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Hexwood

by Jones

Strange things happen at Hexwood Farm.

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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
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Read an Excerpt

Overview

Strange things happen at Hexwood Farm.

From her window, Ann Stavely watches person after person disappear through the farm's gate -- and never come out again. Later, in the woods nearby, she meets a tormented sorcerer, who seems to have arisen from a centuries-long sleep. But Ann knows she saw him enter the farm just that morning. Meanwhile, time keeps shifting in the woods, where a small boy -- or perhaps a teenager -- has encountered a robot and a dragon. Long before the end of their adventure, the strangeness of Hexwood has spread from Earth right out to the center of the galaxy.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Somewhere in the middle of this rather bewildering novel, its heroine, Ann, realizes that she is not--as she and the reader had thought--the 12-year-old daughter of suburban London grocers, but is in fact a 20-something rebel from another galaxy. Ann (whose name is really Vierran) has come to earth as the unwilling handmaiden of the evil Reigner Three who, along with four other Reigners, controls most of the known universe. An ancient and powerful machine known as the Bannus has been reactivated and poses a threat to the Reigners' rule. Vierran must join forces with Mordion, the Reigner Servant, in order to keep from becoming a pawn in Reigner One's dastardly scheme to breed future Servants. These are just a few of the plot-lines that come together in a confusing finale that invokes the legends of King Arthur as well as the gods and heroes of Northern Europe. Certain moments in the muddled narrative will reward the persevering reader: Mordion's long-repressed recollection of his sad and brutal childhood possesses a spine-chilling intensity. But on the whole, Jones is not at her bewitching best. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

Children's Literature

Diana Wynne Jones has been sending fantasy from England into the world for twenty-five years. It is not mere fantasy, though. Sometimes thoughtful, sometimes delightful, sometimes hilarious, her books transcend the genre and are a joy to read for all ages. It's a pleasure, then, to read this reissue of one of her more serious stories. While convalescing from an illness, Ann entertains herself by spying on the activities of her village from her bedroom window. Odd things seem to be happened at the gates to Hexwood Farm. Well at last, she walks into the adjoining park and is plunged into an alternate world. It is a world of Reigners from another galaxy, re-vivified corpses, and curious time lapses. This is possibly Jones's most intricate plot, and it takes a while for the reader to decide if he/she is going insane, or merely the characters. But the general insanity is riveting, and rest assured that Jones logically sorts it all out in the end. 2002 (orig. 1993), Greenwillow,
— Kathleen Karr

School Library Journal - School Library Journal

Gr 6-9-Futuristic, virtual-reality technology melds with the realm of Faerie to liberate the galaxy from the corrupt Reigners who have controlled it for the past 1,000 years. Set in an English village in 1992, the novel's web of events is catalyzed by a bored employee of Hexwood Farm, a secret outpost of the interplanetary rulers. He tampers with the Reigners' old, computerlike machine, the Bannus, hoping it will cough up a hobbit-and-dragon role-playing game. But the Bannus's game is for real, and it sucks the players it chooses-including transcendental souls like Arthur, Merlin, and Fitela-into its field of influence and forces them to act (without changing their natures) within its own scenarios. Unleashed in the Wood (which has power of its own, being a part of the eternal, enchanted forest), the machine is able to stage a battle to dethrone the unrightful Reigners and to choose the best possible new ones. The battlefield the Bannus and the Wood create is Arthurian, complete with castle, sorcery, knights, and dragons. The characters' ages and physical forms often change, though not so fast that readers will lose track of what's going on. Time, too, is fluid. Jones's knife-sharp prose delves with psychedelic clarity into the shared subconscious of humankind. The book is humorous as well, with lines that call Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and James Bond to mind. A wide range of readers will find it marvelously mind-stretching. They may even be tempted to read it twice.- Vanessa Elder, School Library Journal

Sally Estes

Virtual reality is the name of the game. Nobody is who they seem to be in Jones' latest sf tale, which is set in a future universe; nor do most of the characters know who they really are. In fact, readers will be as much at sea as the characters are for a lot of the story. However, perseverance will bring the reward of a satisfying tale as, eventually, all the pieces fall into place. It all begins when the sector controller in charge of Earth receives word that a long-dormant machine that had been sealed by the Reigners, a cabal of five people who control the universe, has been turned on; it has set up a field of theta-space in the woods at Hexwood Farm into which it has introduced situations and persons to enact "with almost total realism" a series of scenes that seesaw across time, adding to the chaos. The protagonist, Ann, the teenage daughter of a British couple living in a village outside of Hexwood Farm, sees a number of strangers enter the farm at different times; they never emerge. Investigating, Ann discovers not only that the woods are much larger than they seem (there's even a castle across a great lake) and that time doesn't run in any straight order, but also that she is the catalyst in the events leading to the downfall of the Reigners and the establishment of a new order. The action is fast paced, the mysterious circumstances are compelling, and there's even a nice bit of humor. Readers who like conundrums will particularly enjoy this.

ISBN-13:: 9780060298883
Publisher:: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:: 09/01/2002
Edition description:: NEW GREENW
Pages:: 464
Product dimensions:: 6.31(w) x 9.33(h) x 1.50(d)
Age Range:: 12 Years

Related Subjects

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The letter was in Earth script, unhandily scrawled in blobby blue ballpoint. It said:
Hexwood Farm
Tuesday 4 March 1992
Dear Secteor Controller,
We thought we better send to you in Regional straight off. We got a right problem here. This fool clerk, calls hisself Harrison Scudamore, he went and started one of these old machines running, the one with all the Reigner seals on it, says he overrode the computers to do it. When we say a few words about that, he turns round and says he was bored, he only wanted to make the best all time football team, you know King Arthur in goal, Julius Ceasar for striker, Napoleon midfield, only this team is for real, he found out this machine can do that, which it do. Trouble is we don�t have the tools nor the training to get the thing turned off, nor we can�t see where the power�s coming from, the thing's got a field like you wouldn�t believe and it won't let us out of the place. Much obliged if you could send a trained operative at your earliest convenience. Yours truly,
W. Madden
Foreman Rayner Hexwood Maintenance
(European Division)
P.S. He says he's had it running more than a month now.

Sector Controller Borasus stared at the letter and wondered if it was a hoax. W. Madden had not known enough about the Reigner Organization to send his letter through the proper channels. Only the fact that he had marked his little brown envelope "urgent!!!" had caused it to arrive in the head office of Albion Sector at all. It was stamped all over with queries from branch offices and had been at least two weeks on the way.

Controller Borasusshuddered slightly. A machine with Reigner seals! If this was not a hoax, it was liable to be very bad news. "It must be someone's idea of a joke," he said to his secretary. "Don't they have something called April Fools' Day on Earth?"

"It's not April there yet," his secretary pointed out dubiously. "If you recollect, sir, the date on which you are due to attend their American conference -- tomorrow, sir -- is March twentieth.�

"Then maybe the joker mistimed his letter," Controller Borasus said hopefully. As a devout man who believed in the Divine Balance perpetually adjusted by the Reigners, and himself as the Reigners� vicar on Albion, he had a strong feeling that nothing could possibly go really wrong. �What is this Hexwood Farm thing of theirs?�

His secretary as usual had all the facts. "A library and reference complex," he answered, "concealed beneath a housing estate not far from London. I have it marked on my screen as one of our older installations. It's been there a good twelve hundred years, and there's never been any kind of trouble there before, sir."

Controller Borasus sighed with relief. Libraries were not places of danger. It had to be a hoax. "Put me through to the place at once."

His secretary looked up the codes and punched in the symbols. The controller's screen lit with a spatter of expanding lights. It was not unlike what you see when you press your fingers into your eyes.

"Whatever's that?" said the Controller.

"I don't know, sir. I'll try again." The secretary canceled the call and punched the code once more. And again after that. Each time the screen filled with a new flux of expanding shapes. On the secretary's third attempt the colored rings began spreading off the viewscreen and rippling gently outward across the paneled wall of the office.

Controller Borasus leaned across and broke the connection, fast. The ripples spread a little more, then faded. The Controller did not like the look of it at all. With a cold, growing certainty that everything was not all right after all, he waited until the screen and the wall at last seemed back to normal and commanded, "Get me Earth Head Office." He could hear that his voice was half an octave higher than usual. He coughed and added, "Runcorn, or whatever the place is called. Tell them I want an explanation at once."

To his relief, things seemed quite normal this time. Runcorn came up on the screen, looking entirely as it should, in the person of a junior executive with beautifully groomed hair and a smart suit, who seemed very startled to see the narrow, august face of the Sector Controller staring out of the screen at him, and even more startled when the Controller asked to speak to the Area Director instantly. "Certainly, Controller. I believe Sir John has just arrived. I'll put you through -- "

"Before you do," Controller Borasus interrupted, "tell me what you know about Hexwood Farm."

"Hexwood Farm!" The junior executive looked nonplussed. "Er -- you mean --Is this one of our information retrieval centers you have in mind, Controller? I think one of them is called something like that."

"And do you know a Maintenance foreman called W. Madden?" demanded the Controller.

"Not personally, Controller," said the junior executive. It was clear that if anyone else had asked him this question, the junior executive would have been very disdainful indeed. He said cautiously, "A fine body of men, Maintenance. They do an excellent job servicing all our offworld machinery and supplies, but of course, naturally, Controller, I get into work some hours after they've -- "

"Put me through to Sir John," sighed the controller.

Sir John Bedford was as surprised as his junior executive. But after Controller Borasus had asked only a few questions, a slow horror began to creep across Sir John's healthy businessman's face. "Hexwood Farm is not considered very important," he said uneasily.