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Chrestomanci (Recommended Reading Order) #1-4
The Chrestomanci Quartet
Chrestomanci—speak his name and bring the debonair enchanter to your door, for he hears his name wherever it is spoken. Renowned and respected throughout the world—his, and other "Anywheres"—the mysterious Chrestomanci watches over all the magic in the world and prevents its misuse. In these four adventure-filled tales, Chrestomanci cuts a dashing figure as he deals with foolish children, ambitious adults, feuding clans and aberrant alternate worlds.
Contains: Charmed Life, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona, and The Lives of Christopher Chant
Contains: Charmed Life, Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona, and The Lives of Christopher Chant
664 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
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538 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 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 29, 2007
This is an omnibus of the first four books featuring Chrestomanci in varying degrees.
Charmed Life: This was a favorite when I was a kid and it was still fun. A lonely boy nicknamed Cat, an awful sister, lots of magic, a castle, alternate worlds and a cat that used to be a fiddle... What's not to love?
Witch Week: This was darker than I expected. Magic at boarding school sounds like fun unless it's full of orphans because it's a magical world where witches are still burned.
The Magicians of Caprona: This one's the opposite - full of magic and love and cats and silliness in an Italian city.
The Lives of Christopher Chant: The Lives of Christopher Chant: This is the childhood that Chrestomanci refers to in Charmed Life. One of the most fun backstories that I've ever read. More magic, awful relatives, boarding schools, cats, and alternate worlds.
Is it me or is Good Reads html display a bit wonky?
Charmed Life: This was a favorite when I was a kid and it was still fun. A lonely boy nicknamed Cat, an awful sister, lots of magic, a castle, alternate worlds and a cat that used to be a fiddle... What's not to love?
Witch Week: This was darker than I expected. Magic at boarding school sounds like fun unless it's full of orphans because it's a magical world where witches are still burned.
The Magicians of Caprona: This one's the opposite - full of magic and love and cats and silliness in an Italian city.
The Lives of Christopher Chant: The Lives of Christopher Chant: This is the childhood that Chrestomanci refers to in Charmed Life. One of the most fun backstories that I've ever read. More magic, awful relatives, boarding schools, cats, and alternate worlds.
Is it me or is Good Reads html display a bit wonky?
September 22, 2007
the original harry potter, and so much better
December 13, 2018
I'm just realizing that somehow, after only having read like 4 of her books, I freaking adore Diana Wynne Jones' writing. She's so casually inventive??? so weird??? somehow familiar yet out of this world, dangerous but comforting? Honestly, if you want to be a more creative fantasy writer, read her books because she does it like she's not even trying.
Now this edition is really a bindup of four books, so I'm going to give each of them their own little review in one big long text post.
Charmed Life-- 2.5 stars.
I really liked the premise, but Cat's role in the plot was to sit and watch his sister do terrible things (which were really inventive and fun to watch, if horrifying), and I didn't buy his reasons for not interfering. All the side characters either only had three lines or were annoying as HECK, except for Chrestomanci who is actually the best character. The pacing is a bit off; the climax just jumps at you with no buildup, and I felt like the placement of exposition was weird. Thankfully it's short, so you do have to read it to understand the other books better, but you won't be suffering for long.
There's also some "this book was written in the '70s but STILL" content warnings I have to drop: there's a really disturbing corporal punishment scene in which one character gets their ears punched and the other character gets spanked with a boot quite harshly.
(Also, DWJ has a thing for using the word 'queer' as in 'strange', so maybe if you're a parent reading to a kid you might want to talk about that.) (And there is a certain word whose original usage means "bundle of sticks" in Britain, but modern Americans know it better as an unspeakably nasty slur aimed at gay men. It's used to mean "bundle of sticks" here, but I think it's still worth a warning if you're a parent who knows your kid is going to read this, or a bored teen who's doing this for funsies, like me.)
Lastly, not sure if this really needs to be said, but Gwendolen and Cat's entire relationship is emotional neglect and one-sided cruelty aimed at Cat, and it goes right up till the very end, so heads-up about that.
Witch Week--3 stars.
The plot is really fun, but it's brought down by barely-tolerable main characters and an ending that I didn't really understand. If you can get past Nan and Charles, you'll probably really enjoy the twists and turns of the plot. I don't want to spoil it, so you'll just have to read it.
Content warnings for Witch Week: bullying. Lots and lots of bullying. Insults, physical violence, blackmail... you get the idea.
Magicians of Caprona-- 4 stars.
I really liked the Italian setting, the huge families, the singing magic, and, of course, the plot. Although, I was promised "two feuding families have to work together to stop the evil" and I got "two feuding families try to figure out the words to a song in their very separate house, barely interacting, featuring Paolo and Tonino shenanigans".
I felt like it needed a little more in the middle, because that was where it lagged a lot. Maybe some more solid characterization would've fixed that. I cannot name a single trait about Paolo, and the only thing Tonino has is "can't do magic but can talk to Benvenuto".
But once we got into the last third of the book, we got some amazingly unique twists, and I don't wanna spoil it, but the attitude towards magic changes in a heart-touching way that kinda even makes you think. I guess I can't get into what I liked without spoiling people, but there was a twist that even I didn't see coming. Just go read these books, people!
CW: light mentions of blood, cigar smoke, and one very disturbing scene where a puppet baby is dashed to pieces and a lady is nearly strangled.
The Lives of Christopher Chant--4.5 stars.
Easily the best out of all of these, no contest. Christopher is, again, THE BEST CHARACTER. I feel like most main characters in this series have to be vehicles for the plot and reasons for the Chrestomanci to show up, but once he actually gets his own book to shine??? So many complaints of mine no longer apply.
His arc is so frustrating yet so sympathetic, and I'm so happy to see a Chrestomanci book where the characterization is actually as good as the plot it's in. He's very much a kid, but you see seeds of what he becomes later, and I adore it for that. To state the non-spoilery virtues of this book would be to repeat myself-- original premise, great twists, yadda yadda yadda.
TBH, my only complaints are:
-there's some gross stuff around the only black character in the book: a consistent, recurring coffee metaphor referring to how he gets pale when he's scared (and I don't think a dark-skinned person can turn beige at the drop of a hat???), only black character in the book is a criminal, etc. (Food descriptors for people are generally a no-no because they come across very fetishy and weird, and there are much better words, anyway.)
Obviously I'm not the best person to judge if it's good rep; you should look at other Black reviewers who have read the book and see what they think. I'm just pointing out what I saw.
-Also, some benevolent sexism crops up (i. e. "i can't hit a girl even to defend myself" is now "i shouldn't use my magic against a lady") that is not quite condoned but not quite challenged, either. Christopher IS a boy living in ambiguously 1900s alternate England, so it makes sense, but I just wish the narrative had brought up the flaw in Christopher's thinking. Aren't there witches in his world? Obviously, in a perfect world no one would have to hit anyone, but if someone had to punch me in order to get out of an alternate dimension, then bring it on!
TL; DR: this series is a very mixed bag but the good outweighs the bad, in my opinion. Be aware of the more problematic elements, and I wouldn't recommend it as a series to try if you haven't read DWJ before-- for that, try Howl's Moving Castle. The Chrestomanci series is meant for a younger audience than Howl, but I still enjoyed them. If you like DWJ, you'll probably like this.
What order do I recommend reading them in? Well, I personally did fine with publication order, but I think chronological would work just as well, except that Charmed Life will have less of a point because you know more of the surprises from reading Lives of Christopher Chant first.
Thanks for reading; I hope this was helpful! I'm going to try and include content warnings in more of my reviews, particularly for older books, because they are helpful for people who a) aren't in a good mental place to read that content, or b) prefer to have a heads-up about it ahead of time, and we need to stop shaming people for using them.
Now this edition is really a bindup of four books, so I'm going to give each of them their own little review in one big long text post.
Charmed Life-- 2.5 stars.
I really liked the premise, but Cat's role in the plot was to sit and watch his sister do terrible things (which were really inventive and fun to watch, if horrifying), and I didn't buy his reasons for not interfering. All the side characters either only had three lines or were annoying as HECK, except for Chrestomanci who is actually the best character. The pacing is a bit off; the climax just jumps at you with no buildup, and I felt like the placement of exposition was weird. Thankfully it's short, so you do have to read it to understand the other books better, but you won't be suffering for long.
There's also some "this book was written in the '70s but STILL" content warnings I have to drop: there's a really disturbing corporal punishment scene in which one character gets their ears punched and the other character gets spanked with a boot quite harshly.
(Also, DWJ has a thing for using the word 'queer' as in 'strange', so maybe if you're a parent reading to a kid you might want to talk about that.) (And there is a certain word whose original usage means "bundle of sticks" in Britain, but modern Americans know it better as an unspeakably nasty slur aimed at gay men. It's used to mean "bundle of sticks" here, but I think it's still worth a warning if you're a parent who knows your kid is going to read this, or a bored teen who's doing this for funsies, like me.)
Lastly, not sure if this really needs to be said, but Gwendolen and Cat's entire relationship is emotional neglect and one-sided cruelty aimed at Cat, and it goes right up till the very end, so heads-up about that.
Witch Week--3 stars.
The plot is really fun, but it's brought down by barely-tolerable main characters and an ending that I didn't really understand. If you can get past Nan and Charles, you'll probably really enjoy the twists and turns of the plot. I don't want to spoil it, so you'll just have to read it.
Content warnings for Witch Week: bullying. Lots and lots of bullying. Insults, physical violence, blackmail... you get the idea.
Magicians of Caprona-- 4 stars.
I really liked the Italian setting, the huge families, the singing magic, and, of course, the plot. Although, I was promised "two feuding families have to work together to stop the evil" and I got "two feuding families try to figure out the words to a song in their very separate house, barely interacting, featuring Paolo and Tonino shenanigans".
I felt like it needed a little more in the middle, because that was where it lagged a lot. Maybe some more solid characterization would've fixed that. I cannot name a single trait about Paolo, and the only thing Tonino has is "can't do magic but can talk to Benvenuto".
But once we got into the last third of the book, we got some amazingly unique twists, and I don't wanna spoil it, but the attitude towards magic changes in a heart-touching way that kinda even makes you think. I guess I can't get into what I liked without spoiling people, but there was a twist that even I didn't see coming. Just go read these books, people!
CW: light mentions of blood, cigar smoke, and one very disturbing scene where a puppet baby is dashed to pieces and a lady is nearly strangled.
The Lives of Christopher Chant--4.5 stars.
Easily the best out of all of these, no contest. Christopher is, again, THE BEST CHARACTER. I feel like most main characters in this series have to be vehicles for the plot and reasons for the Chrestomanci to show up, but once he actually gets his own book to shine??? So many complaints of mine no longer apply.
His arc is so frustrating yet so sympathetic, and I'm so happy to see a Chrestomanci book where the characterization is actually as good as the plot it's in. He's very much a kid, but you see seeds of what he becomes later, and I adore it for that. To state the non-spoilery virtues of this book would be to repeat myself-- original premise, great twists, yadda yadda yadda.
TBH, my only complaints are:
-there's some gross stuff around the only black character in the book: a consistent, recurring coffee metaphor referring to how he gets pale when he's scared (and I don't think a dark-skinned person can turn beige at the drop of a hat???), only black character in the book is a criminal, etc. (Food descriptors for people are generally a no-no because they come across very fetishy and weird, and there are much better words, anyway.)
Obviously I'm not the best person to judge if it's good rep; you should look at other Black reviewers who have read the book and see what they think. I'm just pointing out what I saw.
-Also, some benevolent sexism crops up (i. e. "i can't hit a girl even to defend myself" is now "i shouldn't use my magic against a lady") that is not quite condoned but not quite challenged, either. Christopher IS a boy living in ambiguously 1900s alternate England, so it makes sense, but I just wish the narrative had brought up the flaw in Christopher's thinking. Aren't there witches in his world? Obviously, in a perfect world no one would have to hit anyone, but if someone had to punch me in order to get out of an alternate dimension, then bring it on!
TL; DR: this series is a very mixed bag but the good outweighs the bad, in my opinion. Be aware of the more problematic elements, and I wouldn't recommend it as a series to try if you haven't read DWJ before-- for that, try Howl's Moving Castle. The Chrestomanci series is meant for a younger audience than Howl, but I still enjoyed them. If you like DWJ, you'll probably like this.
What order do I recommend reading them in? Well, I personally did fine with publication order, but I think chronological would work just as well, except that Charmed Life will have less of a point because you know more of the surprises from reading Lives of Christopher Chant first.
Thanks for reading; I hope this was helpful! I'm going to try and include content warnings in more of my reviews, particularly for older books, because they are helpful for people who a) aren't in a good mental place to read that content, or b) prefer to have a heads-up about it ahead of time, and we need to stop shaming people for using them.
September 29, 2019
I want to like Diana Wynne Jones soooo badly. Maybe I'm just not the right age? Everything she writes is dripping with charm and is honestly a delight to read. But then, it seems, something inevitably falls short... the plot, the pacing, consistency... I had the same issue with Howl's Moving Castle. But I can see her influence in the works of modern British fantasy writers such as Neil Gaiman, and for that she must be praised and esteemed. It might simply be that her work is a little dated. She helped develop and evolve the genre but got left behind in her place in history.
May 24, 2022
It hurts me to rate books by Diana Wynne Jones so poorly.
All the magic and beauty and inventiveness I love is here! but it's spoiled for me by kids being absolutely miserable and ignored or treated harshly by adults who are supposed to be caring for them. It's not fun to read as an adult, and I wouldn't have found it fun to read as a kid either.
All the magic and beauty and inventiveness I love is here! but it's spoiled for me by kids being absolutely miserable and ignored or treated harshly by adults who are supposed to be caring for them. It's not fun to read as an adult, and I wouldn't have found it fun to read as a kid either.
July 5, 2017
Some of the books in the quartet are better than other, but if you're jonesing for Harry Potter, this series is an interesting alternative.
July 9, 2017
I love Diana W-J and her Chrestomanci series. At times she goes into some rather fussy detail, but who cares, she's magic.
January 16, 2018
As my best friend's fifth-grade favorite, I knew this quartet was going to be enjoyable, but I had no idea. Each story was gripping and delightful. Hard to pick which I liked best!
April 24, 2019
The world within worlds that Jones creates in this series is so much fun! Each Chrestomanci’s journey is so different and exciting.
March 10, 2021
Magical series! I absolutely loved it when I read it. If you are a fan of Harry Potter, this is quite similar but also very different. If memory serves me right, it's a bit darker too.
December 21, 2021
The Chrestomanci series is a must read for all children and adults! If you love Harry Potter or anything along those lines, Diana Wynne Jones is an essential part of the Cannon of of Fantasy Writing.
January 6, 2023
I thought it was entertaining and the world building was fun. Good fantasy story.
November 24, 2015
Enjoyed this book all four sections. Cat was enchanting in the first. The children of witch week were fun and unpredictable. Tonino the book worm was much like me as a child. And wile the lives of Christopher chant was my least favorite it was still strong.
April 27, 2008
Nice, easy read (okay, its aimed for young adults, so it would be) but thoroughly enjoyable. If you like Harry Potter, you should like these.
July 29, 2008
Excellent fantasy series
July 8, 2009
I am convinced along with my family that J.K. Rowling read these. I am sure Chrestomanci influenced her Harry Potter stories.
December 21, 2021
The Chrestomanci series is a must read for all children and adults! If you love Harry Potter or anything along those lines, Diana Wynne Jones is an essential part of the Cannon of of Fantasy Writing.
July 27, 2023
**** Charmed Life (1977)
**** Witch Week (1982)
**** The Magicians of Caprona (1980)
**** The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)
**** Witch Week (1982)
**** The Magicians of Caprona (1980)
**** The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)
April 6, 2016
A fun, easy read for me and my 8th grade students :)
December 21, 2017
while overall not a bad collection a little slow and not as vibrant as Howl's Moving Castle
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews