Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones Hexwood. This is, unfortunately, a book with too many good ideas and not enough structure or characterization. I say unfortunately because some of the ideas are great. I can't talk about all of them, since piecing them together is a substantial part of the plot and probably the best part of the book, but there's ancient powerful machinery, a fair bit of fiddling about with time (time travel just isn't the right term), some nice non-linear exposition, a galaxy-spanning empire secretly well-established on Earth, some truly nice mind-link telepathy, and a really fun take on magic. On top of that, though, there's also a bit of an Arthurian, some badly done political intrigue and infighting, dragons, badly handled mind control, angst about a dark past, mythical nature, and robots. You may be seeing what I mean about too many ideas. There's something of an overall structure that allows one to sensibly mash all of this stuff together, but it still feels like a disjointed hodge-podge. Worse, though, is that due to the machine-gun speed at which ideas, plot elements, and bits of background are introduced, the really good ones don't get explored. One is left with an extensive list of things in the "this could have been cool if anything had really been done with it" category. I wish some of this could have been spread out across two or three completely different books so that I could have enjoyed a fully-fleshed version. Characterization is another significant problem. The female main character starts off as quite likeable and enjoyable and unfortunately gets less interesting and less likeable as the story goes on, particularly once her ability to serve as a useful viewpoint character is severely compromised by another one of those good ideas. The other two main characters are just eh; Hume stayed basically a meaningless placeholder throughout the whole book, and while there was some attempt to make Mordion interesting, angst does not a character make. The villains were simply bad. Stupid, stereotyped, ineffectual idiots who were simply willed into positions of power by authorial decree, they rarely felt like any sort of credible threat, or really much more than a constant annoyance. The bits of political intrigue were particularly painful and unbelievable; the rulers of this empire definitely do not live up to their billing or their reputations. I wanted to like this book. There's an amusing SF novel here in the galactic empire and its intriguing technology and secret existence on Earth, and there's a very interesting character story around the mind-link concept here (which I just loved). Unfortunately, Hexwood is neither of those novels, and is mostly just frustrating. Journal. I'm in the UK right now, in the middle of nowhere, working on Monkey, about to go offline for a few days. I came over to do three things: to give the BBC a day to promote Episode Four of the next season of Doctor Who , which I have written; to see Hilary Bevan Jones, a wonderful producer with whom I've been working for years, about a couple of things; and to see Diana Wynne Jones. It was a fun but sometimes frustrating day. She adopted me when I was a 24 year old writer for magazines of dubious respectability, and spent the next 25 years being proud of me as I made art that she liked (and, sometimes, I didn't. She'd tell me what she thought, and her opinions and criticism were brilliant and precise and honest, and if she said "Yee-ees. I thought you made a bit of a mess of that one," then I probably had, so when she really liked something it meant the world to me). As an author she was astonishing. The most astonishing thing was the ease with which she'd do things (which may be the kind of thing that impresses other writers more than it does the public, who take it for granted that all writer are magicians.But those of us who write for a living know how hard it is to do what she did). The honest, often prickly characters, the inspired, often unlikely plots, the jaw-dropping resolutions. (She's a wonderful author to read aloud, by the way, as I discovered when reading her books to my kids. Not only does she read aloud beautifully, but denouments which seemed baffling read alone are obvious and elegantly set up and constructed when read aloud. "Children are much more careful readers than adults," she'd say. "You don't have to repeat everything for children. You do with adults, because they aren't paying full attention.") She dedicated her book Hexwood to me, telling me that it was inspired by something that I'd once said about the interior size of British Woods, and I wrote a doggerel poem to thank her. (Hang on. I bet I can find it. There.) There's a kitten curled up in Kilkenny was given a perfect pot of cream And a princess asleep in a thornwrapped castle who's dreaming a perfect dream There's a dog in Alaska who'll dance with delight on a pile of mastodon bones But I've got a copy of Hexwood (dedicated to me) by Diana Wynne Jones. There's an actress who clutches her oscar (and sobs, with proper impromptu joy), There's a machievellian villain who's hit on a wonderf'lly evil ploy, There's wizards in crystal castles and kings on their golden thrones But I've got a copy of Hexwood -- dedicated -- to me! -- by Diana Wynne Jones. There's a fisherman out on the sea today who just caught the perfect fish, There's a child in Luton who opened a genie-filled bottle, and got a wish, There are people who live in glass houses have managed to outlaw stones, But I've got a copy of Hexwood , dedicated to me, by Diana Wynne Jones. I crop up, in semi-fictionalised form, in a book by Diana -- Deep Secret -- and she told me once that the young Chrestomanci in The Lives of Christopher Chant was sort of based on me too. I'm proud of both of those things, even if it does mean that people who have read Deep Secret sometimes ask whether I really ate two breakfasts while mostly asleep, and I tell them that yes, I did. So. Diana, who smoked (with joy and delight and enthusiasm) got lung cancer. And so each time I would come to the UK, I'd go and have dinner with her and her husband John, and the dinner would be cooked and accompanied by Dave Devereux, who has been helping them, and somewhere in there I would see our mutual friend Tom Abba, as well. Each time, I'd take a few minutes at the end and I'd make sure that I'd said to Diana anything I wanted to be sure that I'd said, because I knew I might not see her again, and unsaid things are the hardest. I'd planned to see her yesterday, Saturday, to go down to Bristol with my daughter Holly. But on Friday morning I got a call from Dave Devereux telling me that it was time and I should come now. I called Hilary Bevan Jones, apologised (she was very understanding, as were the other people I was meant to see), and I went to Bristol. I wrote a letter that night to a friend. I'll quote it here, if you don't mind. She's at a hospice. It's beautiful there, and the staff were wonderful - helpful and nice and you never felt like you were bothering them, as one does at so many institutions. I saw the family outside. They warned me that Diana was very frail and changed. She was on morphine, breathing heavy and hard, as if she was fighting for every breath, and I sat by her bedside. I thought about the phrase "your last breath. " as every breath felt like it could be final. But she kept breathing. I told her you said goodbye. Her hair was whiter and she seemed thinner, but not really changed. but it seemed less like someone was actually there -- as if there was a distance between the person I'd known and the body breathing in the bed. Less of a distance than with a body -- but there was a sense that felt like a certainty that she wasn't going to open her eyes and talk again. This sleep was final, and soon the breathing would stop. I went out and sat in the waiting room with Tom Abba, and we talked about Diana, and we both cried a bit. Then I went back in with Tom and we sat some more. I thought about Dogsbody, which I have to write an introduction to, and wondered what star Diana would be, if she was a star. I said goodbye again. Then I went out, and Mickey, her son, went in and sat with her, and I talked to the family. I met Diana's sisters for the first time, although I had heard much about them. I spent the rest of the day with the family, with John and Diana's sister Isobel and Mickey (with whom I'd shared a room at World Fantasy Con in 1988), and we had a Bristolian Chinese meal, and talked about lots of things. And I told John I'd come and see him whenever I come to Bristol, and I shall. It's hard. But I am glad I did it, and they said that Diana was pleased that I was coming, and perhaps somehow she heard me and knew I was there. I stayed up late that night until I could talk to Amanda back in Boston about what had happened that day, and once I had talked to her I felt better. In the morning I was woken by a phone call from Dave, telling me that Diana had passed away in the night. The news was out -- someone had already changed her Wikipedia page to give it a date of death. Rest in Peace, Diana Wynne Jones. You shone like a star. The funniest, wisest writer & the finest friend. I miss you. I felt sad, but also felt lucky. Lucky that I'd known her, lucky that I'd gone and said goodbye on the Friday and not tried to wait until the Saturday. Lucky to have had a friend like that. I do miss her, very much. I have some wonderful friends. I have people in my life who are brilliant, and people who are colourful, and people who are absolutely wonderful, and who make the world better for their being in it. But there was only one Diana Wynne Jones, and the world was a finer one for having her in it. HEXWOOD. In Jones's latest multilayered fantasy, Earth — unbeknownst to its inhabitants — is a minor planet manipulated from distant Homeworld by an oligarchy of five Reigners, who exploit the entire galaxy for economic gain. Earth's precious flint is vital to their technology; when a British hacker creates a disturbance by using "one of those old machines" to create a football team of real historical personages, the Reigners are drawn, one by one, to the scene. There, greengrocer's daughter Ann Stavely has become involved with the extraordinary characters appearing in the wood: Mordion, with skull-like features but a beatific smile, has emerged from a long entrapment; Hume — who springs from the earth where Mordion's blood mingles with Ann's after a minor injury — is a different age each time she meets him. Entering the present-day wood, the Reigners are absorbed into Arthurian Britain, where each persona (including dragons and a number of robots and machines) has several intricately linked identities — past, present, extraterrestrial, mythological. For those who enjoy the intellectual exercise of sorting them out, and of pondering whether God is in the machine or Christ is an ironic parallel to the Reigners' Servant (who bears the guilt of crimes he's forced to commit), the game offered here is unsurpassed; meanwhile, the grappling of the heroes-in-disguise with the avaricious (and chillingly human) Reigners and the emergence of their kindlier potential successors makes an elaborate, fascinating, and suberbly crafted adventure. (Fiction. 12+) Hexwood Book Summary and Study Guide. The person responsible for overseeing Earth, gets an alert that a powerful machine named Bannus has been turned on. He informs the 5 people who run the galaxy, the Reigners, about Bannus. Click here to see the rest of this review. Best part of story, including ending: What I liked about this story was that the mysterious machine turned out to be manipulating everyone. People didn't know what the machine was doing but it was selecting new leaders of the galaxy. The machine turned out to be smarter than everyone. Best scene in story: The best part of the book was when people would enter Hexwood Farm and not come out. This was very suspenseful because the people disappeared into the mysterious farm. The more people would go in, the more suspicious Ann would become. Opinion about the main character: What I liked most about Ann was that she was very brave. She had the courage to investigate the Hexwood Farm even though many people disappeared there. Her actions made her become a big part in selecting the new rulers of the galaxy. Hexwood. No matter what you expect when you first open this book, you will find that you are inevitably wrong. Every character in the book plays multiple parts, experiences multiple realities, and does so in a set of scenes that are presented out of any understandable order. And while the complexities of the plot begin to make sense toward the end of the book, they make far more sense upon the second, or third, or even fourth re-reading, because every scene illuminates something that you have read about, or will read about, in another. Let's begin with the beginning -- Part 1 of the 9 parts of the book. There is an organization, and a letter makes its way through the organization, reporting a problem employee, or a problem machine, or both. There are maintenance people, and various complicated machines, a modern setting, but hints of intergalactic happenings. People report to other people. Things don't really resolve themselves. So that's that, then. Now there's a boy, in a wood somewhere. He meets a robot. He has no memories to speak of. The robot explains himself, sort of. They walk down one path and go onto another path. That's that again. Now there's a girl, in a village in England, who has the flu and feels very sick and weak, so that she is made to stay home from school in bed, where she is bored. Her name is Ann, and she has one younger brother Martin. Her parents run the greengrocer's in the village. Usually she goes to school, and has chores to perform in the shop. She seems to have imaginary friends, but nothing much happens to her. Could this be the most mixed-up, yet deadly dull Diana Wynne Jones story ever written? It's a particularly interesting book because it bears re-reading without any of the boredom that comes from knowing exactly where a plot is going and where it is coming from. Each time the reader reaches a recursion of the plotline, or a character suddenly begins recalling something he or she doesn't actually remember experiencing, there is a flash of connection that brings the story together just that fraction more -- both for the main characters and for the reader. Like many of Diana Wynne Jones' other books, the overall framework of the book involves vulnerable protagonists who are struggling to make things right in a world where the self-centeredness of one person, or one group of people, gradually threatens the well-being of everyone not in their control. It would truly be a shame to spoil the experience of discovering exactly what happens throughout Hexwood, or what it all means, but it can be helpful to have a bit of a map with which to navigate. That imaginary map is what follows. Sections [ edit | edit source ] This is a very organized book, for one with no comprehensible narrative structure. One way it is organized is by the use of section breaks. The nine major sections are labeled "Part One", Part Two", and so on; each has at least five subsections, labeled with an arabic numeral.