[ENI]≫ Download Free Charmed Life The Chrestomanci Series Diana Wynne Jones 9780007106530 Books

Charmed Life The Chrestomanci Series Diana Wynne Jones 9780007106530 Books

Download As PDF : Charmed Life The Chrestomanci Series Diana Wynne Jones 9780007106530 Books

Charmed Life The Chrestomanci Series Diana Wynne Jones 9780007106530 Books

I first read this when I was about 30, and I have re-read it for 30+ years. I couldn't tell if it was a book for adults, or a warped children's book. It reminded me of E. Nesbit, but with a dark undertone. I have tried to track down everything she wrote, haunting the children's section for years. There shouldn't be an age category. I get a different perspective every time I read her books.


Tags : Charmed Life (The Chrestomanci Series) [Diana Wynne Jones] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.,Diana Wynne Jones,Charmed Life (The Chrestomanci Series),Harpercollins Pub Ltd,000710653X,VI-000710653X,Children: Grades 4-6

Charmed Life The Chrestomanci Series Diana Wynne Jones 9780007106530 Books Reviews

Read all of the books in this series. Really. Don't stop reading until you've finished book 6. You'll thank me.
Awesome book with twists and turns! I loved it! I'm starting the next book. I bet it's great too! I recommend all magic books (I'm kind of a fantasy nerd 😋). Check it out dudes!!! Awesome! I might want to read it again....
This is the first book of Ms. Jones that I ever read, and it was so good that I have since searched out and read everything of hers that I could find! A terrific tale with captivating characters!! Beautiful, spoiled, megalomaniacal young witch Gwendolyn believes she is destined to rule the world, and her timid, good-hearted little brother Cat is swept along with her plans and is left holding the bag when everything goes wrong! Please read this book, you won't be disappointed! If you like this one, I also highly recommend The Power of Three, Howl's Moving Castle, and The Magicians of Caprona!
Long before Harry Potter there was Cat Chant. This book is enormously appealing and well written for people of all ages, though it is aimed towards children. I first read it when I was around 13, and I've continued to enjoy it since.
It's the the story of a pair of young orphans Cat and Gwen Chant who are sent to live with an old friend of their fathers after their parents death. They discover much about magic and themselves (at least Cat does) in this lively and well written book.
This is not the only book by this author set in this magical universe, but in some ways it's still my favourite after all these years. One more short story featuring Cat can be found in the author's book "mixed magics".
It is a literary crime that Diana Wynne Jones is not a household name. Each of her books is a treasure. I wish HBO would adapt Charmed Life into a mini series; maybe having her name attached to such a project would boost reader's awareness of her wonderful catalogue of work.
I can't believe I waited so long to read Diana Wynne Jones. She is amazing, and the Crestomanci series has been a joy to me so far. I started here, with Charmed Life, and I have shot through the sequels with increasing delight.

Eric "Cat" Chant believes himself to be useless in the field of magic, unlike his brilliantly gifted older sister. When the children are orphaned, they are taken in by the mysterious figure of Chrestomanci, and taken to live in his strange castle, where odd dangers seem to lurk around every corner, and Cat finds it increasingly more difficult to understand what's happening, especially when his sister disappears and is replaced by an exact duplicate!

Is the strange, lofty figure of Chrestomanci friend, or foe?
Diana Wynne Jones has a wonderfully whimsical ability to worldbuild (of which J.K. Rowling should be jealous). Books with magic in are slowly tending to become more technological (as our technology becomes more magical, perhaps, or maybe it's just because of games in which magic has to be "balanced"); there are clear rules for what can and can't be done. This author was writing before that trend, or ignored it, and her magic is like the magic of folktales. It works because it ought to work, because having it work that way is cool.

She was also writing before "head-hopping" (switching between third-person viewpoints in the middle of a scene) became so denigrated, and a couple of times it's disorientating. Her style is the simple, declarative style of books for younger readers, but there's nothing wrong with that, though if I'd been her editor I would have said "show, don't tell" a couple of times and suggested more active phrasings for a few sentences. The writing, in other words, isn't flawless, but the story, the characters and especially the world make up for it.

The main viewpoint character is a boy known as Cat, for reasons that, when explained, turn out to be very important. He's afflicted with a sister named Gwendolen, who is as self-centred as a gyroscope and reacts badly to being thwarted, causing a cascade of trouble for poor Cat. By the middle of the book he's in not just one, but four or five bad situations, with no solution in sight, and all of them are Gwendolen's fault.

The secondary characters are delightful. The powerful Chrestomanci, in particular, with his beautiful clothes, is like a less self-centred Howl, but each one of them has some characteristic of appearance or mannerism that makes them distinct and memorable.

This is the first of a series of six books, and I'll be reading the others too, I think.
I first read this when I was about 30, and I have re-read it for 30+ years. I couldn't tell if it was a book for adults, or a warped children's book. It reminded me of E. Nesbit, but with a dark undertone. I have tried to track down everything she wrote, haunting the children's section for years. There shouldn't be an age category. I get a different perspective every time I read her books.