2005 book 80

diana wynne jones' castle in the air
this cover claims that this book is a sequel to howl's moving castle, but it's really more of a companion, as its characters are entirely different people who encounter some of my favorites from howl's in the second half of the book. if jones was taking on the european fairy tale in this book's predecessor, here she's messing around with the sorts of stories one would find in a thousand and one nights. the main character is a daydreamy carpet merchant named abdullah who, thanks to a magic carpet, encounters the girl of his dreams--only to have her whisked away by a djinn. of course he's determined to rescue her and has lots of madcap adventures on the way. the first few chapters sort of plodded along for me, but then i got into it and found most of the book very funny, if a little formulaic (it follows the howl's formula pretty well, though none of the characters here are quite as lovable or interesting as any of those were). definitely it's the second half that stands out, as things come to a head and as jones' other characters get involved--abdullah, being one of the arabian nights sorts of heros, doesn't really have much personality, but luckily has some pretty entertaining traveling companions. anyway, the point is, this book is fairly entertaining, but nowhere near as awesome as its predecessor, and is mostly only great once the characters from howl's make an appearance (though at that point, the new characters get a lot more fun as well).

sorry if this is incoherent--i read this last ngiht but none of my web browsers were working (sooo weird) and it's a little early for intelligent thought on young adult fantasy novels.