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A Sudden Wild Magic
Our world has long been protected by "The Ring" - a benevolent secret society of witches and conjurers dedicated to the continuance and well-being of humankind. Now, in the face of impending climatic disaster, the Ring has uncovered a conspiracy potentially more destructive than any it has ever had to contend with. For eons, the mages of a neighboring universe have been looting the Earth of ideas, innovations and technologies - all the while manipulating events and creating devastating catastrophes for their own edification. And unless the brazen piracy is halted, our planet is certainly doomed. Aboard a modified city omnibus, a raiding party of adepts is dispatched to Arth, the stronghold of the interfering Pentarchy - a world ruled by magic, ritual and unbending tradition. And while the Inner Ring on Earth battles spies, traitors and the terrifying sendings of an evil, would-be queen, a motley group of commandoes launches a cynical attack on the virtue of the great citadel of Arth - determined to conquer the mighty fortress through internal dissension, psychological sabotage and kamikaze sex. But ultimately the destiny of two separate universes is in the hands of a trio of unlikely champions: a dotty old Earth woman, caretaker to many cats and a bizarre, simianlike familiar...a rebellious heir to the Pentarchy, whose birthright enables him to perform astonishing feats...and Zillah, a beautiful but troubled young mother who unknowingly possesses the wildest, strangest, and most powerful magic of all. A Sudden Wild Magic is a breathtakingly original, consistently delightful blend of fantasy and SF - a surprising, funny and warmly human adventure of wars, worlds and otherworlds that signals the dazzling emergence of a major new talent in the literary field of the fantastic.
412 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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1713 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 124 reviews
June 3, 2024
I've finally done it. I've finally read Diana Wynne Jones' scandalous adult novel!
Of course, being British and published in 1991, the scandalous bits are delightfully quaint in this day and age! Which was so very DWJ, and so very perfect.
I loved this. It was just like her other books: very British, very madcap, very magical, full of romance (even her children's books are full of romance, you just weren't paying attention). There are centaurs, and people being offered a cup of tea because there's simply nothing else to be done . . .
*sighs*
I miss Diana Wynne Jones.
Of course, being British and published in 1991, the scandalous bits are delightfully quaint in this day and age! Which was so very DWJ, and so very perfect.
I loved this. It was just like her other books: very British, very madcap, very magical, full of romance (even her children's books are full of romance, you just weren't paying attention). There are centaurs, and people being offered a cup of tea because there's simply nothing else to be done . . .
*sighs*
I miss Diana Wynne Jones.
December 28, 2014
I know a lot of Diana Wynne Jones fans don't particularly like this book but I really loved it. I loved the oddball cast of characters that are all thrown together, I loved the strange plot and different magical races and people, and I enjoyed seeing Diana Wynne Jones write adult voices. For me everything clicked and although I wasn't very taken with the main romance and protagonist because I enjoyed all the other characters so much it didn't really matter to me. I'm already looking forward to reading this one again.
March 12, 2021
Lost interest about halfway through. This one lacked the charm, for me, of her other books I've read.
April 4, 2018
3.5 stars
Not my favorite DWJ book--it's an Adult book (very, very specifically) and this is why I feel like she should have stuck with children's books. XD
Don't feel like writing a whole review. But I def don't recommend for younger readers, and feel like a lot of my friends wouldn't care for this due to some of the content. Definitely don't start out with DWJ with this one--start with Howl's Moving Castle, because it's the best. :D
This was definitely an interesting read, and while I didn't care for some of it, it was gripping and fascinating as always--I'm pretty sure DWJ can't write a terrible book, just not her best. And the car stuff was pretty funny. XD And I liked some of the characters at times (just... less than usual...) and some of it was fun. And centaurs. :D
Anyway, not a must-read, but I'm glad I got around to reading it in my continuing journey to read all of DWJ's books.
Not my favorite DWJ book--it's an Adult book (very, very specifically) and this is why I feel like she should have stuck with children's books. XD
Don't feel like writing a whole review. But I def don't recommend for younger readers, and feel like a lot of my friends wouldn't care for this due to some of the content. Definitely don't start out with DWJ with this one--start with Howl's Moving Castle, because it's the best. :D
This was definitely an interesting read, and while I didn't care for some of it, it was gripping and fascinating as always--I'm pretty sure DWJ can't write a terrible book, just not her best. And the car stuff was pretty funny. XD And I liked some of the characters at times (just... less than usual...) and some of it was fun. And centaurs. :D
Anyway, not a must-read, but I'm glad I got around to reading it in my continuing journey to read all of DWJ's books.
March 30, 2018
Magic is mostly ideas -- they're the strongest thing there is!
-- Gladys, X/2
The fantasies of Diana Wynne Jones are the epitome of wild magic, as other commentators have previously noted. You can guess what 'wild magic' is -- uncontrolled flights of powerful fancy spiralling off in unexpected directions, or some such will-o'-the-wisp definition -- and virtually every writing of this much missed author is replete with it. A novel entitled A Sudden Wild Magic is naturally going to include rather a lot of it.
The novel's premise is easily summarised. A neighbouring universe has been harvesting ideas and inventions from our world without our knowledge -- not such a fantastic notion these days -- but has also been experimentally interfering with our lives, introducing global warming and epidemics for example to see how we cope with disasters on this scale. A UK-based group of magical guardians decide to infiltrate a crack team of female adepts, their mission being to disrupt this covert action conducted by male mages by introducing magical viruses; the novel switches back and forth from Earth to this parallel world as it follows the ups and downs of this team and those monitoring progress. Being a Diana Wynne Jones fantasy things are not always as they seem, however.
It's almost pointless to outline the intricacies of the plot narrative in a straightforward review: there is so much going on, so many strands, such a varied cast, so many distinctive individuals. It's a novel of its time, of course: issues current in the 1990s have assumed different perspectives a quarter of a century later -- AIDS-HIV and global warming, for example -- and we might baulk at their semi-humorous treatment both from a retrospective viewpoint and because they are matters warranting serious consideration. But it can be argued that humour used as a means of drawing attention to the misuse of power -- from issues concerning exploitation and gender to technology used irresponsibly and child abuse -- deserves its place in fiction.
Instead then of discussing the narrative's twists and turns, I want here to indicate some of the ways the author's own wild magic operates, how she takes ideas from here and there and allows them to follow their own courses.
The floating citadel or entity that is pirating Earth's intellectual resources is initially called Laputa-Blish. The reasons for this are many. First, it's called Blish because at least one of the protagonists has evidently read James Blish's series of novels called Cities in Flight. But it's also called Laputa from Gulliver's Travels, where the flying island freely travels above the greater island of Balnibarbi. But there are more ramifications: the island's name is derived from the Spanish la puta -- which means prostitute or whore -- from which DWJ has taken the idea that the team of female adepts will use what she calls 'kamikaze sex' to upset the machinations of the brotherhood of mages.
You've now gathered that A Sudden Wild Magic is not a fantasy aimed at her usual audience of younger fans. "Usually I write [speculative fiction] for children," she wrote in an article,¹ "but recently I wrote a novel specifically for adults. this was something I had long wanted to do -- really ever since I discovered that quite as many adults read my books as children do." But in penning this fiction, clearly happy to introduce what may have been regarded as slightly risqué humour, she found that she was breaking some unwritten rules about writing fantasy for adults. Thankfully she decided to disregard them in this case.
There are two strong female leads in these pages. The first is Zillah Green, an unmarried mother with a toddler called Marcus. She's part of some intricate relationships which it's too complex to relate here (they involve a Mark and a Marceny). Zillah is blessed, or maybe cursed, with that sudden wild magic, a talent that gives her great (if rather unpredictable) power but also causes her to be lost and confused. It may be significant that Zillah, a name that first appears in Genesis 4 -- where she is the mother of Tubal Cain, the first metalworker -- means 'shadow' in Hebrew: that shadowy aspect may have been what allows Zillah to be constantly overlooked as someone either not present or else insignificant. She does, however, have a significant part to play throughout the narrative.
The other woman with a key role is Dr Gladys Naismith, a professor emeritus of theology. When we first meet her she appears as a dotty old woman with a penchant for cats, living in a cottage in the Herefordshire countryside. It soon becomes clear though that she is a powerful adept, and also good at reading people. Perhaps her surname is indicative of her abilities, for there is a widespread belief around the world that metalworking is a kind of magic and artificers such as blacksmiths are ipso facto magicians. In such ways does Jones match her characters to their personalities and talents.
Gladys also leads us to another complex of relationships in the novel: Welsh connections and Arthurian allusions, themes which the author frequently includes in her work. Gladys, a form of Gwladys, is related to Welsh gwlad, meaning 'land', 'realm' or 'countryside'-- perhaps it originally meant a queen or princess, just as gwledig meant 'ruler'. This Gladys also shares her name with a Dark Age queen, daughter of the king of what was Breconshire and wife of another king of what was to become Monmouthshire. Both of these ancient Welsh polities are contiguous with Herefordshire in England; so what I believe Jones is suggesting is that the fictional Gladys inhabits a kind of no-man's-land between two realms -- what's conventionally called the Welsh Marches -- making her precisely the sort of person ideally placed to effect communication and movement between both.
We can see that there is method in her madness, a kind of labyrinthine logic to Jones' own wild magic. In Earth's parallel world, the floating island Laputa-Blish is actually called Arth. As well as almost having the same letters as Earth, Arth reminds us of the name Arthur, and I'm sure this is no coincidence. In Welsh tradition Gwladys is abducted by King Gwynllyw from her father King Brychan, and war between the two rulers is only prevented by the intervention of King Arthur, their overlord. In A Sudden Wild Magic the unnamed king of this alternative world attempts to reconcile the ruling mage of Arth with Gladys Naismith. While not an exact parallel there are enough similarities to suggest some crossover; while Arth itself is a kind of hybrid of a Celtic monastery and Camelot-like citadel.
Elsewhere on this parallel world we encounter a Pentarchy under that king, consisting of Orthe, Frinjen, Trenjen, Corriarden and Leathe. Students of British history will remember the concept of the Heptarchy -- which is how Victorians referred to the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as existed before the Norman conquest -- and will see how Jones has adapted it for her purposes. I've had fun trying to winkle out the origins of the names of the five kingdoms but I won't bore you with them here, only to suggest that the mythical Greek river Lethe, associated with a goddess, produced forgetfulness and oblivion, a rather apt association for the Leathe of the Pentarchy.
(I must add a thought I had after completing this review: this is a Trojan Horse story, is it not? The Celestial Omnibus the Earth-based magicians use to infiltrate the citadel of Arth is no less than an example of "Greeks bearing gifts" into the heart of the enemy state. In addition, the Marceny/Mark/Marcus characters may owe their origin to the Welsh word march which means … horse. It makes me wonder whether Marceny’s intended sacrifice of Marcus, Mark's son, was also related to the Trojan War: after all, it was intended that the innocent Iphigenia was to be sacrificed to Artemis so the Greeks could sail to Troy.)
Finally, in exploring the imaginative wellsprings of this novel, I want to briefly discuss the varieties of humans on this world. There are those who are termed gualdians, slightly fey-like people with large eyes who have a propensity for wild magic. I've little doubt that Jones derived this term from Welsh gwyllt, which by now you won't be surprised to learn means ... 'wild'. Then there are the centaurs, half horse, half man (and they do seem to all be male in this story). Jones was to bring centaurs back in Deep Secret (1997), a hybrid from classical myth and an introduced species in her otherwise insular worlds. C S Lewis, one of her lecturers at Oxford, famously started his first Narnia book "with a vision of a faun walking in the snow beside an old fashioned streetlight".² As she wrote of this series, "I marvelled and learned from it." Maybe centaurs are a nod to Lewis's faun.
Now, to the crux of the matter: is this a good story? Because, as she wrote in her essay 'Two Kinds of Writing?', despite the hidden assumptions about writing for adults (as opposed to writing for children), "when all is said and done, it is telling a good story, and telling it well, that is the point of both kinds of writing." Well, here are my criteria for judging narrative: Am I engaged when I read it? Do I enjoy the way the story is told? And do I identify in some way or sympathise with the main protagonists?
Firstly, I admit I'm biased: I am predisposed to be engaged with a Diana Wynne Jones novel because I've enjoyed so many in the past and found them satisfying on so many levels.
Now, as to whether I enjoyed the way this particular story is told, I'm not entirely convinced. In her essay she writes, as an established children's author, about assuming "that writing for adults gave me more freedom, for instance, in the way I could tell the story." She could write episodically, for example, or imply that adults could have sex; she could include "a lot of guilt, a lot of pleasure ... and an awful lot of whoopee at some point when enough people relaxed enough." She adds that in the story "two-thirds die, two get badly victimized, one falls into a clinical depression, one gets blackmailed, everyone's judgement goes askew, and one woman runs away and nearly gets her small child killed."
I don't have any problems with all this. I don't even have a problem with her editor's belief that "It's all so nice." No, what I find marginally disappointing is the way that, having brought all her main characters through various vicissitudes she does what she often does in her children's fiction and wraps the action up just we've just started investing in them. In other words, just when we want to know how they feel, react, plan the rest of their lives or whatever, down comes the curtain. It's almost as if she'd lost interest in them, though I'm sure that would never truly be the case.
Perhaps I'm expecting more than this novel is offering. Quite probably the key to it all (and indicative of the author's basic approach) is the observation by the character Roz (VI/4): "It likes fun -- the citadel, I mean. Can't you feel? People keep repressing it, and it's just sort of itching for something to enjoy." Fun. Enjoyment. That's really what this fiction is looking out for. If, as Gladys says, magic is ideas, then sudden wild magic puts the fun into those ideas.
Finally, did I find the lead roles sympathetic? If I'd read this a few years ago, I perhaps would have identified more with Zillah, irresponsible, creative and impulsive as she was. Now, somewhat older though not necessarily wiser, I find I sway towards Gladys, an authoritative figure who is good at reading people, cultivates dottiness while being as sharp as a pin when it suits her. I sometimes wish I was more like her; at least I have the dottiness.
____________
¹ 'Two Kinds of Writing?' (1991), republished in Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections: On the Magic of Writing. Greenwillow Books 2012, 33-43
² 'Reading C. S. Lewis's Narnia' in Reflections, 47-50
https://wp.me/s2oNj1-sudden
-- Gladys, X/2
The fantasies of Diana Wynne Jones are the epitome of wild magic, as other commentators have previously noted. You can guess what 'wild magic' is -- uncontrolled flights of powerful fancy spiralling off in unexpected directions, or some such will-o'-the-wisp definition -- and virtually every writing of this much missed author is replete with it. A novel entitled A Sudden Wild Magic is naturally going to include rather a lot of it.
The novel's premise is easily summarised. A neighbouring universe has been harvesting ideas and inventions from our world without our knowledge -- not such a fantastic notion these days -- but has also been experimentally interfering with our lives, introducing global warming and epidemics for example to see how we cope with disasters on this scale. A UK-based group of magical guardians decide to infiltrate a crack team of female adepts, their mission being to disrupt this covert action conducted by male mages by introducing magical viruses; the novel switches back and forth from Earth to this parallel world as it follows the ups and downs of this team and those monitoring progress. Being a Diana Wynne Jones fantasy things are not always as they seem, however.
It's almost pointless to outline the intricacies of the plot narrative in a straightforward review: there is so much going on, so many strands, such a varied cast, so many distinctive individuals. It's a novel of its time, of course: issues current in the 1990s have assumed different perspectives a quarter of a century later -- AIDS-HIV and global warming, for example -- and we might baulk at their semi-humorous treatment both from a retrospective viewpoint and because they are matters warranting serious consideration. But it can be argued that humour used as a means of drawing attention to the misuse of power -- from issues concerning exploitation and gender to technology used irresponsibly and child abuse -- deserves its place in fiction.
Instead then of discussing the narrative's twists and turns, I want here to indicate some of the ways the author's own wild magic operates, how she takes ideas from here and there and allows them to follow their own courses.
The floating citadel or entity that is pirating Earth's intellectual resources is initially called Laputa-Blish. The reasons for this are many. First, it's called Blish because at least one of the protagonists has evidently read James Blish's series of novels called Cities in Flight. But it's also called Laputa from Gulliver's Travels, where the flying island freely travels above the greater island of Balnibarbi. But there are more ramifications: the island's name is derived from the Spanish la puta -- which means prostitute or whore -- from which DWJ has taken the idea that the team of female adepts will use what she calls 'kamikaze sex' to upset the machinations of the brotherhood of mages.
You've now gathered that A Sudden Wild Magic is not a fantasy aimed at her usual audience of younger fans. "Usually I write [speculative fiction] for children," she wrote in an article,¹ "but recently I wrote a novel specifically for adults. this was something I had long wanted to do -- really ever since I discovered that quite as many adults read my books as children do." But in penning this fiction, clearly happy to introduce what may have been regarded as slightly risqué humour, she found that she was breaking some unwritten rules about writing fantasy for adults. Thankfully she decided to disregard them in this case.
There are two strong female leads in these pages. The first is Zillah Green, an unmarried mother with a toddler called Marcus. She's part of some intricate relationships which it's too complex to relate here (they involve a Mark and a Marceny). Zillah is blessed, or maybe cursed, with that sudden wild magic, a talent that gives her great (if rather unpredictable) power but also causes her to be lost and confused. It may be significant that Zillah, a name that first appears in Genesis 4 -- where she is the mother of Tubal Cain, the first metalworker -- means 'shadow' in Hebrew: that shadowy aspect may have been what allows Zillah to be constantly overlooked as someone either not present or else insignificant. She does, however, have a significant part to play throughout the narrative.
The other woman with a key role is Dr Gladys Naismith, a professor emeritus of theology. When we first meet her she appears as a dotty old woman with a penchant for cats, living in a cottage in the Herefordshire countryside. It soon becomes clear though that she is a powerful adept, and also good at reading people. Perhaps her surname is indicative of her abilities, for there is a widespread belief around the world that metalworking is a kind of magic and artificers such as blacksmiths are ipso facto magicians. In such ways does Jones match her characters to their personalities and talents.
Gladys also leads us to another complex of relationships in the novel: Welsh connections and Arthurian allusions, themes which the author frequently includes in her work. Gladys, a form of Gwladys, is related to Welsh gwlad, meaning 'land', 'realm' or 'countryside'-- perhaps it originally meant a queen or princess, just as gwledig meant 'ruler'. This Gladys also shares her name with a Dark Age queen, daughter of the king of what was Breconshire and wife of another king of what was to become Monmouthshire. Both of these ancient Welsh polities are contiguous with Herefordshire in England; so what I believe Jones is suggesting is that the fictional Gladys inhabits a kind of no-man's-land between two realms -- what's conventionally called the Welsh Marches -- making her precisely the sort of person ideally placed to effect communication and movement between both.
We can see that there is method in her madness, a kind of labyrinthine logic to Jones' own wild magic. In Earth's parallel world, the floating island Laputa-Blish is actually called Arth. As well as almost having the same letters as Earth, Arth reminds us of the name Arthur, and I'm sure this is no coincidence. In Welsh tradition Gwladys is abducted by King Gwynllyw from her father King Brychan, and war between the two rulers is only prevented by the intervention of King Arthur, their overlord. In A Sudden Wild Magic the unnamed king of this alternative world attempts to reconcile the ruling mage of Arth with Gladys Naismith. While not an exact parallel there are enough similarities to suggest some crossover; while Arth itself is a kind of hybrid of a Celtic monastery and Camelot-like citadel.
Elsewhere on this parallel world we encounter a Pentarchy under that king, consisting of Orthe, Frinjen, Trenjen, Corriarden and Leathe. Students of British history will remember the concept of the Heptarchy -- which is how Victorians referred to the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as existed before the Norman conquest -- and will see how Jones has adapted it for her purposes. I've had fun trying to winkle out the origins of the names of the five kingdoms but I won't bore you with them here, only to suggest that the mythical Greek river Lethe, associated with a goddess, produced forgetfulness and oblivion, a rather apt association for the Leathe of the Pentarchy.
(I must add a thought I had after completing this review: this is a Trojan Horse story, is it not? The Celestial Omnibus the Earth-based magicians use to infiltrate the citadel of Arth is no less than an example of "Greeks bearing gifts" into the heart of the enemy state. In addition, the Marceny/Mark/Marcus characters may owe their origin to the Welsh word march which means … horse. It makes me wonder whether Marceny’s intended sacrifice of Marcus, Mark's son, was also related to the Trojan War: after all, it was intended that the innocent Iphigenia was to be sacrificed to Artemis so the Greeks could sail to Troy.)
Finally, in exploring the imaginative wellsprings of this novel, I want to briefly discuss the varieties of humans on this world. There are those who are termed gualdians, slightly fey-like people with large eyes who have a propensity for wild magic. I've little doubt that Jones derived this term from Welsh gwyllt, which by now you won't be surprised to learn means ... 'wild'. Then there are the centaurs, half horse, half man (and they do seem to all be male in this story). Jones was to bring centaurs back in Deep Secret (1997), a hybrid from classical myth and an introduced species in her otherwise insular worlds. C S Lewis, one of her lecturers at Oxford, famously started his first Narnia book "with a vision of a faun walking in the snow beside an old fashioned streetlight".² As she wrote of this series, "I marvelled and learned from it." Maybe centaurs are a nod to Lewis's faun.
Now, to the crux of the matter: is this a good story? Because, as she wrote in her essay 'Two Kinds of Writing?', despite the hidden assumptions about writing for adults (as opposed to writing for children), "when all is said and done, it is telling a good story, and telling it well, that is the point of both kinds of writing." Well, here are my criteria for judging narrative: Am I engaged when I read it? Do I enjoy the way the story is told? And do I identify in some way or sympathise with the main protagonists?
Firstly, I admit I'm biased: I am predisposed to be engaged with a Diana Wynne Jones novel because I've enjoyed so many in the past and found them satisfying on so many levels.
Now, as to whether I enjoyed the way this particular story is told, I'm not entirely convinced. In her essay she writes, as an established children's author, about assuming "that writing for adults gave me more freedom, for instance, in the way I could tell the story." She could write episodically, for example, or imply that adults could have sex; she could include "a lot of guilt, a lot of pleasure ... and an awful lot of whoopee at some point when enough people relaxed enough." She adds that in the story "two-thirds die, two get badly victimized, one falls into a clinical depression, one gets blackmailed, everyone's judgement goes askew, and one woman runs away and nearly gets her small child killed."
I don't have any problems with all this. I don't even have a problem with her editor's belief that "It's all so nice." No, what I find marginally disappointing is the way that, having brought all her main characters through various vicissitudes she does what she often does in her children's fiction and wraps the action up just we've just started investing in them. In other words, just when we want to know how they feel, react, plan the rest of their lives or whatever, down comes the curtain. It's almost as if she'd lost interest in them, though I'm sure that would never truly be the case.
Perhaps I'm expecting more than this novel is offering. Quite probably the key to it all (and indicative of the author's basic approach) is the observation by the character Roz (VI/4): "It likes fun -- the citadel, I mean. Can't you feel? People keep repressing it, and it's just sort of itching for something to enjoy." Fun. Enjoyment. That's really what this fiction is looking out for. If, as Gladys says, magic is ideas, then sudden wild magic puts the fun into those ideas.
Finally, did I find the lead roles sympathetic? If I'd read this a few years ago, I perhaps would have identified more with Zillah, irresponsible, creative and impulsive as she was. Now, somewhat older though not necessarily wiser, I find I sway towards Gladys, an authoritative figure who is good at reading people, cultivates dottiness while being as sharp as a pin when it suits her. I sometimes wish I was more like her; at least I have the dottiness.
____________
¹ 'Two Kinds of Writing?' (1991), republished in Diana Wynne Jones, Reflections: On the Magic of Writing. Greenwillow Books 2012, 33-43
² 'Reading C. S. Lewis's Narnia' in Reflections, 47-50
https://wp.me/s2oNj1-sudden
June 23, 2019
Wasn't sure what to expect with this book which I gathered was an adult novel from DWJ well known for her children's and young adults' fantasy fiction. In the event, it read very similarly to her books for younger children, for example the Chrestomanci series, but with the addition of mostly low key and certainly non explicit references to sex and with a plot that hinged partially on the ability of a team of women agents to seduce their male hosts.
In a nutshell, our world has been influenced for some time by an adjacent reality where the wizards have been creating problems such as war, global warming (the book was published in 1992) and HIV, and then observing how we deal with such issues, stealing any ideas that seem good to them. They then send these ideas to the rest of their people - for technical reasons, they are in a pocket universe linked to the main one. The magical practitioners of Great Britain discover this and set about fighting back; hence the team sent in in the hope of destablising the hostile regime. For reasons to do with it not being possible to have a personal duplication aka analogue of yourself in the universe you are entering, there are a lot of casualties en route.
I found this story hard to relate to on a number of levels. Firstly the idea that serious problems affecting the real world are trivialised in this way; I just found that hard to accomodate. Then, a lot of the characters were very difficult to distinguish. The lead female character who enters the other world is a wimp for most of the book, and the man she moons over is a non entity (although there is a plot reason for the latter). The baby talk of her 2 year old, whom only she and one other character can understand, becomes a bit tiresome after a while: surely the child would say one or two intelligble words?
It is quite hard to tell most of the women who are on the "invasion team" apart, or most of the men they meet for that matter. The only characters I liked were Gladys, the old female magic worker, and Tod the resourceful cadet who helps the women. And I quite liked there being centaurs, one of them very grumpy. I also liked the comedic conga scene. But I felt the "solutions" were too simplistic for a book meant to be for adults especially . It was as if human beings can't be evil just for their own selfish etc reasons.
I also found it a bit strange that the author introduced some gay male characters as part of the invasion team and then promptly killed them all off. Surely it would have provided more variety in a book where the plot depended on the team seducing their hosts if these men had survived? Why, in other words, did the final invading group have to all be women (apart from the male child)?
Re the question of whether this is really an adult book, I find some of the author's fiction for children much more truly adult than this - for example Cart and Cwidder which deals with both the death of a parent and the disillusionment stemming from the other parent's selfish pragmatism. It doesn't make a story 'adult' to just graft on some sexual references - for example, there are YA books I've read with much more explicit content than this. The story was a silly romp, as a whole written at the level of DWJ's fiction for younger children and lacking the darkness of some of her fiction for older children/young adults. Maybe it was meant to be so, but I didn't find it involving and had expected something more complex, so can only award it an OK 2 stars.
In a nutshell, our world has been influenced for some time by an adjacent reality where the wizards have been creating problems such as war, global warming (the book was published in 1992) and HIV, and then observing how we deal with such issues, stealing any ideas that seem good to them. They then send these ideas to the rest of their people - for technical reasons, they are in a pocket universe linked to the main one. The magical practitioners of Great Britain discover this and set about fighting back; hence the team sent in in the hope of destablising the hostile regime. For reasons to do with it not being possible to have a personal duplication aka analogue of yourself in the universe you are entering, there are a lot of casualties en route.
I found this story hard to relate to on a number of levels. Firstly the idea that serious problems affecting the real world are trivialised in this way; I just found that hard to accomodate. Then, a lot of the characters were very difficult to distinguish. The lead female character who enters the other world is a wimp for most of the book, and the man she moons over is a non entity (although there is a plot reason for the latter). The baby talk of her 2 year old, whom only she and one other character can understand, becomes a bit tiresome after a while: surely the child would say one or two intelligble words?
It is quite hard to tell most of the women who are on the "invasion team" apart, or most of the men they meet for that matter. The only characters I liked were Gladys, the old female magic worker, and Tod the resourceful cadet who helps the women. And I quite liked there being centaurs, one of them very grumpy. I also liked the comedic conga scene. But I felt the "solutions" were too simplistic for a book meant to be for adults especially . It was as if human beings can't be evil just for their own selfish etc reasons.
I also found it a bit strange that the author introduced some gay male characters as part of the invasion team and then promptly killed them all off. Surely it would have provided more variety in a book where the plot depended on the team seducing their hosts if these men had survived? Why, in other words, did the final invading group have to all be women (apart from the male child)?
Re the question of whether this is really an adult book, I find some of the author's fiction for children much more truly adult than this - for example Cart and Cwidder which deals with both the death of a parent and the disillusionment stemming from the other parent's selfish pragmatism. It doesn't make a story 'adult' to just graft on some sexual references - for example, there are YA books I've read with much more explicit content than this. The story was a silly romp, as a whole written at the level of DWJ's fiction for younger children and lacking the darkness of some of her fiction for older children/young adults. Maybe it was meant to be so, but I didn't find it involving and had expected something more complex, so can only award it an OK 2 stars.
June 13, 2016
A curiously flat novel, containing all the classic DWJ ingredients, baked in a hotter oven and not nearly as enjoyable as it could have been.
In an essay, DWJ stated that she tried writing an adult novel as an experiment, and that she found the experience frustrating and unpleasant. With her children's novels, she never felt limited in what kinds of things she could put in, what kinds of attitudes and motivations to give her characters. In an adult novel, the reasons and struggles are so much more limited, so narrowed by the rational adult focus.
I can see how she felt; trying to fit in her usual clever, resourceful, determined people, her indefinable magic styles, her wicked and glimmering motivations, into a dull and straight-laced 'adult' story doesn't work at all. The shame of it seems to be that her own definition of adult novels was so narrow. In this book, adults have affairs, they fall in love, they run away, they run businesses, they drive cars, they have wives they don't much like. It all sounds rather a lot like a child's idea of adulthood.
It's odd, because I've always seen Deep Secret as an adult novel (at least more adult than most of her others), and it shares many of the same elements as this book: why did she have no trouble turning that into one of her best books, while this one just flounders?
This is definitely not one of her best, though it's by no means a bad book. It just feels like a kid dressing up in her mother's clothes: the girl is lovely, funny, smart, but the dress hangs awkwardly, the shoes are far too big, and the makeup looks, frankly, ridiculous.
(Re-read from many years ago, never reviewed)
In an essay, DWJ stated that she tried writing an adult novel as an experiment, and that she found the experience frustrating and unpleasant. With her children's novels, she never felt limited in what kinds of things she could put in, what kinds of attitudes and motivations to give her characters. In an adult novel, the reasons and struggles are so much more limited, so narrowed by the rational adult focus.
I can see how she felt; trying to fit in her usual clever, resourceful, determined people, her indefinable magic styles, her wicked and glimmering motivations, into a dull and straight-laced 'adult' story doesn't work at all. The shame of it seems to be that her own definition of adult novels was so narrow. In this book, adults have affairs, they fall in love, they run away, they run businesses, they drive cars, they have wives they don't much like. It all sounds rather a lot like a child's idea of adulthood.
It's odd, because I've always seen Deep Secret as an adult novel (at least more adult than most of her others), and it shares many of the same elements as this book: why did she have no trouble turning that into one of her best books, while this one just flounders?
This is definitely not one of her best, though it's by no means a bad book. It just feels like a kid dressing up in her mother's clothes: the girl is lovely, funny, smart, but the dress hangs awkwardly, the shoes are far too big, and the makeup looks, frankly, ridiculous.
(Re-read from many years ago, never reviewed)
January 4, 2013
One of Diana Wynne Jones' more 'adult' books, but one that will appeal to her fans in general, with its mix of homey appeal, warm humor, fast-paced action and serious themes.
The Earth We Know (or at least, an Earth very similar to ours) is secretly watched over by a ring of magical adepts. To their dismay, they discover that a neighboring universe has been messing with us - causing all sorts of disasters, apparently in the hopes that they'll learn useful knowledge by studying how we deal with each catastrophe.
In a desperate move, the adepts cobble together a hasty expedition to try to infiltrate the other universe and foil their nefarious plans... but nothing works out quite as expected, on either end.
The Earth We Know (or at least, an Earth very similar to ours) is secretly watched over by a ring of magical adepts. To their dismay, they discover that a neighboring universe has been messing with us - causing all sorts of disasters, apparently in the hopes that they'll learn useful knowledge by studying how we deal with each catastrophe.
In a desperate move, the adepts cobble together a hasty expedition to try to infiltrate the other universe and foil their nefarious plans... but nothing works out quite as expected, on either end.
August 22, 2019
This kept me up all last night, I was pretty interested. It had its usually charm of DWJ sand her twisty style. Overall really interesting though I did feel the the alternate universe was a bit sketchy. Wish I'd read it before but I kept leaving it because I listened to reviews. Need to stop doing that
April 21, 2017
A Sudden Wild Magic was, I believe, Diana Wynne Jones's first formal foray into adult fantasy (though of course many of her young adult and children's fantasy appeals to adults as well). This is my third or fourth reread of it, and although I enjoy it, I still don't think it works as well as most of her other books.
The story takes place in two universes: our own, and the universes of the Pentarchy, whose mages are creating environmental havoc on Earth in order to learn from Earth's mages' responses to the crises. When the Earth mages learn this, they send a group of their own to the Pentarchy to stop their operations.
There are plenty of laughs and lots of interesting characters, but there's a multiplicity of plotlines and of viewpoints which doesn't quite work for me; the ultimate villain isn't even onstage for the majority of the book, and it makes the ending feel a little unconnected to the rest of the book. If you want to try some DWJ targeted towards adults, I'd recommend Deep Secret over A Sudden Wild Magic.
The story takes place in two universes: our own, and the universes of the Pentarchy, whose mages are creating environmental havoc on Earth in order to learn from Earth's mages' responses to the crises. When the Earth mages learn this, they send a group of their own to the Pentarchy to stop their operations.
There are plenty of laughs and lots of interesting characters, but there's a multiplicity of plotlines and of viewpoints which doesn't quite work for me; the ultimate villain isn't even onstage for the majority of the book, and it makes the ending feel a little unconnected to the rest of the book. If you want to try some DWJ targeted towards adults, I'd recommend Deep Secret over A Sudden Wild Magic.
December 31, 2015
I certainly enjoyed this a lot more than the first (or even second) time that I'd read it. I didn't really remember it - it obviously didn't make much of an impression on me. This time, I found more in it to enjoy. I think because I've been reading so much about DWJ and am in the process of working my way through most if not all of her books, I noticed more. Also I'm looking for things, like her references to creativity and the way she represents magical power. I found it uneven - slow to begin and too quickly finished - and I found some of her characters somewhat interchangeable, especially the women. I still got the feeling that she was "slumming" to a certain extent in writing to an "adult" audience, or maybe what she thought an adult audience would like. There's a bit of a British pantomime silliness to all the "naughty" sex. But her themes are some of the same themes she explores in other works: misuse of power, unthinking obedience to authority and abusive family or parental relationships. It's certainly not among the top rank of her books, but there's something there for the DWJ lover to enjoy.
January 26, 2016
Gosh, I've never had such mixed feelings about a book. Parts of it I hated, parts of it made me laugh out loud, and of course I got swept away by the usual whirlwind Diana Wynne Jones ending. But did I like it?
(Cut for mild spoilers/discussion of plot)
Anyway, there are some funny moments, and the plot is a roller-coaster ride, and the characters were starting to grow on me towards the end, though in general they were less likeable and more morally ambiguous than in her other books. If you're a DWJ fan, it's worth a read, but it's definitely one of her weakest works (if not her weakest) and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who's never read DWJ before.
(Cut for mild spoilers/discussion of plot)
Anyway, there are some funny moments, and the plot is a roller-coaster ride, and the characters were starting to grow on me towards the end, though in general they were less likeable and more morally ambiguous than in her other books. If you're a DWJ fan, it's worth a read, but it's definitely one of her weakest works (if not her weakest) and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who's never read DWJ before.
January 6, 2023
I have re-read this book several times. Diana Wynne Jones is the funniest fantasy writer I have ever read--barring Octavia Butler's last book, "Fledgling." Both women are, tragically, dead, their lives cut short. All of Jones's books presuppose complicated layers of alternate universes, and most are classified as kids or YA. This is one of the few which is classified as adult at my library, for adult topics. The gist of the book is that an "otherworld" pushes our world into crises similar to theirs to mooch of our solutions, and in general steals our ideas. The otherworld's scientific monastic community is determined to be male, so a kamikaze force of tempting women is organized to breach its defenses. A woman with strong, although untrained and wild, magical power gets on the rocket by accident with her two year old son. A lot of the broad humor comes from very few people being able to understand her son. Only the select few. This book is very well worth reading, as are all her novels.
June 3, 2018
Да, с многочисленных книг Дианы Уинн Джонс я знакома лишь с трилогией о "Замках". И до этой книги считала ее детским автором ...
Отправить диверсионную группу из женщин в общество давших обет безбрачия мужчин - уж тут то есть где фантазии разгуляться. Как повели себя мужчины в данной ситуации ? Это та еще история)
Эта книга не лишена привычного для Джонс юмора и фантазии. Диана выстроила волшебный мир, который мало кого оставить равнодушным. Уж я то посмеялась от души.
Начало было слегка скучным. Середина разошлась не на шутку и в ней основной костяк интересностей книги. А вот конец смутно напомнил окончание "Ходячего замка" : "он посмотрел на ее, она посмотрела на его и для них никого больше не существовало", ну и то что он вышел каким-то быстрым и сумбурным.
Это как-то помалу смутило, но на общую оценку книге не сильно повлияло.
Отправить диверсионную группу из женщин в общество давших обет безбрачия мужчин - уж тут то есть где фантазии разгуляться. Как повели себя мужчины в данной ситуации ? Это та еще история)
Эта книга не лишена привычного для Джонс юмора и фантазии. Диана выстроила волшебный мир, который мало кого оставить равнодушным. Уж я то посмеялась от души.
Начало было слегка скучным. Середина разошлась не на шутку и в ней основной костяк интересностей книги. А вот конец смутно напомнил окончание "Ходячего замка" : "он посмотрел на ее, она посмотрела на его и для них никого больше не существовало", ну и то что он вышел каким-то быстрым и сумбурным.
Это как-то помалу смутило, но на общую оценку книге не сильно повлияло.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 27, 2024
At chapter 5, I was still considering if I would finish. Everything was so puzzling and cryptic, and I don't like that. But then it straightened out and I got into the story and read on to a satisfying ending.
July 18, 2025
DWJ is one of my favorite authors. I've collected most of her works. This one has been sitting on my bookshelf for years; I've been saving it for a special occasion when I could sit down and really enjoy it. Yesterday I realized how futile that notion was, so I cracked it open and dove right in. I was not disappointed. This is a wondrously whimsical story with all sorts of interesting characters. She really knows how to weave a good storyline, unlike today's booktok authors. The cover alone tells you it's going to be a jolly fun read. RIP Diana, thanks for another fantastical ride.
April 16, 2024
[4.5 stars, really, but Jones at her best is almost worth an extra half star all by herself]
"A Sudden Wild Magic" usually gets categorized as a rare Jones novel for adults, presumably because there's a certain amount of offscreen sex and no characters in the same age range as a younger reader. But it's by no means a significant break from her better known work. Which is a good thing, because there's nobody better than Jones at her peak, and if "A Sudden Wild Magic" is not quite her peak, it's extremely close to it. The only thing that keeps it from that level is the alternative-universe setting of the Pentarchy, which isn't entirely successful. Presumably this is because most of the alternative-universe scenes actually take place in Arth, which the Earth characters call Laputa-Blish because it appears, in some kind of inter-universe vision, to be floating above the Pentarchy (hence the flying city references in the name: "Gulliver's Travels" is familiar, though I've never read any James Blish so I had to look that up). Arth serves as the location of an observatory/fortress run by an order of monkish mages, and the scenes there work beautifully. But at the end of the book, there are a few sections set in the Pentarchy, which aren't quite as good: Jones hasn't put all that much thought into how it works, and Lady Marcy is a rather stereotypical female villain, much less interesting than the High Head of Arth. But by this point you are (or at least I am) too deeply into the book to care: I always read the last 100 pages or so at a gulp regardless. Everything else works brilliantly, I think. The magical system, for instance, successfully blends a classical style of magery, with carefully designed spells featuring chants and processions and whatnot, with something much more open and free-form, the wild magic of the title. Jones does this by making magic be both a force that one can wield following certain rules -- one of the Earth characters, Mark, uses a computer to help him with his magic -- and also the Goddess, who can grant her power to anyone she chooses. The combination of mythical and algorithmic still feels fresh to me, even though the book is thirty years old now. The other thing that strikes me is the way that Jones will sometimes switch back and forth between different character's viewpoints on the page as they interact, rather than sticking with a single viewpoint per chapter or section as she usually does. This could be clunky but it flows quite smoothly, and lets us see when the characters are demonstrating genuine insight and when they are fooling themselves. "A Sudden Wild Magic" also must be one of the first books to use global warming as a plot point, though alas, hear in the real world we can't blame it on people from another universe. Otherwise, it's the usual: the characters are great, the plotting is top-notch, the jokes are funny, and, as mentioned, I always find myself caught up in the story, even though I've read it several times before.
"A Sudden Wild Magic" usually gets categorized as a rare Jones novel for adults, presumably because there's a certain amount of offscreen sex and no characters in the same age range as a younger reader. But it's by no means a significant break from her better known work. Which is a good thing, because there's nobody better than Jones at her peak, and if "A Sudden Wild Magic" is not quite her peak, it's extremely close to it. The only thing that keeps it from that level is the alternative-universe setting of the Pentarchy, which isn't entirely successful. Presumably this is because most of the alternative-universe scenes actually take place in Arth, which the Earth characters call Laputa-Blish because it appears, in some kind of inter-universe vision, to be floating above the Pentarchy (hence the flying city references in the name: "Gulliver's Travels" is familiar, though I've never read any James Blish so I had to look that up). Arth serves as the location of an observatory/fortress run by an order of monkish mages, and the scenes there work beautifully. But at the end of the book, there are a few sections set in the Pentarchy, which aren't quite as good: Jones hasn't put all that much thought into how it works, and Lady Marcy is a rather stereotypical female villain, much less interesting than the High Head of Arth. But by this point you are (or at least I am) too deeply into the book to care: I always read the last 100 pages or so at a gulp regardless. Everything else works brilliantly, I think. The magical system, for instance, successfully blends a classical style of magery, with carefully designed spells featuring chants and processions and whatnot, with something much more open and free-form, the wild magic of the title. Jones does this by making magic be both a force that one can wield following certain rules -- one of the Earth characters, Mark, uses a computer to help him with his magic -- and also the Goddess, who can grant her power to anyone she chooses. The combination of mythical and algorithmic still feels fresh to me, even though the book is thirty years old now. The other thing that strikes me is the way that Jones will sometimes switch back and forth between different character's viewpoints on the page as they interact, rather than sticking with a single viewpoint per chapter or section as she usually does. This could be clunky but it flows quite smoothly, and lets us see when the characters are demonstrating genuine insight and when they are fooling themselves. "A Sudden Wild Magic" also must be one of the first books to use global warming as a plot point, though alas, hear in the real world we can't blame it on people from another universe. Otherwise, it's the usual: the characters are great, the plotting is top-notch, the jokes are funny, and, as mentioned, I always find myself caught up in the story, even though I've read it several times before.
August 30, 2012
Originally posted on my blog here in September 2000.
A Sudden Wild Magic hovers uneasily between the child and adult book markets; it is basically a child oriented plot to which sex scenes have been added.
The fundamental idea is that it is a magical cabal who have protected Great Britain throughout history - a convenient hurricane destroying the Armada here, Hitler deciding to invade Russia rather than Kent there - but with a twist: most of the world's crises have been magical in origin, set in motion by beings from another universe in order to make use of the technology and magical lore developed to counter them. In some ways, this idea has interest, but it is based on a distinctly simplistic view of how something as complex as world history works.
The novel begins with the discovery by the cabal that the alien race is tampering with history. They send a group off to destroy the space-station-like structure from which the crises have been launched and from where the efforts made in counteraction observed. The plot is completed with a glib, throwaway ending (which manages to use two deus ex machina characters).
More criticisms can be made, including incongruities such as the fact that despite watching Earth for hundreds of years, the observers had never worked out that both they and those they watched were human. The fact that this is made the reason for immediately ending the exploitation is strange; human beings have never had any particular compunction about exploiting each other, and surely intelligence is as good a ground to stop for a civilised race - and that those observed were intelligent must have been obvious.
A Sudden Wild Magic may be an exceptionally lazy novel, but it has one big merit. It is well enough written to encourage the reader, once started, to get through to the end (disappointing though that may prove to be).
A Sudden Wild Magic hovers uneasily between the child and adult book markets; it is basically a child oriented plot to which sex scenes have been added.
The fundamental idea is that it is a magical cabal who have protected Great Britain throughout history - a convenient hurricane destroying the Armada here, Hitler deciding to invade Russia rather than Kent there - but with a twist: most of the world's crises have been magical in origin, set in motion by beings from another universe in order to make use of the technology and magical lore developed to counter them. In some ways, this idea has interest, but it is based on a distinctly simplistic view of how something as complex as world history works.
The novel begins with the discovery by the cabal that the alien race is tampering with history. They send a group off to destroy the space-station-like structure from which the crises have been launched and from where the efforts made in counteraction observed. The plot is completed with a glib, throwaway ending (which manages to use two deus ex machina characters).
More criticisms can be made, including incongruities such as the fact that despite watching Earth for hundreds of years, the observers had never worked out that both they and those they watched were human. The fact that this is made the reason for immediately ending the exploitation is strange; human beings have never had any particular compunction about exploiting each other, and surely intelligence is as good a ground to stop for a civilised race - and that those observed were intelligent must have been obvious.
A Sudden Wild Magic may be an exceptionally lazy novel, but it has one big merit. It is well enough written to encourage the reader, once started, to get through to the end (disappointing though that may prove to be).
May 30, 2011
Yet another from my new favorite author which was lent by the same kind friend who has been supplying me with literary "crack."
Our world has long been protected by "The Ring" - a benevolent secret society of witches and conjurers dedicated to the continuance and well-being of humankind. Now, in the face of impending climatic disaster, the Ring has uncovered a conspiracy potentially more destructive than any it has ever had to contend with. For eons, the mages of a neighboring universe have been looting the Earth of ideas, innovations and technologies - all the while manipulating events and creating devastating catastrophes for their own edification. And unless the brazen piracy is halted, our planet is certainly doomed.This is an oddly unbalanced story somehow, through most of it, which actually makes sense as the overall point of the story is about balance. However, I didn't really enjoy it until the last chapter or two. An unusual experience for me with this author's work.
March 26, 2009
The book started with a very intriguing plot in which an organization of magic users realized that another planet/universe instigated certain events like world war II and global warming to watch how Earth's advancements and inventions will deal with these problems. However, after about halfway, the book got very tedious to read and I was tempted to just put it down: There was a lot of perspective switching and many subplots revolving around character interactions that were only superficially touched upon. In addition, explanations regarding the structure and mechanics of magic and the worlds got even more vague. The book seemed to lose focus but managed to tie itself together in the end. Although the many colorful characters didn't make the book a complete waste of time, I wouldn't pick up this book again. Perhaps it just wasn't to my taste and not what I look for when I pick up a fantasy.
September 17, 2013
As far as I can tell, this is the one adult novel that I have ever found written by Diana Wynne Jones. It was a bit hard to get used to an author who normally puts only the most subtle of love lines in a story to have a book that seems pretty blatantly based around who is sleeping or has slept with whom, and the effect that that has had (it's not the main plot point by any means, but from Diana any mention of this is weird). I was extremely thankful for the fact that she left out any actual sex scenes so all things considered it is still fairly clean, for an adult book.
All that aside, A Sudden Wild Magic has a slow start, like most of Diana's books, but once about halfway hits it's impossible to put down. There's the usual batch of magic coming from a mysterious source, and a world that seems to think that ours is rather like a terrarium. Fun read! Also for some reason the only Diana Wynne Jones available at my college library. What class studied this??
All that aside, A Sudden Wild Magic has a slow start, like most of Diana's books, but once about halfway hits it's impossible to put down. There's the usual batch of magic coming from a mysterious source, and a world that seems to think that ours is rather like a terrarium. Fun read! Also for some reason the only Diana Wynne Jones available at my college library. What class studied this??
January 3, 2021
I started to get a little bogged down with the Couples-style infidelities and assignations, but Jones quickly got the magic in that saved everything from boredom. I still think there might have been a few too many characters. Still there were many fine moments. Some jokes on the green economy, like the character who has all the recycled toilet paper ("*could* one recycle toilet paper?" muses someone), the character who uses an old fashioned clasp purse, the hilarious views of Earth, specifically British, culture from the eyes of an alien - given a sweater to wear and told what the locals call it: "Tod cautiously stood up. The ethnic garment showed no signs of jumping…" and the best of all, the Deux Chevaux car. I took the name to be some kind of joke - a car with a two horsepower engine - only to discover it is a real model of justifiably mocked vehicle in Europe. Or was. Jones does a great job of creating scenes you can picture in your mind's eye.
February 16, 2023
Pretty classic DWJ! I hadn't read this one before and I was unsurprised to find it featured staples of her books such as the multiverse, practical and clever witches, instinctive magic vs magic with lots of rules, some interesting pets, terrible parenting, characters who are powerful but don't realize it, and a very large show-down in which basically every named character turns up. I think I could have used a few extra chapters at the end just to wrap up loose ends but it was still pretty enjoyable. Also, it was quite strange reading an adult DWJ book because it had the exact same writing style but talked much more frankly about stuff like death, being a single parent, and relationship drama. Every time characters would start talking about sex I would just be like "I didn't know they could that in a DWJ book." I don't think this will go on my shelf of all-time favorites by her but it was still pretty good.
March 13, 2008
Much as I adore Diana Wynne Jones's writing, every now and then I find one of hers that just makes me go "meh". A Sudden Wild Magic is one of them. It has many of the same themes as my all time favorites of hers including Fire and Hemlock and Hexwood: strong women, men who need to be saved from evil, and great minor characters. But unlike the characters in F&H and Hexwood, I found this hero and heroine not very engaging. It's not that they were unlikeable (well, one of them was borderline) so much as that I could not enter in to their adventures and sympathize with their motivations. Several of the minor characters were wonderful, and the plot was as imaginative as usual from DWJ, but I just couldn't stay interested, which is why it took me over a month to finish reading.
February 25, 2010
Full of DWJs usual excellent creativity and characterizations, but the heroines of the story win by sleeping with the enemy. Not by being strong or clever or lucky or determined or kind. But through sex. Go prostitution! Ugh. Not an inspirational look into the mind of the author. If this had been my first read of her books, I'd never have read another. It does make me want to go back and examine the heroines in her other stories. Are they all rescued? Howl's Moving Castle? Yes, she's rescued. Acher's Goon? Boy hero. Chrestomanci series? All boy heroes. I'd never noticed it before. Ah, well. I haven't given up on her entirely, but this book certainly does lower her in my ranking of favorite authors.
October 23, 2014
I did really enjoy this - it had more interesting magic and worlds than DWJ usually does, though possibly this was just because I didn't know the plot already.
The main difference to her children's books, however, seemed to be that the characters were more morally ambiguous - typically for DWJ, I can't decide whether this was badly done or not.
__________________________
My last unread DWJ... :(
This feels odd, though. I'm not sure she really mastered the switch from children's to adult books. But maybe it's just my familiarity with her writing style making me think that.
I also really really really hate the idea that the world's problems are caused by magic on another world. I know this is a fantasy book essentially for children, but it just grates at me.
The main difference to her children's books, however, seemed to be that the characters were more morally ambiguous - typically for DWJ, I can't decide whether this was badly done or not.
__________________________
My last unread DWJ... :(
This feels odd, though. I'm not sure she really mastered the switch from children's to adult books. But maybe it's just my familiarity with her writing style making me think that.
I also really really really hate the idea that the world's problems are caused by magic on another world. I know this is a fantasy book essentially for children, but it just grates at me.
December 13, 2007
Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favorite children's fantasy writers. This is one of her few books aimed at an adult audience and is just plain fun. It's not perfect, but if you want a fast-paced fantasy about witches, warlocks, alternate worlds, and environmental issues "with a little sex in it" (as the producers in Sullivan's Travels said) this is your book!
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May 5, 2012I am fascinated by how often Diana Wynne Jones creates people who I would consider unpleasant in any other circumstance-- liars and cheats, unfaithful and lazy-- and makes me identify with them. And it's not that I think their failures are interesting (it's not the bad boy effect) they just serve to make the characters REAL. She is SO good at that.
January 9, 2025
Not her best work, honestly, a bit all over the place and unexplainably awkward. I felt like Deep Secret is very similar to this one, but much more engaging and well-structured.
February 6, 2010
A misfire by the usually charming Diana Wynne Jones. I found the plot bewildering—it involves a diabolical plan by magic users in another dimension to use global warming to disrupt Earth, also witches, numerous cats and an alien monkey—and the characters, for the most part, unappealing.
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