House of Many Ways (Howl's Castle Series #3)

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House of Many Ways (Howl's Castle Series #3) Pub. Date: 6/10/2008 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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Overview

The sequel to Howl's Moving Castle

When Charmain Baker agreed to look after her great-uncle's house, she thought she was getting blissful, parent-free time to read. She didn't realize that the house bent space and time, and she did not expect to become responsible for an extremely magical stray dog and a muddled young apprentice wizard. Now, somehow, she's been targeted by a terrifying creature called a lubbock, too, and become central to the king's urgent search for the fabled Elfgift that will save the country. The king is so desperate to find the Elfgift, he's called in an intimidating sorceress named Sophie to help. And where Sophie is, the great Wizard Howl and fire demon Calcifer won't be far behind. How did respectable Charmain end up in such a mess, and how will she get herself out of it?

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Longtime fans and new readers alike will revel in Jones's self-assured return to the realm she charted in Howl's Moving Castle, a riff on English and German fairytales, and its Arabian Nights-themed sequel, Castle in the Air. When bookish, utterly selfish Charmain leaves home to care for her ailing great-uncle's magical house, she surprises herself by discovering her own hidden talents-and ends up helping save the kingdom of High Norland from the fearsome Lubbock. Brought up by her doting parents to be utterly "respectable" (which in her case translates to being astonishingly useless), Charmain is an unlikely heroine. Yet she easily holds center stage, even when the flamboyant Wizard Howl (of Moving Castle fame) appears midway through the novel. Beguiling enough on their own, Charmain's big and small adventures (bickering with the boy who comes to stay; attempting housework with hilarious results; mediating the disputes of the disgruntled tiny blue men who work behind the scenes) gain an added urgency thanks to the lurking menace of the Lubbock, who is easily among the scariest villains Jones has ever created. A tale to luxuriate in. Ages 12-up. (June)

Children's Literature

Diana Wynne Jones writes marvelous fantasy. Her imagination is always vivid, her characters real, and her tales hold both humor and heart. Wynne Jones's sequel to Howl's Moving Castle is a case in point. Yes, she repeats the same conceit of expandable rooms and inner spaces, but the sequel's tone is quite different from the original. Her heroine Charmaine—suborned to care for her wizard Great Uncle William's household in his absence—is a proud, bookish, self-contained young lady who wages her own private war against the forces of evil with a mixture of early ineptness and growing control. While the entire story is a quiet coda to Howl's dramatics, there is enough small scale action to keep the reader riveted: the antics of the orphan dog Waif; the arrival of young Peter to spar with Charmaine; and, of course, the reintroduction of the Wizard Howl's entire family—with Howl himself disguised as the most miserable of lisping brats. Oh, and there is a decrepit Royal Family and missing gold thrown into the plot pot as well. It all makes for an amusing, comfortable, leisurely read. Would there were more of these! Reviewer: Kathleen Karr

More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews

School Library Journal

Gr 5-10- Sheltered teenager Charmain Baker is sent by her domineering great-aunt to house-sit for a distant relative, the royal wizard. She finds that his residence has myriad magical rooms and hallways and soon learns that there is trouble in the seemingly peaceful kingdom of High Norland. The treasury is disappearing, and no one knows where the money is going. Princess Hilda invites Sophie Pendragon, the main character from Howl's Moving Castle (1986), to come help solve the mystery, with her husband, Howl, disguised as an annoying preschooler, and the fire-demon Calcifer. A lubbock, one of Jones's more threatening magical creations, and its offspring, the lubbockins, threaten the kingdom, and it's up to Charmain and her nascent magical talents-and her new friends-to save the day. A whirlwind conclusion sets all to rights and leaves Charmain ready to start life outside of her parents' shadow. Sophie and Howl play background roles here, as in Castle in the Air (HarperCollins, 2001), but readers will find Charmain much to their liking as she develops from a girl who is unable to take care of herself into a proactive and adventurous young woman.-Beth L. Meister, Pleasant View Elementary School, Franklin, WI

Kirkus Reviews

Snark and affection abound in a colorful world filled with unfortunately dyed laundry, enormous kobold-built cuckoo clocks and horrifying cooking experiments. This third book in the Howl's Moving Castle (1986, etc.) series introduces Charmain, a crankily respectable girl in the kingdom of High Norland. Charmain's parents forbid anything that isn't ladylike or elegant (including cooking, tidying, magic and playing with other children). When Charmain is volunteered to housesit for sick Great-Uncle William, a wizard, she finds herself thrown into a muddled and magical international incident. Charmain's exposure to sorcerous power and national intrigue interest her less then the smaller but more personal growth opportunities available: befriending a wizard's apprentice, acquiring her first dog, learning how to do laundry. Sulky Charmain develops into a crotchety protagonist capable of empathy and self-sacrifice but still a fully realized crosspatch who comes into her own in a convoluted climax that is trademark Wynne Jones yet holds together unusually well. Fan-pleasing series regulars Howl, Sophie and Calcifer play major roles, but this joyfully chaotic tale stays Charmain's-and a good thing, too. (Fantasy. 11-13)

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061477973
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 5/26/2009
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 432
Sales rank: 47,424
Age range: 10 - 14 Years
Lexile: 0830L (what's this?)
Series: Howl's Castle Series , #3
Product dimensions: 5.10 (w) x 7.50 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

In a career spanning four decades, award-winning author Diana Wynne Jones wrote more than forty books of fantasy for young readers. Characterized by magic, multiple universes, witches and wizards—and a charismatic nine-lived enchanter—her books were filled with unlimited imagination, dazzling plots, and an effervescent sense of humor that earned her legendary status in the world of fantasy. From the very beginning, Diana Wynne Jones’s books garnered literary accolades: her novel Dogsbody was a runner-up for the 1975 Carnegie Medal, and Charmed Life won the esteemed Guardian children’s fiction prize in 1977. Since then, in addition to being translated into more than twenty languages, her books have earned a wide array of honors—including two Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honors—and appeared on countless best-of-the-year lists.

Her work also found commercial success: In 1992 the BBC adapted her novel Archer’s Goon into a six-part miniseries, and her bestselling Howl’s Moving Castle was made into an animated film by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki in 2004. The film was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006, and became one of the most financially successful Japanese films in history.

Diana Wynne Jones has also been honored with many prestigious awards for the body of her work. She was given the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award in 1999 for having made a significant impact on fantasy, received a D.Lit from Bristol University in 2006, and won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Convention in 2007.

Born just outside London in 1934, Diana Wynne Jones had a childhood that was “very vivid and often very distressing”—one that became the fertile ground where her tremendous imagination took root. When the raids of World War II reached London in 1939, the five-year-old girl and her two younger sisters were torn from their suburban life and sent to Wales to live with their grandparents. This was to be the first of many migrations, one of which brought her family to Lane Head, a large manor in the author-populated Lake District and former residence of John Ruskin’s secretary, W.G . Collingwood. This time marked an important moment in Diana Wynne Jones’s life, where her writing ambitions were magnified by, in her own words, “early marginal contacts with the Great.” She confesses to having “offending Arthur Ransome by making a noise on the shore beside his houseboat,” erasing a stack of drawings by the late Ruskin himself in order to reuse the paper, and causing Beatrix Potter (who also lived nearby) to complain about her and her sister’s behavior. “It struck me,” Jones said, “that the Great were remarkably touchy and unpleasant, and I thought I would like to be the same, without the unpleasantness.” Prompted by her penny-pinching father’s refusal to buy the children any books, Diana Wynne Jones wrote her first novel at age twelve and entertained her sisters with readings of her stories. Those early stories—and much of her future work—were inspired by a limited but crucial foundation of classics: Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, The Arabian Nights, and Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages.

Fantasy was Jones’s passion from the start, despite receiving little support from her often neglectful parents. This passion was fueled further during her tenure at St. Anne’s College in Oxford, where lectures by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis increased her fascination with myth and legend. She married Medievalist John Burrow in 1956; the couple have three sons and six grandchildren.

After a decade of rejections, Diana Wynne Jones’s first novel, Changeover, was published in 1970. In 1973, she joined forces with her lifelong literary agent, Laura Cecil, and in the four decades to follow, Diana Wynne Jones wrote prodigiously, sometimes completing three titles in a single year. Along the way she gained a fiercely loyal following; many of her admirers became successful authors themselves, including Newbery Award winners Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman, and Newbery Honor Book author Megan Whalen Turner. A conference dedicated solely to her work was held at the University of West England, Bristol, in 2009. Diana Wynne Jones continued to write during her battle with lung cancer, which ultimately took her life in March 2011. Her last book, Earwig and the Witch, was published by Greenwillow Books in 2012.

Read an Excerpt

House of Many Ways

Chapter One

In which Charmain is volunteered to look after a wizard's house

"Charmain must do it," said Aunt Sempronia. "We can't leave Great-Uncle William to face this on his own."

"Your Great-Uncle William?" said Mrs. Baker. "Isn't he—" She coughed and lowered her voice because this, to her mind, was not quite nice. "Isn't he a wizard?"

"Of course," said Aunt Sempronia. "But he has—" Here she too lowered her voice. "He has a growth, you know, on his insides, and only the elves can help him. They have to carry him off in order to cure him, you see, and someone has to look after his house. Spells, you know, escape if there's no one there to watch them. And I am far too busy to do it. My stray dogs' charity alone—"

"Me too. We're up to our ears in wedding cake orders this month," Mrs. Baker said hastily. "Sam was saying only this morning—"

"Then it has to be Charmain," Aunt Sempronia decreed. "Surely she's old enough now."

"Er—" said Mrs. Baker.

They both looked across the parlor to where Mrs. Baker's daughter sat, deep in a book, as usual, with her long, thin body bent into what sunlight came in past Mrs. Baker's geraniums, her red hair pinned up in a sort of birds' nest, and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. She held one of her father's huge juicy pasties in one hand and munched it as she read. Crumbs kept falling on her book, and she brushed them off with the pasty when they fell on the page she was reading.

"Er... did you hear us, dear?" Mrs. Baker said anxiously.

"No," Charmain said withher mouth full. "What?"

"That's settled, then," Aunt Sempronia said. "I'll leave it to you to explain to her, Berenice, dear." She stood up, majestically shaking out the folds of her stiff silk dress and then of her silk parasol. "I'll be back to fetch her tomorrow morning," she said. "Now I'd better go and tell poor Great-Uncle William that Charmain will be taking care of things for him."

She swept out of the parlor, leaving Mrs. Baker to wish that her husband's aunt was not so rich or so bossy, and to wonder how she was going to explain to Charmain, let alone to Sam. Sam never allowed Charmain to do anything that was not utterly respectable. Nor did Mrs. Baker either, except when Aunt Sempronia took a hand.

Aunt Sempronia, meanwhile, mounted into her smart little pony-trap and had her groom drive her beyond the other side of town where Great-Uncle William lived.

"I've fixed it all up," she announced, sailing through the magic ways to where Great-Uncle William sat glumly writing in his study. "My great-niece Charmain is coming here tomorrow. She will see you on your way and look after you when you come back. In between, she will take care of the house for you."

"How very kind of her," said Great-Uncle William. "I take it she is well versed in magic, then?"

"I have no idea," said Aunt Sempronia. "What I do know is that she never has her nose out of a book, never does a hand's turn in the house, and is treated like a sacred object by both her parents. It will do her good to do something normal for a change."

"Oh, dear," said Great-Uncle William. "Thank you for warning me. I shall take precautions, then."

"Do that," said Aunt Sempronia. "And you had better make sure there is plenty of food in the place. I've never known a girl who eats so much. And remains thin as a witch's besom with it. I've never understood it. I'll bring her here tomorrow before the elves come, then."

She turned and left. "Thank you," Great-Uncle William said weakly to her stiff, rustling back. "Dear, dear," he added, as the front door slammed. "Ah, well. One has to be grateful to one's relatives, I suppose."

Charmain, oddly enough, was quite grateful to Aunt Sempronia too. Not that she was in the least grateful for being volunteered to look after an old, sick wizard whom she had never met. "She might have asked me!" she said, rather often, to her mother.

"I think she knew you would say no, dear," Mrs. Baker suggested eventually.

"I might have," Charmain said. "Or," she added, with a secretive smile, "I might not have."

"Dear, I'm not expecting you to enjoy it," Mrs. Baker said tremulously. "It's not at all nice. It's just that it would be so very kind—"

"You know I'm not kind," Charmain said, and she went away upstairs to her white frilly bedroom, where she sat at her nice desk, staring out of her window at the roofs, towers, and chimneys of High Norland City, and then up at the blue mountains beyond. The truth was, this was the chance she had been longing for. She was tired of her respectable school and very tired of living at home, with her mother treating her as if Charmain were a tigress no one was sure was tame, and her father forbidding her to do things because they were not nice, or not safe, or not usual. This was a chance to leave home and do something—the one thing—Charmain had always wanted to do. It was worth putting up with a wizard's house just for that. She wondered if she had the courage to write the letter that went with it.

For a long time she had no courage at all. She sat and stared at the clouds piling along the peaks of the mountains, white and purple, making shapes like fat animals and thin swooping dragons. She stared until the clouds had wisped away into nothing but faint mist against a blue sky. Then she said, "Now or nothing." After that she sighed, fetched her glasses up on...

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Anonymous

Posted May 7, 2009

House of Many Ways is amazing!

I have chosen the story, House of Many Ways for my fantasy, outside reading novel. House of Many Ways is about a girl named Charmain, who is sent to take care of her Great Uncle William's house while he is sick and being taken care of by elves. Her great Uncle William is the wizard of High Norland. We later find out that he is sick with an egg of a dangerous and unkind blue creature called a Lubbock. Meanwhile, while Charmain is in the house she hears a knock on the door. It is a young boy saying that he was sent to the house by his mother to be the wizard's apprentice. The boy, Peter, will be staying with her until the wizard arrives from being treated. During this, Charmain wrote a letter to the king of High Norland to help out around the castle, it was accepted and the dog that is at the house becomes attached to her and helps her along her journeys. They later find out that the only way to kill a Lubbock egg is by a fire demon. Charmain knows one from the castle and is sent on a mission to get him. There are many positives to this fantasy book that I chose. One that pops right into my mind is imagination. The author of this novel, Diana Waynne, she has an amazingly imaginative mind. All of the detail that was put into this story made it seem like there was a movie playing in my head. Another positive about House of Many Ways is that it was the kind of book that I couldn't put down. Those are my favorite kind of books! I also liked that there were a variation of made up creatures, such as the fire demon. This book was very different from most of the books that I have read and it had an interesting, but enjoyable plot. another good thing about this book is that it was perfect for my age group. One other it is one of those books that when you read all of the topics you will be surprised by all of them. Lastly, after i read this book i wanted it to keep going because it got so interesting and it left you hanging at the end. There were only three negatives that I hade about this book. The first was that the only lack of detail was explaining more about the creatures visual and where the animals lived, also she could have explained more of how long they lived for and other facts about these creatures in the book. The second negative was that Diana Waynne could have explained more about the location of High Norland. she could have made up a more specific location or located it at a real location. Thirdly, Diana Waynne could have explained more of what Great Uncle William's house looks like. Otherwise, the detail was great! The writing style of the author was very clear and I could understand the point of the plot very well. I could also understand the topics she had very clearly. Over all Diana's writing very straight forward and understandable. I would recommend House of Many Ways to any who likes learning about different kinds of people and fantasy. There are a lot of surprises that you wouldn't expect from this kind of book. If you are interested in made up places and animals, this is the kind of fantasy book for you. These are a few reasons why I would recommend this book to people who like fantasy. This fantasy book is a sequel to Howl's moving Castle and Castle in the Air. These two books also have a similar writing style to House of Many Ways. This is one of the best novels that I have read in a long time because I like this genre, fantasy, and if people like fantasy too this is the kind of book for them. I loved House of Many Ways!

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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TeensReadToo

Posted November 1, 2008

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Reviewed by Elly for TeensReadToo.com

When book lover Charmain Baker has to go and take care of Great Uncle William Norland's (a wizard) house while he is away, she is in for a surprise.

Soon after arriving, she discovers that the letter she sent to the King was answered, and he wants her to work with him in the Royal Library. Then Sophie Pendragon, Wizard Howl, and Morgan arrive, making the palace almost a nursery.

The Wizard Howl and Sophie ask Charmain to help them look for the King's disappearing gold by looking for any mention of debts or loans in the records she is reviewing for the King.

With help from new characters Waif and Peter Charmain, the plot gets thrown into a confusing mystery. Diana Wynne Jones's sequel to HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE will keep readers breathless as they follow Charmain through her never-ending surprises and encounters with kobolds, lubbocks and elves.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who enjoys Diana Wynne Jones's writing or wants a fascinating fantasy mystery. Although this book is a sequel, it can be read without any prior knowledge of the first book.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted September 10, 2008

Dear fellow book dorks

I definitely recommend this book. It's about one of use! The book dork! While the main character is a little spoiled she does quickly gets over it. She just wants to read but finds herself in a story of her own. anyway its a good book and it is a sequel to Howls moving castle but Howl and sophie are not main characters but it is about them too so it's funny and interesting.I LIKED IT!

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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kellie0223

Posted January 28, 2011

An absorbing read

While this book doesn't revolve around Sophie and Howl, you do eventually get to a satisfying tie-in with their characters towards the end. The main character is very likeable and I was just as drawn in as I was when I read Howl's Moving Castle.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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BooksMakeMeHappy

Posted October 4, 2009

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Absorobingly Entertaining

I bought this book because I loved Howl's Moving Castle, but I actually like this book more! Charmaine (the main character) is so interesting and the plot has so many things going on at once, just like it Howl's Moving Castle. It's interesting how everything twists up together later on. This book demands a reread to catch all the little foreshadowing bits. I love it and am currently rereading it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Jolliday

Posted August 22, 2009

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Hints of Genius

I liked this story mostly. I don't consider it to be the strongest of Diana Wynne Jones's books, but it is worth reading at least once. There are a lot of characters worth getting to know, and the world is wonderfully realized, but I'm of the opinion that either the story needed to be entirely about Charmain and the the house, or entirely about Howl and Sophie and Morgan and their friends--or the book needed to be about two hundred pages longer to fit everything in. There are fascinating parts to everything, glimmers of genius, but sometimes I think that Ms. Jones was writing this as a sort of "here, here's your sequel, now leave me alone so I can do what I really want."

Not that I blame her. L. Frank Baum felt just about the same way about Dorothy and Oz. But I really would have liked the entire story to unfold from the house--or for Charmain to have done most of the work in the story. She's a wonderful character, and one that makes a nice change from the typical fantasy heroine (not that any of Diana Wynne Jones's books have what you would call the "typical" fantasy heroine). But I wanted her to play more of a part in things. Things seem to happen around her rather than her making things happen.

That said, this book is worth reading at least once. I've only read it once, so I might like it more when I read it again. Oh, and be warned--the cover says this is _the_ sequel to Howl's Moving castle. There's another book in between Howl's Moving Castle and this one called A Castle In the Air. You don't _have_ to read it in order to understand this book, but it's great fun.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Lindsey_Miller

Posted July 5, 2009

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Cute, but not as good as Howl's Moving Castle

At first, since I was expecting this to be a direct sequel with Howl and the whole gang as the main characters, I was a bit disappointed. Howl's Moving Castle is my favorite Studio Ghibli film, thus I was hoping for a repeat of that wonderful story. However, Charmain becomes a lovable character very quickly, and although Howl's transformation into Twinkle, the annoying little child with a lisp, makes him a little less endearing than in his previous book, it adds to the book overall to have him there with the other characters.

However, in comparison, this novel skews to a younger audience than its predecessor, and lacks the same sort of social commentary that Howl makes. One of the general recurring themes of the Studio Ghibli films is the horror of war, and few stories do that as much justice as Howl, in which a war is started and thousands die just because of a game played by the royalty of neighboring countries. This text doesn't really have any of those same sorts of themes, and it's mostly about a cross and overprotected little girl struggling to grow up while she strives, often in vain, to be a better person. All said, though, it's a fun afternoon read, or a great bedtime story.

-Lindsey Miller, www.lindseyslibrary.com

1 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted August 28, 2008

A Great Read

I thought the book was preety good.The main character was a little spoiled, but you get used to it. I read this after I read Howl's Moving Castle and expected to see more of Howl and Sophie, but they weren't the main characters. Overall it was a good read. I was spellbound to this book. This author creates a world you will love.

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted April 7, 2012

Pretty Good

This book was pretty good it picked up my attention really quick but once I got to the last couple of chapters it kind of slowed down so i closed the book and was done reading that so really not the book i would recomend for myself
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Anonymous

Posted April 6, 2012

Wow!

If my house was like that, my whole life would be an adventure! Including seeing how much the pile of laundry expands!
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Anonymous

Posted March 19, 2012

Ok

I really likeit but it was a litle weird.... LIKE ME :))
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MissPrint

Posted February 27, 2012

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House of Many Ways is Jones' third novel featuring Howl and Sophie, following Howl's Moving Castle from 1986 (also a movie adaptation made by Hayao Miyazaki in 2004) and Castle in the Air from 1990. Although all of these novels stand alone very nicely, certain nuances of the story will make more sense if you read the novels in sequence. Certain characters' cameo appearances will also be more satisfying with the background afforded by reading all three novels.

This particular story starts in High Norland with Charmain Baker. Born to lovely parents determined to make their daughter respectable, Charmain is ill equipped for almost everything besides eating and reading--a fact that has escaped the notice of her parents and doesn't much bother Charmain.

The only problem with her tame existence is that Charmain is unable to do the one thing she has always, desperately, wanted to do: work in the royal library with the elderly Princess Hilda and her even more elderly father, the king of High Norland.

As part of her plan to gain entry to the library, Charmain agrees to watch the royal wizard's house while he undergoes treatment from elves for a mysterious illness. Upon her arrival at the house, it becomes clear that this house-sitting venture will be more than Charmain had expected what with the angry kobolds and the sudden arrival of the wizard's new apprentice, Peter. It may, however, also be exactly what she needs.

There are a lot of reasons that I like this book and its predecessors in the series. Diana Wynne Jones has a particularly charming writing style that is both cozy and engaging. There is something decidedly old fashioned about the prose, ranging from the chapter titles reminiscent of those found in E. M. Forster's A Room With a View to the swift and casual narration so similar to the voice Jane Austen favored in her novels. At the same time, amazingly, Jones integrates elements of the fantastic like magic and wizards and elves without ever seeming outlandish or contrived.

House of Many Ways is a particularly appealing title, by an already well-liked artist. First and foremost, for obvious reasons, I like that Charmain is a bookish character who wants to work in a library. The other characters that populate this novel, including some from both Howl's Moving Castle and Castle in the Air, are original and appealing though not by any means perfect.

Even Charmain, the novel's heroine, has moments where she is quite mistaken about a variety of things. Happily, never long enough to become problematic for readers. At the same time, it is refreshing that Charmain is utterly useless despite her being so well read. When she arrives at the wizard's house she cannot cook, wash clothes, or do many other things that most people take for granted.

This story is about magic and a fair bit of adventure. But it is also about what every college senior has to think about sooner or later: being an adult. As the novel progresses, Charmain learns about more than books and magic, she learns how to grow up and take care of herself, even when that means admitting she might need some help.
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Anonymous

Posted February 26, 2012

A let down

I have read the whole "Howl's Moving Castle" series and I must confess, I was dissapoited. After seeing the movie of the first book, I loved it, and read the book, hoping to get more details. I found that the author did not elabarate on all of the fasinating characters and magic, like she could have, but was still captivated by the story and loved the first book (Although she could have wrote more about Sophie and Howl's life together, this being my favorite part, and she only wrote a couple pages at the end). So I of course picked up the 'sequel' "Castle in the Air" excitedly expecting more details in the lives of my favorite characters, Howl, Sophie, and Calcifer. However, the previous characters only play a very small part, and the story follows a completely different story line. I do not think it should have been called a sequel if it was not going to follow the origial story line and have the same main characters. The third book was better, because the original characters played more of a role. By itself it is a charming book, but when veiwed as a whole, it had almost nothing to do with the previous book and as the last book in the series, did not answer some unresolved issues in the series.
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Vera-Iconica

Posted January 5, 2012

more from this reviewer

<3

I love this book!
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Caoimhe

Posted July 29, 2011

more from this reviewer

Awesome Read!

Diana Jones did an amazing job on writing this. It's a great read that people young and old can enjoy a lot. The prequel to this "Howl's Moving Castle" is just as great. If you like this book, read the first one!
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8459187

Posted June 19, 2011

:)

The book was just amazing. The author did a good job of writing the story and you can easily relate to the characters

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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5243322

Posted May 15, 2011

Amazing!

Diana Wynne Jones did a fantastic job creating suspense, adventure, and the character's personalities. I recommend to all fantasy lovers.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Taylor_Summers

Posted February 24, 2010

I Also Recommend:

Hilarious as usual...

Even though this book took me a little while longer to read, satisfaction was indeed guaranteed! The characters are very well-rounded in realism and behavior, so I had an easy time relating to them. (Especially Charmain!)I love all the new and old characters in this book, it fells as though I know them! I recommmend this book for anyone who's read Howl's Moving Castle, as well as Castle in the Air. I enjoyed reading House of many ways, especially because it was hilaroius as usual!
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Anonymous

Posted August 14, 2011

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Anonymous

Posted June 29, 2011

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A let down

<3

Awesome Read!

:)

Amazing!

Hilarious as usual...