there is a pretty long glossary which is filling in loads of blank spaces for the books if not all.
Damnit. I enjoyed this. But not as much as the 3rd book, which is by far the best if the series, most likely because of the first person voice. I did enjoy seeing how all the characters from all the previous books came together along with Maewen the new arrival 200 yyears from the future.
I cant give a proper review I just cant. This style of DWJ which isnt bad to read but personally a chore to describe can be fuzzy (as there are layers of narrative from truth to lies seen as truth at the time), jumping from many perspectives. Its pretty enjoyable but at the same time there are lots of leaps to be made.
I enjoyed how all the history of Dalemark and the Undying came together.
Mitt is probably my favorite character, mainly because he was so confused and misunderstood. I was quite upset about Hildy. There was no explanation about her behavior more a resignation that some people are just horrible. Her and a few other characters were portrayed differently here than in previous stories. I think that was probably the most interesting thing about the book.
You realize that when you read each book its told from one side against the other and then you have to reevaluate who is right or wrong or if there is a more greater evil.
I still think she should have sorted out her endings because it is NOT a nice feeling and muddles my ideas of how much I enjoyed this and the other books. Lol I sound like a a brat. But honestly you get so carried away it brings you up short!
Also I really wanted to see what happened with Maewan and Mitt in the future
EDIT: Realised there is a pretty long glossary which is filling in loads of blank spaces for the books if not all.
June 18, 2010
I knew it! It all came together in the end! Characters from all 3 previous novels returned and met up for the first time, and they all work together to unite Dalemark. This is definitely a series I would like to read again. Now that I know what happens, it would be interesting to see the clues and hints that lead up to the ending.
One thing I really liked: the glossary (appendix?) at the end. This would have been helpful to have in some of the earlier books, too, although it might have spoiled a few things. I'm actually reading it straight through, because there's some info here that doesn't come out in the narrative.
I only have two complaints, and I'll try to be as vague as possible. At one point, a certain character realizes that another character has been working with EVIL for quite some time. This turned out to be true, but I don't really get how they figured it out. Second, on the very last page, one character sends a cryptic message to another, which is supposedly very meaningful and clever. Maybe a little too clever, though. I honestly thought about it for about 15 minutes before I figured it out, and I'm still not entirely sure if I'm right. I must be though. What else could it mean?!?!
Anyhow, minor complaints that didn't affect my rating (if they hadn't happened so close to the end, I probably wouldn't have remembered them at all). All in all, I'm super pleased with my first Diana Wynne Jones outside of Howl's moving Castle and its friends.
One thing I really liked: the glossary (appendix?) at the end. This would have been helpful to have in some of the earlier books, too, although it might have spoiled a few things. I'm actually reading it straight through, because there's some info here that doesn't come out in the narrative.
I only have two complaints, and I'll try to be as vague as possible. At one point, a certain character realizes that another character has been working with EVIL for quite some time. This turned out to be true, but I don't really get how they figured it out. Second, on the very last page, one character sends a cryptic message to another, which is supposedly very meaningful and clever. Maybe a little too clever, though. I honestly thought about it for about 15 minutes before I figured it out, and I'm still not entirely sure if I'm right. I must be though. What else could it mean?!?!
Anyhow, minor complaints that didn't affect my rating (if they hadn't happened so close to the end, I probably wouldn't have remembered them at all). All in all, I'm super pleased with my first Diana Wynne Jones outside of Howl's moving Castle and its friends.
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