Late March Books 1 - Diana Wynne Jones

The sad news came a week ago that Diana Wynne Jones had died. She battled cancer for several years, and decided to stop chemotherapy a year or so ago.

To honor her, I decided to re-read a few of her books. One of my favorites is Howl's Moving Castle. The main character, Sophie Hatter, is the oldest of three children. Now the eldest never has any adventures. It's always the youngest, or maybe the next youngest. After their father dies, their stepmother quickly arranges for the youngest to be apprenticed to a witch and the next youngest to a baker. Sophie will work in the haberdashery, even though she already knows most of the work. One day she upsets a potential customer, who puts her under a spell. It turns out that the woman was the feared Witch of the Waste and she turned Sophie into an old woman. Sophie takes off because she doesn't want her family to know what happened. She ends up becoming housekeeper for Howl, a notorious Wizard. Howl lives variously, in a TARDIS-like (bigger on the inside) moving castle that has portals to Wales (where he was born and raised), and various locations in 'this' world. To become young again, Sophie enters into a bargain with Howl's fire demon, Calcifer. She much break the contract between Calcifer and Howl, but neither one are able to tell her about the contract directly.

This just barely scrapes the surface of the story. We have spells galore, missing wizards and princes, mysterious deaths, an animated scarecrow, a lost dog, and a bunch of hats. Most of DWJ's books are for children/young adults and you can see that in an obvious manner with the simple sentence structures. The book also felt very much like it could easily be read aloud, not that that's restricted to children's books.

No one is quite who they seem, and motivations of others are variable depending on who's doing the talking. Some themes (you aren't beat over the head with Morals) include trusting yourself, finding your own path, and looking beyond appearances.

I did notice that this (and House of Many Ways, discussed below) is a very caucasian book, but it makes sense since it has some Welsh characters and then the fantasy lands which feel pretty British. Sophie is red-headed. Howl dies his hair blonde. Other characters are blond or red-haired, or light brunette. I wouldn't have noticed this when I was younger.

I do have to call her books charming, with moderately complicated plots and *very* interesting characters. Both Calcifer and Howl are terrific and I'm glad we get to seem more of them in House of Many Ways.

Charmain is interested in reading only. Her father is a pastry chef while her mother is very concerned with doing and acting the correct thing. As such, Charmain's never been allowed in the kitchen or had to do any household chores at all--there are people for that. Charmain sees a very boring life ahead and sends a letter to the king asking to help catalog the royal library, which she knows is being done by the king and his daughter.

Meanwhile, her aunt arranges for Charmain to look after her great-uncle William's house while he is away with the elves being treated for an unknown disease. The treatment was arranged by the king because the great uncle is the royal wizard and has been trying to find the king's elfgift and treasury funds.

In short order, Charmain ends up taking care of Waif, a stray dog that her William had taken in and sharing the house with Peter, who's supposed to be William's new apprentice. They have to deal with kobold problems (they were maintaining the house and gardens but have stopped), trying to clean up the house, and an encounter with the Lubbock.

She also get a positive response from the king and starts going there to help catalog the kingdom's papers. She's then drawn into the kingdom's problems. The king's daughter, Princess Hilda asked Sophie (from Howl's Moving Castle) to come and help figure out where all the treasury money goes. Sophie thought she had left her young son Morgan with his father Howl, but suddenly Morgan and a darling little boy named Twinkle show up...

Everything's connected as it turns out: Waif, William's mysterious illness, the Lubbock, the disappearing treasury, etc.

Charmain's quite prickly, which is unusual in a protagonist, but realizes it and tries to mend her ways. Jones's characters are wonderful in that they have good and bad traits, are often selfish, but always come through in the end.
 

Late March books 2 - Daniel Keys Moran

Yeeaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!!!! It's been 18 years since we last saw a Continuing Time book from Daniel Keys Moran.

The A.I. War: The Big Boost by Daniel Keys Moran

Many years ago, I bought a book with a beatiful cover and an interesting back cover blurb called The Armageddon Blues by Daniel Keys Moran (cover art by Jim Burns). I liked it a lot. A few months later, I snatched up Emerald Eyes, the start of a series called The Continuing Time. Emerald Eyes is the story of the genegineered telepaths, who all have bright green eyes. Most were created in test tubes, but two of the earliest, Carl Castanaveras and Jany McConnell have two children, Denice and David. There's also Trent Castanaveras. He should have been a telepath, but something happened. He has blue eyes, many other improvements over a normal human sapiens (wider spectra in vision, faster reflexes like the telepaths), and turns out to be a gifted computer programmer. Published a year or so later, The Long Run details several years in Trent's life. The Long Run is basically a caper book. It starts out with a failed boost (burglary) and ends with a spectacularly successful one.

Around five years later, Denice's story was published as The Last Dancer. It extends the story of the Continuing Time and shows Denice's evolution into...well, something. Trent shows up briefly.

Then, silence. Well, not quite silence. A few teaser excerpts, some limited edition hard covers, some other writings. Bantam had dropped the series, then it took years for DKM to get back the rights. Life also intervened in several major ways.

After several false starts, Moran published the next book in the series as an ebook. It's the first part of the The A.I. War, called The Big Boost. If you haven't read any of the earlier books, should you start here? I have to say no. At a minimum, you should read The Long Run, although both Emerald Eyes and The Last Dancer would be useful for some bits and pieces.

During The Long Run, Trent became the first person to kill a Peacekeeper Elite cyborg. Actually it's his second, but no one is sure about the first. Pretty good for someone who's a pacifist and considers killing to be wrong. The Peacekeepers are the army and police of the Unification. The UN has become the world government. The US is occupied, but keeps flaring up in rebellion. The Elite are cyborgs--metal-laced skeletons, replaced eyes, fingertip lasers, hardened skin, etc. Trent killed both in self defense, but with a bounty on his head, Trent has been living off Earth in various places. Colonization of the solar system has begun and there are the Belt States, several colonies on the Moon and Mars, etc.

I've omitted a lot of other information and plot--it's pretty easy to spoil these books, if you care about spoilers. It's a big, sprawling universe and the depth of world-building shows.

As The Big Boost opens, the Unification is building the equivalent of an Imperial Cruiser complete with nukes (probably) and is obviously planning to unify the solar system. Those groups who are still fighting the Unification have been trying to destroy the ship but have failed multiple times. They ask Trent to go. He's been planning for it for years as it turns out. If you liked The Long Run, you're going to like this. There are hints for the further story and great scenes and dialogue, and twists. Even knowing one scene was coming (having read the excerpt on DKM's blog a while ago), I still gasped in surprise when it happened.

DKM's Continuing Time stories have a cyberpunk feel to me, with very good technological extrapolations. He's a professional computer programmer and it shows. Although the future is a bit bleak, it's nowhere near as bad as the Sprawl or F.M. Busby's unified earth.

From The Long Run: 

 

The Crystal Wind 

is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life.

 

—The Player’s Litany

You can get the book (and EE and tLR) from fsand.com/Home.aspx