"The Lives of Christopher Chant", "Sorcery & Cecelia"

It's so gratifying to reread a book after so many years and find that I love it just as much as the first time around, (even if the entire plotline reads completely fresh.) Diana Wynne Jones presents the fanciful, nostalgic many-world world with a light touch, the characters intricately mirror each other, and everything comes together wonderfully at the end.

• Instead he went up the path, around a large rock, into the part he always thought of as The Place Between. Christopher thought it was probably a leftover piece of the world, from before somebody came along and made the world properly. Formless slopes of rock towered and slanted in all directions.
• Christopher made careful inquiries from the nursery maid with the big feet. She told him Heathens were savages who ate people. Missionaries were the best people, and they were the ones Heathens ate. Christopher saw that he was going to be a missionary when he grew up. He found Mama’s talk increasingly alarming. He wished she had chosen another career for him.
• Between them they make such an atmosphere—it’s no wonder they can’t keep any servants! Oh Christopher, forgive me for talking like this about your parents!”
  All the Governesses asked Christopher to forgive them and he forgave them very readily, for this was the only time now that he had news of Mama and Papa. It gave him a wistful sort of feeling that perhaps other people had parents who were not like this. He was also sure that there was some sort of crisis brewing. The hushed thunder of it reached as far as the schoolroom,
• He kept feeling that spear thudding into his chest. He began to get annoyed with himself. It was as if school had taught him how to be frightened.
• For half an hour after that the hospital was in total confusion, while everyone tried to catch a five-foot corpse clothed mostly in a flying sheet, which raced up and down the corridors shrieking that it was missing cricket practice.
• “I thought so!” Papa said with dismal satisfaction. “Now, my son, those people who are lucky enough to have several lives are always, invariably, highly gifted enchanters.
• “Go on, boy!” howled Dr. Pawson. “Don’t do it!”
  “I can’t not do something I can’t do,” Christopher said, thoroughly harassed.
  “Of course you can!” yelled Dr. Pawson. “That’s the essence of magic. Get on with it. Mirror on the table beside you. Levitate it and be quick about it!”
• Dr. Pawson’s teeth were brown, and they lay higgledy-piggledy in all directions, like a fence trampled by cows.
• “My old mother,” said Dr. Pawson. “She’s normally bedridden, but as you can see, she’s very strongly moved. As is almost everything else.” He sat and stared at Christopher awhile longer,
• “No, Christopher,” Papa panted sternly, looking strange and most undignified, with his coat flapping and his hair blowing in all directions. “A gentleman never works magic against a woman, particularly his own mama.”
  Gentlemen, it seemed to Christopher, made things unreasonably difficult for themselves in that case.
• FOR THE FIRST WEEK, Christopher could think of nothing else but how much he hated Chrestomanci Castle and the people in it. It seemed to combine the worst things about school and home, with a few special awfulnesses of its own.
• they smuggle in illicit magical produce by the hundredweight from all over the Related Worlds. They have brought in cartloads of dragons’ blood, narcotic dew, magic mushrooms, eel livers from Series Two, poison balm from Six, dream juice from Nine and eternal fire from Ten.
• “You see what mischief your careless climbing could do? While we rush around the Castle on your account, we could miss our one chance of catching this gang. You should learn to think of others, Christopher.”
  “I do,” Christopher said bitterly, “but none of you think of me. When most people die, they don’t get told off for it.”
• “No, you’re too honest,” she said, and looked at him closely. “Silver forces you to tell the truth,” she said. “The Gift of Asheth tells me. So you got into the habit of never lying.”
• “Know him!” said the maid. “When he was working at the Castle, I reckon we were all a bit sweet on him.” Here Christopher noticed that his supper tray was beginning to jiggle. He slammed his hand down on it. “You must admit,” the maid said, luckily not looking at the tray, “Mr. Roberts is that good-looking—and so pleasant with it. I’ll name no names, but there were quite a few girls who went out of their way to bump into Mr. Roberts in corridors. Silly things! Everyone knew he only had eyes for Miss Rosalie.”
  “Miss Rosalie!” Christopher exclaimed, more interested than ever, and he held the tray down with all his strength. The Goddess clearly thought she had got something wrong and was summoning it mightily.
• “Your soul?” said Christopher.
  “Yes,” Tacroy said bitterly. “The part that makes you the person you are. With you, it’s the part that carries on from life to life.
• They don’t go by right and wrong in Eleven. They don’t consider themselves human—Or no, I suppose they think they’re the only real people, and they study the rest of you like something in a zoo when the Dright happens to feel interested.”
  Christopher could tell from Tacroy’s voice that he hated the Eleven people very deeply. He well understood that.
• And you know your nine lives came about—don’t you?—because all the doubles you might have had in the other worlds in Twelve never got born for some reason.”
• “They’re the people who gave rise to all the stories about Elves. If you think about them like that—cold, unearthly people who go by quite different rules—that will give you some idea.
• “Fur,” Tacroy said. “The more you wear, the higher your rank.” Christopher conjured the tigerskin rug from the Middle Saloon and the Goddess cut a hole in it for his head.
• His seventh life leaped into flame all over at once. The Dright hung on to its shoulders as it blazed, grimly trying to quench it, but Christopher had been right. Fire magic was the Dright’s weak point. His attempt to reverse the spell was slow and hesitating. But he kept trying, and hung on to the life by its shoulders, until he had to let go or lose both hands.
• The next instant, this man had pulled himself together into a brisk, silvery gentleman; and then the same gentleman, older and grimmer. Christopher stared, awed and rather touched. He realized that Gabriel had hated being the Chrestomanci, and they were seeing the stages by which he had come to terms with it.
• though I may be right in supposing that Mordecai went on working with you for your equally fearsome uncle because he knew that any other spirit traveler your uncle chose would have turned you into a hardened criminal before long. Would you agree?”
  “Well,” said Christopher, trying to be honest. “I think some of it was because we were both so keen on cricket.”
• Everyone raced for the stairs, except for Gabriel. He put his cup down slowly, obviously wondering what was happening. Christopher dashed to the stairs and then, for speed, did what he had always longed to do and slid down the rosy curve of marble banister.
• He stepped over to the black ropes and picked his limp transparent likeness out from among the library chairs. Courteously, he draped it over the end of Mother Proudfoot’s spear. “There. Will this one serve?”
  “Admirably,” said Mother Proudfoot. “Thank you.” She gave the Goddess a kiss and descended majestically into the ground beside the chest of diamonds.

==============================

It must have been a hoot for Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer to write this light fantasy-cum-Regency romance in epistolary form. Seeing all those period jargons is like meeting old friends at a garden party.

• The second day, we were taken to see the Elgin Marbles, which was interesting, and to listen to other people see the Elgin Marbles, which would make the eyes roll right back in your head with boredom.
• You know me well enough to know what I did then—retire to the sidelines with a stiff back and an “I don’t care a jot” expression concealing the fact I felt a complete antidote.
• (Do you ever wonder if driving a team is like dancing? Being where you’re wanted when you’re wanted, with no words, just hints? I never thought of it from the horse’s point of view, but perhaps it is, and perhaps that is why good dancers and good drivers are both rare and highly thought of.)
• “I do have methods of going unnoticed,” he continued, “but I have never assumed a lady’s identity. Miranda’s imagination can sometimes reach more lurid heights than even Mr. Lewis and his Monk.”
• He smiled with such a degree of cynicism I almost expected his teeth to glint metallic.
• “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to tell them?” I asked. “Oh, they won’t ask, don’t think it. No, they’ll dance with you and then say I am justly called mysterious,” he said. “You are odious.” “Quite so, but admit you’ve never danced better than these last few moments when you were too angry to think about it.”
• It is curious how the least amiable people are sometimes the most interesting in appearance. The odious Marquis has regular enough features, but his appearance is set quite out of the common way by two things.
• Instead, I stood mute while he informed her that I had accepted his proposal of marriage, and took his leave of us with an oiled ease that suggested he has had years of experience slithering into betrothals and out again.
• “You weren’t carrying a fan that day,” James said positively. He looked at me with a grim expression. “The truth, Cecy.” It is most annoying to be faced with someone who refuses to accept even the most plausible subterfuge.
• I recognized the tone of voice well enough that I did not bother to argue. It seems, Kate, that even in wizardry there are things it is Not Proper to speak of before Young Ladies.
• “Mr. Strangle, Madame,” said the butler, and withdrew his bulk to reveal Mr. Strangle in the hall behind him, looking like a garden rake with poor posture.
• In the third place, she has a reputation for outspokenness that puts even Thomas to shame. Apparently she once told the Archbishop of Canterbury that marriage among the clergy was the only factor that prevented English village life from degenerating into utter savagery.
• In one long corridor they display some of the artifacts the Prince brought back from his tour of the American colonies last year, some very fine beadwork and a Mohican shaman’s drum, which casts out illness (Mohican illness only, unfortunately). There was also a gleaming obsidian disc that belonged to Doctor John Dee,
• There is nothing that is quite so reassuring in an awkward situation as knowing that one is well turned-out,