Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones

[lightreads]

Dark Lord of Derkholm

3/5. A fantasy kingdom collectively decides it has had enough of the tours groups that come through from our world seeking adventure.

I mistakenly thought this would be zany, as it had all the hallmarks – jokes about geese! Animals of all sorts that can talk! Nonsensical prophecies! But actually it's a rather grim tale of exploitation and the costs of it. This fantasy land is forced to conform itself to tourist ideas, and in so doing it teaches many of its people, including those who hate the tours, to think of life and other people as their playthings. It's a hard lesson for a lot of them, including the putative good guys.

And I'm not sure this stuck the landing? It stuck a landing, I'll give it that. But I have a sinking suspicion that DWJ was not actually entirely aware of all the kind of exploitation she put in here. Like, the main guy has two human kids and five talking griffin kids, and it's all charming blended family, right? Except he's also bread a talking winged horse that, for absolutely no reason, is chattel and not a child even though I'm damned if I can see the difference.

Comments

[runpunkrun]

I had the same kind of problems with the dad in this book, and it stopped me from finding it charming and zany.

[lokifan]

Yeah I mean, I actually think it IS zany but it's definitely properly dark too. And yeah, Pretty seems like a person.

[jadelennox]

I used to teach this book and I was always startled at the interactions between students who took it at face value (most of them) with those who saw those other levels. Same with those students who see what happened to Shona as a particularly heinous attack (content warning content warning!) and those who didn't.

[lightreads]

Yes, that! It was startling. I said to my wife, who hasn't read this for possibly decades, "and wtf with the sexual assault?" and she was like "....what sexual assault?"