Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Game by Diana Wynne Jones Diana Wynne Jones. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Diana Wynne Jones , (born Aug. 16, 1934, London, Eng.—died March 26, 2011, Bristol), British fantasy writer of more than 40 books for children, many of which centre on magic or magicians. Jones was the oldest of three sisters and often looked after her siblings—partly because of a complicated relationship with their parents, who were both teachers. Despite struggling with dyslexia, she did well in school as a child and developed a keen interest in books, reading works such as The Thousand and One Nights and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur at a young age. Jones decided early that she wanted to become a writer, and when she was 13 years old she began writing stories for her sisters. In 1953 Jones entered St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she studied English (B.A., 1956) and attended lectures by renowned authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. In 1956 Jones married John Burrow, with whom she had three sons. She read books with her children as they were growing up, which served as an introduction to the world of children’s literature—of which Jones had read little in her own childhood. During this time she submitted a few of her works to publishers and agents, but they were rejected. Though the majority of her books were written for children, Jones’s first published novel, Changeover (1970), was intended for adults. Despite having penned the novel in 1966, Jones did not embark on her writing career in earnest until all her children were in school. After being introduced to a literary agent, Jones went on to write Wilkins’ Tooth (1973; also published as Witch’s Business ), Eight Days of Luke (1975), The Ogre Downstairs (1974), and dozens more over the next several decades. Many of her books feature magic or magicians. Among the most famous are The Chronicles of Chrestomanci series and Howl’s Moving Castle (1986)—the latter of which was made into a successful animated film by Japanese director Miyazaki Hayao in 2004. Another of her works, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (1996; revised 2006), serves as a humorous exploration of the clichés of her favoured genre. Jones was the recipient of many honours and awards, including a World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2007. The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones. Dot writes: anyone who knows me will be aware that I’m a raving Diana Wynne Jones fan. (Appropriately, her husband, J. A. Burrow, is one of my favourite scholars of medieval literature.) I was therefore delighted yesterday when a parcel of books arrived including her latest, a novella called The Game . I gobbled it up in the course of the day by reading during Prawn’s feeds. (There are advantages to having a greedy baby!) It’s a rollicking read and I enjoyed it very much. The central conceit, of a family who can access the ‘mythosphere’, the dimension in which characters and events from the world’s mythologies take place, reminded me initially of Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood novels; among Wynne Jones’s own books it had obvious affinities with the field of the Bannus in Hexwood . As the book goes on one can see points of contact with other Wynne Jones novels such as Eight Days of Luke and Fire and Hemlock . However, to be honest I don’t think this is one of her stronger works. She’s rather fond of scenes and sequences in which everyone rushes around madly, yelling at each other in a comical and endearing way, of crazy famillies, of sudden jack-knifes of plot and people who adruptly find themselves doing magic, and of a general rush and angularity that works brilliantly in her best books but feels disjointed here. I thought The Pinhoe Egg suffered from some of the same defects. One of her specialities is people turning out to be quite other than who you thought they were. Again, this is extraordinarily satisfying in (for example) Archer’s Goon , but in The Game I found the revelation disappointing. The idea that there is a mythosphere as well as – interwoven with – the physical universe is an exciting one and I thought it could open up ideas about how myth and reality intersect and about points of contact between different mythologies. Instead, the whole mad rushing family turn out to be Greek gods, so myth and reality collapse into each other and one mythology supersedes the others. I do wonder whether she only thought up the end part way through (she has talked about her writing process, and she is someone who follows her stories where they want to go rather than planning everything in advance). Early in the book the heroine’s grandfather says something about how golden apples run through the myths of the world but never seem to harden into a single strand – implicitly, into a religious doctrine or orthodoxy. Golden apples recur later in the book but, though there’s a list of different apple stories in the appendix to the Harper Collins edition, in the story the apples are always the apples of the Hesperides. I felt a wonderful possibility had just not been followed up. Anyhow, it was still great fun. Share this: Like this: Related. One thought on “ The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones ” Oooh a new Diana Wynne Jones book! Must order on Amazon for the hospital… I’m hooked on the Chrestomanci books and love the Tough Guide to Fantasyland… THE GAME. A fantasy novella kindles a sizzling premise that fails to catch fire. When a chance encounter with the mysterious musical magicians Flute and Fiddle introduces young Hayley to the “mythosphere,” where myths, fairy tales and legends spin their strands through the human imagination, her stringent grandmother exiles her to school in Scotland. A temporary diversion through Ireland acquaints Hayley with several aunts and innumerable cousins, and (most exhilarating) The Game: a scavenger hunt through the mythosphere. But as Hayley roams through the Zodiac and romps through the Hesperides, she discovers secrets about herself and her family—secrets that might free her to defy even her tyrannical Uncle Jolyon. As always, Jones’s prose sparkles, and Hayley is a likable character, diffident yet plucky; the mythosphere is a fascinating conceit that deserves open exploration. Unfortunately, the narrative is limited by a constricted paradigm, and the conclusion seems both predictable and forced. Readers lacking a solid grounding in Greek mythology are likely to be left puzzled, even with the concluding explanatory note. Plenty of glitter and flash, but hardly indispensable. (Fantasy. 11+) Pub Date: April 1, 2007. ISBN: 0-14-240718-6. Page Count: 192. Publisher: Firebird/Penguin. Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010. Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007. Share your opinion of this book. Did you like this book? More by Diana Wynne Jones. Engrossing, contemplative, and as heart-wrenching as the title promises. Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2017. New York Times Bestseller. THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END. by Adam Silvera ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2017. What would you do with one day left to live? In an alternate present, a company named Death-Cast calls Deckers—people who will die within the coming day—to inform them of their impending deaths, though not how they will happen. The End Day call comes for two teenagers living in New York City: Puerto Rican Mateo and bisexual Cuban-American foster kid Rufus. Rufus needs company after a violent act puts cops on his tail and lands his friends in jail; Mateo wants someone to push him past his comfort zone after a lifetime of playing it safe. The two meet through Last Friend, an app that connects lonely Deckers (one of many ways in which Death-Cast influences social media). Mateo and Rufus set out to seize the day together in their final hours, during which their deepening friendship blossoms into something more. Present-tense chapters, short and time-stamped, primarily feature the protagonists’ distinctive first-person narrations. Fleeting third-person chapters give windows into the lives of other characters they encounter, underscoring how even a tiny action can change the course of someone else’s life. It’s another standout from Silvera ( History Is All You Left Me , 2017, etc.), who here grapples gracefully with heavy questions about death and the meaning of a life well-lived. Engrossing, contemplative, and as heart-wrenching as the title promises. (Speculative fiction. 13-adult). Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017. ISBN: 978-0-06-245779-0. Page Count: 384. Publisher: HarperTeen. Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017. Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017. Share your opinion of this book. Did you like this book? More by Adam Silvera. Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2014. New York Times Bestseller. WE WERE LIARS. by E. Lockhart ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 2014. A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart. Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic. Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up ) The Game (2007) Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Consider this Jones' version of a Strindberg dream play. It begins like many YA novels with a young orphaned girl, Hayley, who has been living with a mean aunt. The story begins when she is sent away to live with another set of aunts. The new house is full of precocious children, and bits of magic enter the scene. So far, typical. Then Hayley plays the Game and the mode of the story changes completely. Where the Game takes people, who the aunts are, and who Hayley is, is gradually revealed but I won't say more. I do wonder what the target audience made of this though. It's Diana Wynne Jones. Of course it's recommended. ( ) This delightful little novel takes the reader on a rompt through Greek mythology in the form of a ridiculous family feud. Jones draws on constellations and planets to give life to an exuberant family who live under the thumb of Uncle Jolyon (Jupter's human-esque form) until a little upstart, Hayley )yes, the comet) rebels and put the old man back into his celestial place. The myths that Jones draws on are some of the lesser known Greek myths, but reader don't need to have an in depth knowledge to enjoy little Hayley's antics and her uncle's mad dash to keep his power. ( ) Raised by her grandparents since she was a baby, when her parents mysteriously went missing, Hayley is homeschooled, and kept away from other children. When she does something to upset her grandmother she is sent to her aunts in Ireland, where she discovers to her surprise that she has a very large extended family she knew nothing about. As she gets involved in "the game" played by her cousins, a game involving the magical mythosphere, she makes further startling discoveries about the nature of this family to which she belongs. Although I have read and enjoyed quite a few of Diana Wynne Jones' fantasy novels for young people over the years - I have particularly fond memories of the Chronicles of Chrestomanci , as well as Howl's Moving Castle - I never happened to pick up The Game until it was assigned as a text in the course I took on the history of children's literature, while getting my masters a few years back. It utilizes Greek mythology, and to a lesser extent Russian folklore, in ways that are quite interesting and unique, and it kept me entertained, as I was reading. That said, it was not particularly memorable, and if I did not have the detailed notes I kept for all my class readings, I would struggle to recall anything beyond the vague outline. Certainly, none of the characters made a great impression upon me. Perhaps I will reread this, at some point, and change my mind, but overall I would not describe this as one of the author's better works. Recommended primarily to strong Diana Wynne Jones fans, and to readers who enjoy mythology-adjacent fantasy fiction. ( ) I picked this book up at the library when I was there looking for something else completely. I've been wanting to read one of Jones's books and the description on the cover about magic and mythology really sucked me in. I love a good fantasy novel. At first glance, the idea seems a genuinely good one: what would happen if the constellations came to life as real people? I imagine this book is meant to appeal to the Percy Jackson set (I still haven't read those books). But in practice, the book was difficult to follow and slightly..well. boring (is there a nicer way of saying this?). Diana Wynne Jones is obviously a masterful writer. One sentence is still memorable to me after closing the book: "Martya was a big strong girl with hair like the white silk fringes on Grandma's parlour furniture--soft, straight hair that was always swirling across her round pink face." Lovely. But memorable images and interesting characters are not enough for a good book--what is missing for me is a solid plot. I've summed up the premise in the story in one sentence, but it actually takes quite a while of reading to get there. She starts out introducing an incredibly cute main character and her rambunctious, colorful family, but then when the actual driving conflict is introduced. it all becomes a winding mess. "The game" itself is strange and a little too ethereal to really get a good sense of what is going on. It almost reads as a giant inside joke that is hard to follow for everyone else. I have heard lots of good things about Jones's other books (including Howl's Moving Castle, the movie of which I liked a lot), so I am hardly going to stop reading her writing, but I think perhaps this novel would appeal more to her fans rather than someone reading her books for the first time. ( ) This entire novella felt like a wink to the reader, as if Jones expected readers to pick up on the mythological and astronomical references--which I struggled to do. The story also inundates the reader with characters, throwing an entire, large cast into the mix near the beginning. I struggled to keep the relationships between the characters straight. There was tension throughout, motivations were clear enough to sustain the shifts in relationships, and I was interested in the powerful twins, who were an original creation for this story. This was not a slog of a read. This story simply wasn't for me. ( ) a gallimaufry. Some thousand years ago in February I wrote about The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern and postulated that it might have been influenced by video games. (This was, I admit, quite a reach since I don’t play video games, but knowing very little about something has rarely prevented me from pontificating.) Anyway, in the comments we wondered about a subgenre of fiction influenced by video games. Chris mentioned Codex by Lev Grossman but I don’t think we came up with any others. Now, perhaps here is a third novel to add to that subgenre: Diana Wynne Jones’s Hexwood , from 1993, which uses elements of gaming as its plot in a far more fundamental way than I think Morgenstern did. First of all, what is Hexwood? To teenaged Ann, lying in bed with a virus, it is the housing estate on which she lives – with Hexwood Farm, a derelict old place behind crumbling walls. People enter it but never seem to leave. To Hume, it is a woodland filled with strange creatures, a castle, a white van. To the Reigners, it is an old library and archive on Earth, a remote and backward outpost in their intergalactic empire. But in all these guises Hexwood houses the Bannus, an ancient computer whose function is to make decisions by creating an ever-expanding theta- field and: live action scenarios of any set of facts and people you care to feed into it. [It] acts little plays for you, until you find the right one and tell it to stop. What does that mean? It means that it generates an alternative reality into which it pulls people and circumstances. In this alternative reality the people play out different scenarios, on and on, until an outcome is reached and someone stops the machine. And each of these scenarios is itself a sort of alternate reality, since the people playing them have no memory of the previous versions. At the beginning of the book, a young man called Harrison Scudamore has succeeded in getting himself employed by Rayner Hexwood, the manifestation of the Reigner Corporation on Earth, and has switched on the Bannus. More and more people are being sucked into it to play out its scenarios. Can anyone stop it – and how? This device of the playing out of versions of a similar story is very like that of many video games, in which you have a character and a set of circumstances and at each stage a variety of possible decisions which shape the way that the game moves. And one (or possibly more!) set of decisions will lead you to a successful outcome and the winning of the game. In many of her novels, Diana Wynne Jones uses alternate worlds and realities (The Homeward Bounders , Fire and Hemlock, the Chrestomanci series, to name but a few), so the conceit of the computer game is obviously attractive to her. The Bannus layers different realities over each other, but what is ‘real’ and what is ‘game’ is further complicated by the lies and misdirections of some characters and the confusion of others over who they ‘really’ are – since they inhabit more than one identity. Furthermore, time is not linear but skips back and forth. The Fisher King has apparently been in his castle for years at the beginning of the novel, but in fact only arrives there halfway through. (This makes much more sense in the book.) Hexwood I think goes further, in asking questions about free will and control, which again come from the device of the video game. When someone plays a video game, they know they are playing and they know what their goal is, even if they only have control over their own character. In Hexwood you are in the game, but you don’t know it, you think you are in the ‘real’ world and acting from your own free will. The Bannus is the one who is playing, and without your consent or even knowledge, since your memory is wiped each time. Wynne Jones make the parallel with political systems clear. If the Bannus, compelling people to play a game they do not understand and removing parts of their memories to do so, has a sinister aspect, how much more does the Reigner Corporation, which seeks to control and (mis)shape people to suit their own ends, treating them as having no more value than some pixels on a screen? The training of children to become Servants – official assassins to the Reigners – is truly chilling. Yet the power of the Corporation, like that of the Bannus, seems so great as to be unstoppable. Of course, there is a lot of fun too. Wynne Jones also throws in dragons, a robot, Arthurian legend, a magician and problematic middle managers, all handled with her customary verve and humour. It is complex and even the outline I have given is not accurate because what happens right up until the end of the novel is that your perception of what is happening – and even what the Bannus is – is constantly shifting (due to the lies and misdirections I mentioned before). It’s also a timely reminder that the checks and balances built in to any system of government are both deeply important and deeply vulnerable so we should fight for them while we still have them, ahem British government (yes I know it is a cheap political point sorry). What do you think? Have you read Hexwood ? Can you think of any other novels which use video games in some way? Tags: diana wynne jones, hexwood. Comments. Some thousand years ago in February I wrote about The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern and postulated that it might have been influenced by video games. (This was, I admit, quite a reach since I don’t play video games, but knowing very little about something has rarely prevented me from pontificating.) Anyway, in the comments we wondered about a subgenre of fiction influenced by video games. Chris mentioned Codex by Lev Grossman but I don’t think we came up with any others. Now, perhaps here is a third novel to add to that subgenre: Diana Wynne Jones’s Hexwood , from 1993, which uses elements of gaming as its plot in a far more fundamental way than I think Morgenstern did. First of all, what is Hexwood? To teenaged Ann, lying in bed with a virus, it is the housing estate on which she lives – with Hexwood Farm, a derelict old place behind crumbling walls. People enter it but never seem to leave. To Hume, it is a woodland filled with strange creatures, a castle, a white van. To the Reigners, it is an old library and archive on Earth, a remote and backward outpost in their intergalactic empire. But in all these guises Hexwood houses the Bannus, an ancient computer whose function is to make decisions by creating an ever-expanding theta- field and: live action scenarios of any set of facts and people you care to feed into it. [It] acts little plays for you, until you find the right one and tell it to stop. What does that mean? It means that it generates an alternative reality into which it pulls people and circumstances. In this alternative reality the people play out different scenarios, on and on, until an outcome is reached and someone stops the machine. And each of these scenarios is itself a sort of alternate reality, since the people playing them have no memory of the previous versions. At the beginning of the book, a young man called Harrison Scudamore has succeeded in getting himself employed by Rayner Hexwood, the manifestation of the Reigner Corporation on Earth, and has switched on the Bannus. More and more people are being sucked into it to play out its scenarios. Can anyone stop it – and how? This device of the playing out of versions of a similar story is very like that of many video games, in which you have a character and a set of circumstances and at each stage a variety of possible decisions which shape the way that the game moves. And one (or possibly more!) set of decisions will lead you to a successful outcome and the winning of the game. In many of her novels, Diana Wynne Jones uses alternate worlds and realities (The Homeward Bounders , Fire and Hemlock, the Chrestomanci series, to name but a few), so the conceit of the computer game is obviously attractive to her. The Bannus layers different realities over each other, but what is ‘real’ and what is ‘game’ is further complicated by the lies and misdirections of some characters and the confusion of others over who they ‘really’ are – since they inhabit more than one identity. Furthermore, time is not linear but skips back and forth. The Fisher King has apparently been in his castle for years at the beginning of the novel, but in fact only arrives there halfway through. (This makes much more sense in the book.) Hexwood I think goes further, in asking questions about free will and control, which again come from the device of the video game. When someone plays a video game, they know they are playing and they know what their goal is, even if they only have control over their own character. In Hexwood you are in the game, but you don’t know it, you think you are in the ‘real’ world and acting from your own free will. The Bannus is the one who is playing, and without your consent or even knowledge, since your memory is wiped each time. Wynne Jones make the parallel with political systems clear. If the Bannus, compelling people to play a game they do not understand and removing parts of their memories to do so, has a sinister aspect, how much more does the Reigner Corporation, which seeks to control and (mis)shape people to suit their own ends, treating them as having no more value than some pixels on a screen? The training of children to become Servants – official assassins to the Reigners – is truly chilling. Yet the power of the Corporation, like that of the Bannus, seems so great as to be unstoppable. Of course, there is a lot of fun too. Wynne Jones also throws in dragons, a robot, Arthurian legend, a magician and problematic middle managers, all handled with her customary verve and humour. It is complex and even the outline I have given is not accurate because what happens right up until the end of the novel is that your perception of what is happening – and even what the Bannus is – is constantly shifting (due to the lies and misdirections I mentioned before). It’s also a timely reminder that the checks and balances built in to any system of government are both deeply important and deeply vulnerable so we should fight for them while we still have them, ahem British government (yes I know it is a cheap political point sorry). What do you think? Have you read Hexwood ? Can you think of any other novels which use video games in some way?