A review by thearbiter89
Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 2: The Magicians of Caprona/Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones
4.0
The middle two stories in the Chrestomanci sextet are quite odd in that they only sporadically feature the titular character, being stories set in worlds parallel to Chrestomanci's own. But they are no less engaging from the outset even as they feature new characters.
Of the two novellas, I prefer Witch Week for its almost dystopian character: a world of computers and gas-powered cars where magic-users, including children, are tracked down and burned at the stake; wherein Jones' bucolic prose never obscures an essential grimness; where her characters are outcast and suitably angry; where the use of magic as described has potentially Lovecraftian levels of existential dread-inducement.
But Magicians of Caprona has its own, rather Continental charm, being a tale of two feuding Italian families a la R+J but without the tweeny romance. It even has war-themes and conscription - and again I have to remark on Jones' propensity to slide in grimmer themes so matter-of-factly in the lives of her pre-teen protagonists. But the rather feeble villain and bow-neat resolution blunt the force of this tale's thematic thrust.
I give this collection: 4 out of 5 rebellious broomsticks
Of the two novellas, I prefer Witch Week for its almost dystopian character: a world of computers and gas-powered cars where magic-users, including children, are tracked down and burned at the stake; wherein Jones' bucolic prose never obscures an essential grimness; where her characters are outcast and suitably angry; where the use of magic as described has potentially Lovecraftian levels of existential dread-inducement.
But Magicians of Caprona has its own, rather Continental charm, being a tale of two feuding Italian families a la R+J but without the tweeny romance. It even has war-themes and conscription - and again I have to remark on Jones' propensity to slide in grimmer themes so matter-of-factly in the lives of her pre-teen protagonists. But the rather feeble villain and bow-neat resolution blunt the force of this tale's thematic thrust.
I give this collection: 4 out of 5 rebellious broomsticks