Review: House of Many Ways

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Although I still gave it four stars, I enjoyed this one less than the previous book in the series. That's mainly down to the main character, Charmain. She starts out unpromising, with no skills, no motivation to do anything but read, and a nature which she herself admits is not kind. But we've seen the author take unpromising characters (like the daydreaming hero of the previous book) and give them a convincing and gradual arc towards being effective by the end, so I wasn't too worried.

The problem is that the arc is too gradual, and doesn't really make it all the way to "here is an effective character that we like" before the book ends abruptly. In the previous book, the series heroes (the Pendragons) played an important role in the plot's resolution, but so did the viewpoint character. Here, the viewpoint character doesn't display a lot of agency, and acts more as a messenger and gatherer of information, while the significant steps that resolve the plot are performed by others.

Her relationship with her foil, Peter, also doesn't progress a whole lot through the book. She tries to be kind to him, without notable success, and he tries to get her to be practical, with slight success, and by the end they're almost as much at odds as at their first meeting.

The journey was fun; I always enjoy a magical house, though this one was more or less set-dressing, and if it had been a mundane house that wouldn't have affected the plot much. Charmain's adventures were entertaining, too, but ultimately I was less than fully satisfied with the resolution and her (lack of much) part in it.

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