The Lives of Christopher Chant – Diana Wynne Jones

I picked this up at a sale and mostly because it said Diana Wynne Jones and I loved her Moving Castle series so much.

It is the first in her Chrestomanci series, which was written long before the Moving Castle series, and I could tell. Still, it was enjoyable and had that familiar Wynne Jones effect of making me stay up far too late reading when I promised myself I’d read a single chapter.

The plot involves a boy called Christopher Chant who can travel to other worlds in his sleep… something he takes for granted and his uncle Ralph sees as a golden opportunity…

Wynne Jones expertly enters the mind of a young boy and brings the reader with her. Her subtlety shines through again, as the real story is hinted at enough for the reader to guess it while the main character is still living in blissful ignorance. She colours the various worlds so skillfully that you can actually believe you’ve visited them.

I put down this book and was immediately eager to pick up the next in the series, Conrad’s Fate (if reading according to the internal timeline, which I have chosen to do).

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