β Scribed by Diana Wynne Jones
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
"As a boy, he had spent fascinated hours looking at the garden through each differently coloured pane. Depending, you got a rose pink sunset garden, hushed and windless; a stormy orange garden, where it was suddenly autumn; a tropical green garden, where there seemed likely to be parrots and monkeys any second. And so on. As an adult now, Andrew valued that glass even more. Magic apart, it was old old old. The glass had all sorts of internal wrinkles and trapped bubbles, and the long-dead maker had somehow managed to make the colours both intense and misty at once."
When the magician Jocelyn Brandon Hope died he bequeathed Melstone House to his grandson Andrew. He also left his field of care: an area of strangeness surrounding the land around the house, whose boundary Andrew must walk in order to preserve its power.
Andrew had always loved the house, but he finds owning it a lot more complicated, aside from all the magic. There is Mrs Stock, the tyrannical housekeeper who wont let him move the furniture and punishes him with her terrible cooking. Just as bad is the obsessive gardener who will only grow giant inedible vegetables. To add to his troubles, twelve year old orphan Aidan Cain suddenly arrives on the doorstep begging protection from magical stalkers, and Andrews sinister rich neighbour, Mr Brown, begins to encroach on the field of care. The one compensation is the gardeners beautiful niece, Stashe. Things become stranger and stranger until all is made clear with the help of the enchanted glass itself.
Not since HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE has Diana Wynne Jones combined romance and humour so successfully as in this delightful novel with echoes of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream.
Library : Fantasy
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780061866852
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
After his grandfather dies, Andrew Hope inherits a house and surrounding land in an English village, but things become very complicated when young orphan Aidan shows up and suddenly a host of variously magical townsfolk and interlopers start intruding on their lives.
A brilliant, intricate and magical novel from the Godmother of British fantasy. When Andrew Hope's magician grandfather dies, he leaves his house and field-of-care to his grandson who spent much of his childhood at the house. Andrew has forgotten much of this, but he remembers the very strong-minde
A brilliant, intricate and magical novel from the Godmother of British fantasy. When Andrew Hope's magician grandfather dies, he leaves his house and field-of-care to his grandson who spent much of his childhood at the house. Andrew has forgotten much of this, but he remembers the very strong-minde
Aidan Cain has had the worst week of his life. His gran died, he was sent to a foster home, and now malicious beings are stalking him. There is one person Gran told Aidan to go to if he ever got into trouble--a powerful sorcerer who lives at Melstone House. But when Aidan arrives on the doorstep, h
Aidan Cain has had the worst week of his life. His gran died, he was sent to a foster home, and now malicious beings are stalking him. There is one person Gran told Aidan to go to if he ever got into troubleβa powerful sorcerer who lives at Melstone House. But when Aidan arrives on the doorstep, he
Aidan Cain has had the worst week of his life. His gran died, he was sent to a foster home, and now malicious beings are stalking him. There is one person Gran told Aidan to go to if he ever got into troubleβa powerful sorcerer who lives at Melstone House. But when Aidan arrives on the doorstep, he