Castle in the Air

Book Title: Castle in the Air

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Series: Howl's Moving Castle #2

Date Started: May 4th 2020

Date Completed: May 10th 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

A lot of people know the story of Howl's Moving Castle, whether from the Ghibli animation or Diana Wynne Jones' book. Fewer people are aware there are sequels, I feel, and that's a shame because this was a lot of fun to read. I think I would've prefered it as a kid as opposed to a twenty-something, but it was still a nice burst of fantastical adventure and humour.

Wynne Jones' world of Ingary, Zanzib and the various other countries that make up its map is genuinely fantastic. It's an obvious parallel to our world (for those of you who've read the book, you'll know I mean this literally), but it has these tiny edges of the fantastic, these flairs of the bizarre and whimsical. Obviously, there are djinns and fire spirits and wizards and moving castles, but it comes down to the stories too: Castle in the Air begins as somewhat of a retelling of Aladdin and other 1001 Nights tales but merges other stories like The 12 Dancing Princesses and even some Wizard of Oz vibes into something new. (For a book written in the late 80s, it's also got a satisfyingly feminist twist, though it takes a while to get to it.)

I loved how large the story felt, like an epic poem, but how neatly everything tied up in a contained way. Threads from within the story itself ended up being the solutions the characters were looking for - coming from literally right under their noses. It felt even more like a fairy tale because of that. On the downside of this was the fact that, while reading it, it seemed to work far better episodically by chapter than read all at once. This is perfect (and a fair bit better than normal books) if you're reading to a child every night, just a bit slow for older readers perhaps.

Admittedly, I enjoyed Castle in the Air way more once Sophie (heroine of Howl's Moving Castle) showed up. She's such a strong character, her little involvement in the story was well crafted, and she is sadly more engaging than Abdullah - when she's in a scene, your attention is so focused on her, and she lights it up. That being said, the initial cast of this novel is still engaging in a fairytale-like way. They play off the tropes in old stories like that, but sometimes the long-winded poetic dialogue grinds you down.

I don't even know how many years it's been since I read Howl's Moving Castle, but I hope I won't take as long to get around to the last novel in this series. I didn't actually know Sophie and co from the first book were going to make an appearance, but looking at the synopsis for House of Many Ways it seems like they'll have a bigger part in the final instalment, which honestly makes me very excited.