Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
March 6th, 2005 at 1:15 pm (Books)
The only Diana Wynne Jones I read as a child was The Ogre Downstairs. I enjoyed it, but not enough to go chasing up any of her other books. Over the last couple of years, having discovered that a lot of people are very enthusiastic about her, I have been reading her books on and off. Howl’s Moving Castle has been the most recent, inspired by the fact that Hayao Miyazaki has made a film version of it (and I just loved his Spirited Away) and this had lead to a certain amount of discussion about the book on both Girlsown and Child_Lit.
With the exception of Fire and Hemlock, I’m just not seeing the magic a lot of people find in DWJ. For me, most of her books are enjoyable enough, but nothing extraordinary – and there have been one or two (e.g. A Tale of Time City) that I found all but unreadable.
Howl’s Moving Castle fell into the “pleasant enough” category. The story had some interesting ideas, but I wasn’t particularly grabbed by any of the characters. I didn’t dislike them, but I found them rather on the bland side – which surprised me a little, since I gather some people list Howl as one of their all-time favourite heroes. Obviously DWJ is just one of those authors I’m somehow missing the point of.