Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones

[lightreads]

Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Adorable. It’s a DWJ book, so it’s all multi-universe wizards who end up solving their problems while attending a scifi convention, also baby animals. It is sweet and silly and one of those stories where every plot thread converges in a charmingly improbable bow with built in deus ex machina. But it’s DWJ, so it is also wryly observed, a little dry, a little piercing. But still kind. I mean, it’s set at a scifi convention in all the embarrassing/awesome/exhausting spectacle you’d expect, and she is so droll about it – like when you facepalm but you’re grinning behind it.

I love her like this, writing about grownups but for young people. (Rather than a lot of her books about children for children, which often bore me.) She had this way of writing about adults for children that keeps them from being aliens. Hell, it’s DWJ – the aliens aren’t alien. Just a keen eye and a steady hand, that was her.




View all my reviews

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

I would love this book forever for two things: the Nick-at-breakfast scene (which is reportedly based on Neil Gaiman, but I don't actually care) and the way it pulls off that complete tone shift into the mythic at the end.

I have no memory of the sequel.

[jadelennox]

Ahaha see comment below.

[jadelennox]

Apparently Nick uncaffeinated is a barely-veiled Neil Gaiman. (People who know the UK con scene can identify more of the players; that's the only one I can remember.) And yet it doesn't read as inside jokes, but as, well, adults and teens written for kids.

[kate_nepveu]

I know the hotel is a specific hotel, but not any other purported correspondences.

The bit about the orgy on the stairs has always made me wonder whether it's a UK thing, a type-of-con thing, or just sheer luck that _I've_ never stumbled into any such activity . . .

[lightreads]

The bit about the orgy on the stairs has always made me wonder whether it's a UK thing, a type-of-con thing, or just sheer luck that _I've_ never stumbled into any such activity . . .

Definitely not just a UK thing. *cough*.

[kate_nepveu]

Hee.

My peculiar anti-public-sex field strikes again!

[lightreads]

I didn't know that! Now I really want to know if the GoH horror writer who wants to tell everyone that he does it for the money is supposed to be someone.