3.97 avg rating — 35,872 ratings

"I always read this together with The Lives of Christopher Chant. (I think this was the first DWJ book I ever read!)"

4.25 avg rating — 24,007 ratings

"Probably my favorite DWJ book (but Charmed Life should be read first)"

4.11 avg rating — 18,051 ratings

"I have a hard time getting people to take me seriously when I recommend this, because the title sounds like a cliche epic fantasy, but that's precisely the point! It's about a world whose economy is mainly based on running "fantasy tours" for people from another world (presumably our own). The characters are all relatively normal people, but they have to play archetypal characters for the purpose of the tours, and stage epic battles between "good and evil". It's a lot of fun to read; also try The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, an encyclopedia/"travel guide" for people visiting fantasy worlds (alternatively a good resource for authors wanting to avoid fantasy cliches in their writing)."

4.02 avg rating — 4,523 ratings

"This one is a great example of how complicated DWJ's plots can be. You can read my review for a longer explanation, and here's a summary from "tacroy" on tumblr: "Hexwood is ostensibly about a machine that goes crazy, and also a girl who accidentally wanders into the woods one day and finds a boy and a man raising the boy in the woods, but then it becomes interstellar finance and orwellian capitalism and also the arthurian legend?? But it WORKS. Oh, and all of it happens because somebody wanted to play D&D. Seriously.""

4.10 avg rating — 6,808 ratings

"Another book with multiple worlds and people whose job is to oversee other magic users (if I remember correctly, it's not in the same "universe" as the Chrestomanci books). Curiously, this book was marketed to adults in the UK, but not the US (where it was censored slightly, and completely unnecessarily from what I've heard). A lot of it takes place at a fantasy convention, which is fun."