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Greenwillow Books, 2000
$15.95 hardcover
267 pages

A new term begins at the Wizards' University. Elda, Felim, Lukin, Olga, Claudia, and Ruskin, new students all, quickly become friends. They are talented, eager to learn, and ready to handle anything the University throws at them, including lousy food in the cafeteria, a walking cloakrack, and requests for more money.

But this turns out to be a lot less than what they end up throwing at the University. Those donation requests, for instance, result in malicious mice, assassins after Felim, a dwarf tribe determined to reclaim Ruskin as an escaped slave, and more.

It's a good thing Elda and her friends are indeed, as mentioned, talented and eager to learn. And they are about to learn a whole lot more about magic than the University ever intended!

In 1998 Diana Wynne Jones published Dark Lord of Derkholm, a successful and irreverent mockery of the fantasy fiction genre -- particularly the "epic" variety. Now she returns to that world with Year of the Griffin.

This is a sequel which also stands on its own, so you do not need to read the first book to enjoy this one. There are some minor characters in common, but mostly Jones develops a new cast; Elda herself, one of Wizard Derk's daughters, is the exception. (I did mention that Elda is a griffin, didn't I?)

In usual Jones fashion, the plot is an entertaining comedy of errors, a rushing accumulation of events and characters all building to a climax where everything (mostly) is resolved in unexpected ways. Jones is good at that.

Any book by Diana Wynne Jones is guaranteed to be good. There is no one else like her out there; she is her own unique brand. But although she gets the critical praise she deserves, sustained popularity has not especially happened in the United States (Jones lives in England), where her books seem to live almost an underground existence. Certain titles of hers do stay in print. Currently Witch Week, Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, and Dark Lord of Derkholm are all available in paperback. Read these, and when you're properly addicted you can begin the (unfortunately) more difficult task of hunting up her other thirty or so books.

And now you'll have to excuse me. I have an urge to re-read some of her books myself. Diana Wynne Jones is good that way.

(One final, minor observation: the publisher really needs to get a better artist for her hardcover editions.)

Set in the same world:

Dark Lord of Derkholm. Greenwillow, 1998

Reviewed by Wendy Morris. © 2001 by Wendy Morris

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