Зачарованный лес

by Diana Wynne Jones, Диана Уинн Джонс, А. Шульгат (Translator)

Книги для подростков
8.16 8 27 123 24 рецензии 10 цитат
Оценки друзей: 810
9 в избранномв избранном 172 прочитали, 530 планируют
ISBN: 978-5-389-07230-5
Год издания: 2016
Издательство: Азбука
Серия: Волшебные бестселлеры Дианы Уинн Джонс
Язык: Русский
Управляющий Борас встревожен: на планете Земля, во вверенном ему секторе случилось чрезвычайное происшествие. Мелкий служащий справочного центра на ферме Гексвуд самовольно запустил старую машину, способную моделировать реальность. Дело, казалось бы, пустяковое, но чутье подсказывает управляющему, что Правители будут очень недовольны.

Двенадцатилетняя Энн живет в поселке рядом с полуразвалившейся фермой Гексвуд. Странное местечко эта ферма. Присматривает за ней какой-то подозрительный тип, а с недавних пор к нему повадились гости: то фургон с непонятным логотипом, то преступного вида незнакомцы. И что-то уж совсем необычное происходит с окрестным лесом, в котором Энн знает каждую тропинку. Прежде реденький, невзрачный лесок, он теперь то и дело меняется, да и время в нем течет как-то по-особенному. Ко всему прочему в лесу неожиданно завелся замок с рыцарями и поселился волшебник по имени Мордион Агенос. Из своего прошлого Мордион почти ничего не помнит: вот разве только каких-то Правителей, которых он, Мордион, непременно должен победить. Кажется, его новая знакомая Энн тоже как-то с этим связана… Девочке и волшебнику предстоит вернуть утраченные воспоминания о чем-то очень важном. И, похоже, ответы на их вопросы где-то совсем рядом — ведь зачарованный лес подобен памяти…

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fiction, Childrens, Time Travel, Magic

544 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Diana 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.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Hexwood” by Diana Wynne Jones. Is marketed as a children’s book. I would argue that point.Ms Jones was Born: August 16, 1934, in London, United Kingdom, she Died: March 26, 2011, in Bristol, U.K. She was an an author who produced a book a year for forty years.

This copy of the book was published October 1993 as a UK Hardback by Methuen.


The story concerned A vast intergalactic government/corporation that relies on selling flint from Earth, which is used in interplanetary transportation. Earth has a galactic monopoly on flint, but we don’t know that.

The Earth represented is a fairly close approximation to the one we live in. The corporation is governed by a group of five Reigners, who are so far from most of the workers that they are more mythic than real.

There is an assassin called The Servant who takes care of any problems for them; he is their public face. The current Reigners are corrupt and excessively involved with consolidating their already extensive power.

On Earth, the corporation is called Rayner Hexwood International; the Earth installation has the two goals of exporting as much flint as possible as cheaply as possible and preventing the local population from discovering the existence of life offplanet. There is also a secretive underground file storage facility, sometimes called a library, sometimes Hexwood Farm. The library houses The Bannus, a reality simulator that helps people make decisions. was designed to create a reality that would run people through several different versions of a situation so that they could choose the best way to act. This Bannus was programmed to choose Reigners.

Reigner One didn’t want to lose his position, so he sealed it up and hid it where he thought no one would ever find it. He did the same to his two most dangerous enemies. A thousand years later The Bannus is pissed, and manipulates a computer hacker into breaking the seals and turning it on. The dupe wanted to do some live role-playing with hobbits on a Grail Quest,

but instead he got angry alien technology with mind control. It sucks in all the people around it and convinces them they’re living in this Camelot-style environment; as the book goes on, it sucks in more and more people, and the situation gets increasingly complex. But none of these people know they’re in a simulation, only the hacker does.

Life before plumbing was rather more difficult than he anticipated. But hackerboy isn’t the protagonist; he’s just a pawn who thinks that he’s more central than he is.
The local village is early-1990s contemporary British. Ann is a regular girl with a familiarly obtuse family. She hears voices in her head and discovers a magical medieval world in the woods at the edge of the village. She accepts her reality as the real one, but can’t convince her friends in the woods around the castle that their reality isn’t real. Given time, Ann figures out that neither is real. She’s not a girl; she’s a grown woman who accompanied the Reigners to Earth to try to defuse the situation. The goal is to find and shut down The Bannus; it’s hard because it keeps convincing people they’re knights or ladies-in-waiting or shopkeepers. And if a sentient computer can alter reality, what would it make itself look like? Would it really become a Grail? The Bannus’s goal is to draw in the Reigners and kill them.

Hexwood Farm is a place where nothing can be taken for granted. It is full of machines that should not be tampered with.

[deborah o'carroll (offline during 2026) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread March 2019

SO delightful rereading this now that I knew what actually happened! XD It's brilliant on a reread! I love it! AND MORDION.

First read April 2017

An ordinary modern-day British girl (kind of), named Ann, stumbles into an epic fantasy world (…sort of), and meets a pigeon-hole-defying, spoiler-drenched man named Mordion, and a boy named Hume (maybe).

There are also robots. And dragons.

There’s also an inter-galactic sci-fi mess going on, some Arthurian legends sprinkled around the edges in totally unexpected ways, and oh, yeah, the entire thing is out of order in a time-bending confusing labyrinth of plot-twists.

Nobody is who they seem (or rather, they may be somebody else… or several somebody elses. I literally kept a list/diagram while I was reading).

FEATURING:

+ Dragons
+ Robots
+ King Arthur and Merlin (sort of)
+ Time which is… fluid, shall we say, and more complicated than Doctor Who
+ A tragic brainwashed assassin to rival Bucky Barnes (he’s got nothing on this guy)
+ A complex plot-within-plot that makes my head hurt and kind of makes Inception’s layers look like a children’s cartoon
+ Several hundred plot twists
+ An unexpected romance
+ One of my new favorite characters of ever (not sure how I feel about this)
+ Weirdest book I’ve ever read
+ Has more genres mashed in it than I’ve ever seen in a single book (Contemporary/Fantasy/Sci-fi/Time/Arthurian/Romance/YA/Adult/DWJ)
+ Darker than most DWJ books (except Deep Secret)
+ One of my top five-or-ten DWJ books (despite the darkness/weirdness… don’t hold it against me; I’m surprised at me too)
+ First new-to-me DWJ book since my How to Read Diana Wynne Jones blog posts; it lined up with pretty much everything, x100000
+ I need to reread it now, please and thank you

Don’t read this as your first DWJ, and if you do read it, know you’re getting into an insanely complex, inter-genre, rather dark story, for which reason I only recommend it to older teens/adults. If I recommend it at all. I loved it to bits but have a feeling that it’s far too weird to recommend to anyone at all. I literally can’t predict who would/wouldn’t like this. You’ll either a) love it a ridiculous amount (*raises hand*), b) hate it, or c) not understand it at all. I have a feeling there’s no middle ground.

Anyone who has read it: TALK TO ME! I need somebody who understands my confused feels about this book.

If you need me, I’ll be in a corner with my mind blown, contemplating re-reading this book so that I can understand it, and generally having a massive book hangover. Because how am I going to find anything to read, after this mindbending confusing thing, that will not feel like bland cardboard? HELP. *collapses* (I’m hoping Stephen Lawhead’s The Fatal Tree might help me with this… *reaches for bookshelf*)

Favorite quote:

“Can’t you treat yourself with a bit more consideration?”

“Why should I?” Mordion said, hugging the duvet round himself.

“Because you’re a person, of course!” Ann snapped at him. “One person ought to treat another person properly even if the person’s himself!”

“What a strange idea!” Mordion said.

[Review originally posted on The Page Dreamer: https://thepagedreamer.wordpress.com/...]

[Raquel Estebaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una novela muy original por la mezcla de escenarios, que incluye desde portales espaciales a bosques mágicos, y su trama, compleja y a veces un poco confusa.

Me han gustado los personajes y su desarrollo, hay desde personajes que pertenecen a los mitos artúricos, a robots, dragones o corporaciones galácticas. En fin, una locura con un desenlace que todos estos han llevado a buen puerto.

Ha sido una lectura agradable, pero podría haberme fascinado, y no.

3,5⭐

[Scurra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can normally handle DWJ's intricate plots, even the ones with time travel. But this one still makes my head hurt (in a good way.) The twist catches you almost totally by surprise, even when you can see something is coming, and multi-threaded story fits together perfectly if you take the time to step back and look at it carefully.

I can't think of many novels that attempt something this complex, let alone ones classed as "young adult". The fact that the story and characters are also highly engaging pushes this into my top list.

[Kaion · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an unabashed fan, I kind of love being gobsmacked by Diana Wynne Jones's labyrinthine plots that hang together solely by her ability to concisely create worlds strangely logical and magical and fiercely true characters while hilariously eschewing your expectations.

I think this is Diana Wynne Jones's most confusing novel, and by that fact alone, gains a great fondness in my evaluation of it. This is the story of Hexwood Farm, where the Bannus, a dangerous probability machine, has been mistakenly turned on to create a fantasy football team. This is the story of Ann Stavely, a 12 year old girl who lives by Hexwood Farm and keeps noticing strange people disappearing into the woods. This is a story of the corrupted intergalactic "Reigners" who have a stranglehold on the universe, threatened only by the power of the Bannus.

Any further attempt to explain the plot is likely to be more confusing than enlightening. All the events are out of order, everything both is and isn't what it seems, and through it all, yet... The humor of the moment shines. Each narrative "layer" of the story is by itself a compelling and holds together surprisingly well through the power of the character arcs- and it still makes sense at the genius/typical slapdash ending (without neglecting the themes of power and possiblity).

Is it for everyone? Maybe not. But for the rest of us, I'll continue savoring the sweet bliss of having to immediately flip to the first page again after the last page, for a go for catching all the plot twists the second time around. (Really, I don't think the plot could come from any other writer, it's so essential DWJ genre-mashing. Dragons! Italy-esque intergalactic trading houses! Yamaha robot! Bureaucracy! Romance! Knights! Grocers! Wardrobe humor! Fantasy soccer!) Rating: 4.5/5 stars (Reread 1/04/2010)

[Mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars - For my enjoyment, I would say 3 stars. For my nostalgia for this kind of writing and world building, I would say 4 stars, so let's split the difference

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still trying to decide how I feel about Hexwood. Parts of it were painfully boring, but the ideas and how it comes together at the end are more interesting. But also I'm unclear who this is for? It starts out reading almost middle grade, but then gets much more mature. Some elements read like YA, some like adult. It's kind of a weird little book that blends sci-fi and fantasy in a twisting story, but its quite creative. That said, I struggled to get through the middle because it was so dull and repetitive. I think I kind of liked it?

[Sesana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange, complicated, and carefully written. There are several moments in this book where I discovered that I was not reading the book that I thought I was reading, and each time I was surprised and, once I adjusted, delighted. But definitely strange.

[Lauren James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diana Wynne Jones writes the books I try to write, but she does it a hundred times better, and she did it in 1993. Sigh. Robots, time loops, unreliable narrators, closed environments, space, memory loss - this has got the whole caboolde. So good.

[W.R. Gingell · Rating 5 out of 5]

on re-read it lives up to its previous place as an all time favourite read and THEN some. also it's been so long since i could read for fun that i'd forgotten a LOT of things and had the joy of figuring out things again as if it was the first time.

enchanted all over again

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's so much going on in Hexwood that I don't even know how to begin reviewing it. It surprised me, several times, without making such leaps that I couldn't see how it got there. It's a complex book, jumping around in time a lot, and with lots of cases of mistaken identity (including people mistaking their own identities). It took me a while to put it all together, but despite that it was also an engaging read, and also not too much of a long one (according to my log, it took me three hours total, five reading sessions -- and two of those were at a concert where I was quite distracted). So it's impressive how much of it there is.

To my eyes, the main source is the Arthurian mythos: the court, the Grail quest, the Fisher King, Morgan Le Fay by any other name, Arthur, Merlin... There's other stuff too, including Beowulf, but it's fascinating what Diana Wynne Jones did with the material that's so familiar to me.

The basic story is that an old machine intended to select the right rulers of the universe, the Reigners, is turned on again. The current Reigner One cheated, and since then has wrongfully held power. The machine lures people into its field so it can finally fulfil its intended purpose, and continues to run scenarios until it has things the way it wants it.

I found the characters interesting, and guessing who they really were was also fun. I was wrong several times, and right once or twice, and totally missed one or two more. I got to love them quite a bit, especially Mordion, and I actually think they were probably better fleshed out and their connections better explored than, say, Howl and Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle. While I love that book, this satisfied more.

[Rosamund Hodge]

Still my favorite DWJ novel! <3

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like… this kind of like Winnie the Pooh/ The Wizard of Oz / Hitchhiker’s Guide maybe a mutant baby who was also somehow Merlin?

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure I wrote somewhere on this site that the interesting thing about fantasy was the way the author set up a new system of rules to the real world and seeing how they chose to play out their scenarios in this new system. Well, that can be interesting, but a large part of what makes Diana Wynne Jones interesting is the way she sets up a system of rules that is so vague that she can pretty much do anything she wants. It's a fact that I've read my traditional favourite of hers, Fire and Hemlock, at least ten times and never once have I understood the ending. Her characters' ability to do magic seems to depend more on their individual psychology than on any coherent idea of how magic actually works in her worlds.

What you get when you read Diana Wynne Jones is a whole lot of the same. And yet it's so good that I keep coming back to it. I love her.

Also read 14.5.15-16.5.15

[Azumi · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 "It was ok" y un poquito más

A ver, vaya por delante que no quiero restarle méritos porque realmente la historia es original y muy bien pensada. Mezcla viajes en el tiempo, portales espaciales, robots y caballeros, damiselas y dragones, pero a mí me ha resultado intrincada y complicada con lo que me ha resultado pesada en ocasiones, se me ha hecho un pelín larga y me he dispersado mucho durante su lectura.

No he acabado de conectar con la historia ni con los personajes (que son muy monos todos) pero no… y me sabe muy mal porque tenía muchas ganas de leer el libro.

[Žarko]

Toliko je napakovano u ovu knjižicu 🤯

[Liene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for everyone, that much is certain.
A wild mix of fantasy and whimsical scifi, it reads a bit like Doctor Who, or Umbrella Academy, but more chaotic and without any character or group of characters that you can latch onto throughout the chaos.
I think this book is quite brilliant, and I think a reread - knowing what is going on this time around - would be very rewarding. But, this is not a flavor for everyone. If you like zany British television and humor, I'd say give it a go, but be prepared to be bewildered.

[Andrea]

This book is a master class in time travelly confusion - and also a very cool story. There are a couple of negative points (Jones' use of fat as a bad person trait, and a wince-worthy conversation with a Japanese person) but otherwise thoroughly enjoyable.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s another twisty plot from the girl Jones, somewhat similar to wandering around a curiously managed patch of woodland. One thing I have learned about rereading Diana Wynne Jones novels is that, whatever my first impressions were, future revisits will inevitably reveal that I wasn’t paying proper attention the first time around. Or even the second time.

In this fantasy, for example, much is made of the sense of déjà-vu experienced by principal characters, emphasising that this or that memory will always prove more or less elusive the more one tries to examine it. And so it proved with my reread — I kept having to turn back pages to check if and when something familiar seemed to turn up, and not always being successful.

In fact, then, Hexwood appears to be a kind of metaphor or indeed metafiction for the experiences a reader has when visiting the author’s novels for the first or, indeed, the nth time, highly apt then for a fiction which doggedly explores the unreliability of time perception.

To summarise the premise of Hexwood in a few words isn’t easy, but I shall try, using a phrase from the blurb to my edition: “Hexwood is like human memory; it doesn’t reveal its secrets in chronological order.” In this it shares some of the attributes of the woodland in Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood (1984) in which mythic images or mythagos emerge out of wood’s matrix and become substantial, and the mythic past interacts with the quotidian present in unpredictable ways.

At first though we seem to be dropped straight into a science fiction novel rather than a piece of mythic fiction: we meet a Sector Controller of the planet Albion who’s received a message from somebody at Rayner Hexwood Maintenance on Earth warning of a potential problem. He feels he must involve Homeworld, where the power for several inhabited worlds rests with five rulers called Reigners, whose authority is dispensed by a Servant. Our attention then shifts to a boy in a wood, who when confronted by a dragon-like creature has to find a way to counter it. No sooner are we digesting this then our attention is switched to the mundane setting of Hexwood Farm Estate and Ann Stavely, on the cusp of becoming a teenager but stuck at home because of a debilitating virus. Oh, and she hears voices.

These multiple scenarios are all linked to Hexwood, a place which suggests magic in its very name. But as well as hopping around in time the novel introduces us to many named individuals and entities, and pretty soon we realise that many of these have multiple identities. I had to resort to a notebook to keep track of these, very much as one might do with a crime mystery, and became easily distracted with trying to work out the significance of names and functions. For example, it doesn’t take a genius to realise many Arthurian motifs are involved, even Norse mythic types, or that descriptions of ‘pearly’ portals (made of Earth flint) are possible references to Christian mythology. I also suspect that the author has taken ideas from the traditional counting song Green Grow the Rushes, O! but without being literal about the numbers involved.

There are also dark elements here which give a real edge to the storytelling. There’s child abuse, both physical and emotional, and even hints of incest, along with terrible abuse of power. Why such sombre details in what was marketed as a children’s book? I suspect that, not long after Margaret Thatcher’s premiership came to an end but while her party were in power, Jones — like a lot of sensitive individuals who believed in social justice — was aware of how virtual absolute power could corrupt, and how social inequalities were being exacerbated. Also, as in the case with much of her fiction, elements of autobiography doubtless crept in when we remember her own dysfunctional upbringing.

Yet this novel as a whole has the quality of a dream verging on nightmare in which nonsensical connections somehow appear to have a rationale. Early on we are told that Ann’s brother Martin enjoys role-playing games, and this fact gives a clue to the logic pervading the narrative: players have the chance of exploring scenarios, learning from them so as to proceed past dangers to the next level of expertise. We have to be careful though that as readers we’re not being misdirected: at various stages we’re told that a machine called the Bannus merely enacts a series of scenes (much as RPGs), then that it’s a machine for making dreams come true or translating dreams to reality; but, as several clues make very clear, it has functions beyond this which aren’t revealed — if they’re revealed at all — till near the end.

But ultimately, despite all the colourful characters (who really whittle down to some half dozen or so individuals), this novel is about the magic the imagination can create. We seem to have an ancestral fascination with woods, sometimes verging on fear; whether the Teutonic forests of the Grimm fairytales, the tropical jungles where unknown fauna and flora abound, or the tamed coppiced woodland of pastoral countrysides, we dare to explore vicariously, playing hide and seek, peopling them with outlaws, damsels, warriors and mythical creatures, and searching for a structure — whether cottage or castle — to rest awhile.

Just such a place is Hexwood -- just forty miles from London, we're specifically told. As, incidentally, was Thaxted, where the author spent a significant part of her unorthodox childhood. No wonder Hexwood has a distinct if uncomfortable intensity about it, as though Jones was revisiting part of her life through the writing of it.

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a difficult one to review because it is such a highwire act which on the whole succeeds. Superficially it is more science fictional than most of DWJ's work but some of the elements - such as dragons and the role playing virtual reality which dominates the book - steer its feel towards fantasy. The story opens when an alert comes into an area controller that an emergency has occurred on a backwater planet called Earth. It seems that a machine stored there, called the Bannus, has been switched on by an interfering library clerk and has begun creating virtual reality scenarios which have sucked in various personnel. It soon becomes clear that aliens have been a presence on Earth for centuries - which was populated by criminal or political prisoners - and that they have secretly been exporting flint, as only Earth flint is of the right quality for use in the instantaneous transport links on which the galactic corporation depends. That corporation is dominated by five individuals called Reigners who have artificially extended their lives and who have engineered things so that they exercise tyranny over the rest of the galactic community. A few brave souls in the rival families hope to one day overthrow them but are having to play a long game.

Meanwhile, a 12 year old Earth girl called Anne, daughter of greengrocers, lives near the gates of a derelict farm called Hexwood - except the farm is actually the site where the Bannus is stored. She soon becomes drawn into the virtual reality and becomes a key player.

That only gives a basic outline because the story has a multiplicity of characters who interact in different time frames which are presented out of order so that a child is seen older then younger - because of the machine's creating of a field of play. There is also a huge twist partway through when we start to discover that no one is who they appear to be. Other aspects include a pseudo Arthurian set-up complete with Fisher King and Morgan le Fay imposter, dragons, robots, the raising of children ruthlessly to become loyal assassins, power struggles in the past and present between the ruling classes, a form of telepathy where certain people hear voices in their heads to whom they can only give role names such as the Prisoner, the Boy, the King etc, magic enabled by the Bannus and real magic from a wider entity the archetypal Wood which once covered all England . A couple of minor things that might cause offence are a stereotypical cameo appearance by a Japanese person and a somewhat negative attitude to overweight people.

The ending is not quite as rushed as some of DWJ's more complicated tales, such as Fire and Hemlock but still involves a lot of sorting out of who various characters really are, and certain people getting their just deserts. It has a more satisfying ending than some of the others I've read. Possibly this is one that would benefit from a re-read when you know what is really going on. A solid 3 star read.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

EDIT (RE-READ): Just re-read this and think it's one of the most perfect books in the world. I'm depressed because I feel like I've read most of Diana's catalogue - definitely all her great standalones. This was actually even more fun the second time around because I forgot most of the mechanics of the plot so was incredibly confused all over again, my favourite thing about Hexwood's structure is how it throws up recognisable "rules" to guide the audience through the weirdness of the first half and then it turns out all these rules were mostly misdirections too.

A reading experience where you're constantly being knocked off balance and feel like you're tripping but also is a mixture of every trope/genre DWJ has been obsessed with throughout her career. It's her masterpiece! The second half is SO thrilling, like it's impossible to put down and I marvel at the way everything comes together every time! I'm also realising Mordion is the real main character of this book the second time around.....his storyline is just incredibly moving and I think the non-chronological structure is perfect when you read it as a trauma narrative that mirrors memory/how the brain fragments events to protect us (Yam literally saying the woods are "human memory"). Also one of her most romantic books in my opinion :') I LOVE THIS BOOK I LOVE AND MISS DIANA WYNNE JONES


--

ah, my obsession with deadly brainwashed assassins with kind hearts (and who are sort of sexy) rages on!!

this book is maddeningly intricate and tough to get into, even by diana wynne jones standards. I gave up on it like 3 times previously but luckily softened after re-watching a lot of doctor who (my tolerance for mind-screw reality warping plots is now super high). the twists towards the end are just so delightful and actually made me dizzy - everything comes together cleverly and, by the end, i was fond of all the characters, which happens with every diana book i read. only she can manage to make something so epic in scale feel so cosy.

[Tijana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ne mogu uopšte da ulazim u to zašto je knjiga toliko dobra bez stravičnih spojlera :(

Mogu da kažem kako je ovo, eto, prava omladinska književnost, ili YA, a ima i složen zaplet i bogatu karakterizaciju i poigravanje pripovedanjem i intertekstualnošću i mitskim i žanrovskim matricama i vrlo ozbiljne-do-mračne teme. A ovamo je još malo pa akciono štivo.
Sa treće strane, Hexwood je vrlo zahtevan roman u pogledu čitalačke koncentracije, naročito u prvoj polovini, nesrećni čitalac se samo batrga među nejasnim naznakama prividnog, pravog i najpravijeg zapleta, lako mi je da zamislim kako neko iole nestrpljiv odustaje :|

Topla preporuka?... uz opomenu da je ova knjiga, kao i npr. Fire and Hemlock, za dva-tri uzrasna nivoa iznad, recimo, Haulovog pokretnog zamka i drugih romana Dajane Vin Džouns koji su kod nas prevođeni. Dakle, ne 10-12+ nego oko 14-15+.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diana Wynne Jones truly operates on a different plane… no-one else combines the innocent charm of children’s books with such inexplicable and complicated logic systems (except he who shall not be named). If anyone asked me during the book what was going on at any given time, I don’t know if I would have been able to answer. Yet, (perhaps as Claire said?), there is an intuitiveness to Jones’ stories that lends itself better to children’s minds, and while I will never be able to properly explain in English words what a Bannus is or what the Wood is, the magic of Jones means that the strange revelations do make sense, the story does make sense, in some other unformed part of the mind where words and reality’s logic has not taken root. I was reading this before sleep and afterwards, my mind slipped into that thought-dream state where I was not fully asleep but rather persuaded by the internal logic of unreal thoughts, and my thoughts were all confused thoughts of people entering the Bannus and reconfiguring. Finished in the morning.

[Bibliothecat · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Wonderful things did exist. Even if they're only in my own mind.”

Ann hears voices in her head. She was never sure whether they are her imaginings or whether these voices do indeed exist, but they always give her sound advice. Down the road lies the old Hexwood Farm where admission is prohibited - everyone knows that! Yet Ann notices an array of strange visitors entering the farm and never return. Curiosity draws her to investigate, but once in the wood, she finds her voices are no longer there and time and place in Hexwood seem to change at random intervals.

Diana Wynne Jones has written quite an amount of books, and I can't comprehend why Hexwood does not rank among the most read. It is such a wonderfully complex and interwoven story that stretches across a wide board of genres. I love stories where the narrative seems to jump back and forth between different timelines. Here we have Ann from a perfectly ordinary contemporary setting, a troop of knights and medieval characters who may or may not be related to the Arthurian saga, as well as a futuristic sci-fi cast that has a dystopian undertone to it. Yet even when grouping events into those three parts, nothing in Hexwood is quite what it seems.

Ann is not our only narrative, in fact, her narrative only starts after a couple of chapters have gone by. Among others, we have Mordion the magician of sorts, Yam the robot, and Hume who isn't quite sure whether he is a true human but desperately wants to become a knight. There is also the Reigner organisation which consists of five individuals who control the entire universe. Earth is quite unaware of all this, just as much as Ann is unaware that the farm down the road is a Reigner institute of sorts. A so-called Banus is kept there - a machine that can play out dreams and replay scenes to find the best outcome. With a machine like that, you're bound to get quite the story.

Thanks to the many back and forths and the numerous narrators, I found myself often confused about characters' true identities and how everything would eventually fit together. And I mean that it's confusing in the best way possible. You need to pay attention to every small detail and many events won't make sense until the very last chapter. It also gives the book a great re-readability quality.

And if a dream-machine with Arthurian elements, an enchanted wood, and outer space adventures aren't enough for you, Hexwood is a story that is incredibly funny, adventurous with action-packed scenes, genuinely sad and, unlike many others of Diana Wynne Jones' books, has a great and well rounded ending that does not leave you hanging with many unanswered questions. The characters are genuine and relatable - they are all quite unique and have different motivations and wishes. Hexwood has a new surprise around every other corner and even a sprinkle of romance - in fact, the romance caught me quite off guard and was yet another great twist on top of everything else.

This is such an incredibly well-crafted work that I wish more Diana Wynne Jones fans would read and appreciate. But not just them, anyone who loves complex and interwoven stories can enjoy this work, even more so as it includes so many different genres.

[Rindis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hexwood starts off conventionally enough. Earth is an unwitting backwater in the galaxy when an ancient device activates, and the ruling junta's efforts to stop the problem fail.

Life on Earth continues normally, except for our main character. She observes strange goings on right outside Hexwood Farm (the secret storage facility where this is going on), and gets drawn into the situation, and a rebellion against the cruel leadership of the House of Balance.

And already we've gone off the track, because despite appearances, that isn't entirely true. The rest of the novel slowly goes down a rabbit-hole of increasing awareness of just how much everyone's perceptions are being played with. It would be interesting to try and map out some of what's actually going on, but a lot of it is deliberately obscure, and probably impossible to pinpoint exactly.

Despite the confusing mess that the novel tries to descend into, it's very well written and engaging. I'm kind of disappointed in some revelations near the middle, and while there's a definite case of characters popping out of the woodwork at the end, much of that is actually mentioned earlier. Worth a read, but be prepared for the plot not to be what it seems!

[J.M. Stengl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, that was unique. I own this book in physical form, which was a good thing, since I spent a lot of time paging back and forth to remind myself of who was who and what was what and when was . . . you get the idea. Tangled, complex, frustrating, intriguing, and ultimately quite satisfying.

If you love Diana Wynne Jones, prepare yourself for a wild ride and go for it. If you're reading an ebook, take copious notes.

Yes, it has a happy romance. Lots of violent death, but nothing graphic. The good guys win, and the bad guys . . . not so much.

I would call this a space-and-time-jumping Arthurian legend (if you squint and tilt your head a little), with a lovable assassin and a likable heroine. It is all over the place, yet I enjoyed it.

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

Locura de libro que mezcla robots, mitos artúricos, viajes en el tiempo y millones de tramas y subtramas que hasta el último momento no terminan de aclararse.
Como siempre, un gustazo leer a esta autora, por su originalidad y la capacidad que tiene para desarrollar tramas complejas con desenlaces perfectos… aún así, es una novela que no ha llegado a engancharme del todo en ningún momento.

[Isabel Bitterblau · Rating 4 out of 5]

También quiero una peli Ghibli de ésto, gracias.

[Emma (howlsmovinglibrary) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Howl Movingcastle is the original babygirl, but Mordion Agenos is the original poor meow meow.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hexwood: really frelling smart. One of those books I keep seeing more in the longer I think about it. Sort of startling that it’s Young Adult Fiction; way smarter than the vast number of books we read in my reading group. I suspect if I was a little more educated, I’d see a whole lot more in it.

We start with a young woman who has the flu and imaginary friends. Confined to her bed, she sees all these mysterious trucks driving up to an old farm, all these odd people going in, and no one ever leaving. When she’s well enough, she goes to investigate, and ends up in some tulgy, mythic wood with an old man, a child, a robot, and a dragon. And without her imaginary friends. She returns often, and every time, things are . . . different. Also non chronological.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, some official in the old and corrupt empire that really runs things realizes that some unauthorized operative on Earth has turned on a piece of equipment, apparently to assist in role playing games, and no one can turn it off.

Plays with the Fisher King, Tiamut and Marduk, Stargate, Enders’ Game, the “gods were aliens” notion, the grail, D&D, children raised to be assassins, hints of the Snow Queen, old stories of kings who refused to die at the right time and robots that do not have Asimov’s Laws deeply inscribed in their souls. I suspect I’ll be reading it again.