Celebrate Diana Wynne Jones!

Diana Wynne Jones published more than fifty books, and I have read them all, I think, some of them more than once. They’re clever, and funny, and sweet, and utterly charming; they hold up to re-reading. I’m sure she’s influenced my own writing, in ways I don’t even know.

She’s perhaps best known for Howl’s Moving Castle, which was adapted into a film of the same title by Hayao Miyazaki. Both of which are quite wonderful. Or perhaps you’ve run across her silly, smart, and delightful Dark Lord of Derkholm, which won a Mythopoeic fantasy award, and which manages to both skewer fantasy tropes and tell a wonderful story, all at once. My first introduction to her was, I think, through her Dalemark quartet, which I must go and re-read, because twenty years have made the details fuzzy — but I loved them, and loved them enough to then go and read anything of hers I could find. Which of course led me to the utterly delightful Chrestomanci books, of which my favorite is probably The Magicians of Caprona, though it’s very hard to pick a favorite — and many more.

I’m still so sad. No more Chrestomanci books is hard to accept.

I went to Borders and walked through the children’s section, finding her books shelved in three different areas, which is as it should be, as she wrote many different kinds of things. (Although some cross-referencing would have been helpful.) I was tempted to pick up a copy of the new vol. 3 edition of the Chrestomanci books, even though I already own both books in that volume as separate editions. I did let my hands hold vol. 3 for a moment. So much magic in those pages.

Someone anonymously said on a Facebook thread about her that the extra-hard thing about writers dying is that worlds unborn die with them. I never knew Diana herself, but I loved the worlds she created.

Mary Anne Mohanraj