A Year of Diana Wynne Jones: The late 1990s!

In my quest to read all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books in one year, this month I read Deep Secret, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and Puss in Boots: three titles that could all start with the word “The” and in the U.S., do not. Deep thoughts!

Deep Secret and Dark Lord of Derkholm are two of my absolute favorite books, and Puss in Boots was new to me, so it was an exciting month all around.

Deep Secret (1997)
A lot of Deep Secret takes place at a fan convention, and there are discussions of the hotel breakfasts, the publisher parties, the snits during panels, and the conflicts in scheduling that will resonate deeply for anyone who has been to a similar event. I reread it every year when I attend a specific academic conference, and every year as I hear people exclaiming about how confusing the hotel is, I feel like the book is taking place where I am. It’s a cozy feeling.

So when I first thought of doing this project, influenced extremely heavily by an awesome friend who’d led a group read of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books called “A Year on Discworld,” I decided to shape the year around the week I’d be rereading this book anyway. It worked great.

In Deep Secret, we meet Maree, who is studying to be a vet, and who has been crossed in love. She is extremely broke, and has to live with a vague uncle and his terrible wife. She gets along with her teen cousin, Nick, but he’s hardly a reliable ally.

We also meet Rupert, a Magid who crosses the boundaries between worlds, following orders from the well-meaning Upper Room. Their paths cross when Rupert is on a search to find the next Magid he will train. Frustrated with the search (and Maree) he tweaks the fatelines of all his prospective Magid trainees, and they all converge upon PhantasmaCon, where the shit hits the fan. Highly recommended.

Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998)
I didn’t know the term “kitchen sink fantasy” when I first read Dark Lord of Derkholm, but rereading it now, I think it was probably the first kitchen sink fantasy I ever read. It’s focused on the Lord of the Rings suite of fantasy elements with wizards, dwarves, tall elves and dragons, but it also has gods and demons, vampires and werewolves, and parallel universes.

In Dark Lord of Derkholm, there is an entire world being exploited as a tourist destination, where all the people are compelled to enact fantasy tropes for bands of tourists who come through a portal from a nearby universe paying exorbitant fees to have the kind of adventuring party experience they have been led to expect. In many ways this is the novel version of Tough Guide to Fantasyland, which I wrote about last month.

At the beginning of the novel, Derk, a well-liked wizard with a big family, gets tapped to be this year’s Dark Lord. This is a position with a lot of organizing responsibility as well as an acting commitment, and he doesn’t want to do any of it. One of his sons, Blade, is tapped to lead one of the tourist parties as well, and the point of view shifts between them.

Derk is imperfect, but he is kind and cares about his family and generally tries to do the right thing. His kids like him as well as his neighbors, and frankly, it is extremely refreshing to read about a family of people who like each other in a Diana Wynne Jones book. Even other characters point out how Derk is a good guy, rare in father figure figures in her work.

Puss in Boots (1999)
And this one is extremely short! Puss in Boots was part of a program in the U.K. in which well-known authors would retell fairy tales. They would get bound as paperbacks and sold inexpensively or given out as school prizes. This version of Puss in Boots is basically the story that we all know, with added notes I don’t remember from the original such as that the princess admired the miller’s son’s muscles. Good for her.

Diana Wynne Jones has used the “trick” from the Puss in Boots story before, as part of the denouement in Witch’s Business. So even though I was reading this book for the first time for this yearlong readthrough, I kind of felt like I already knew her thoughts on how the story goes.

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If you’d like to read along with me, my schedule is here! Believing is Seeing, Year of the Griffin, and Mixed Magics are up next for me.

Custom images for this series are by Marnanel Thurman.