Though I was captivated early on by the novel’s mystique, a problem with the whole book slowly became apparent to me before too long.
I suppose it helped that Derk has the Herculean task of managing several flesh and blood role-playing campaigns, having him coordinate pretty much all the peoples of his world to try and make it work, but the end result was something that felt very natural and lived in that the book didn’t quite have the luxury of easing the reader in to. With a cast pretty much entirely familiar with their magical world, I was surprised with how seamlessly Jones was able to weave world-building details into the narrative. In the early phases of the story, Jones spends a lot of valuable time establishing the book’s myriad of characters and building up the world.
These beasts talk and act like people the entire book. Only two of them are human, however, and the other five are griffins that he created with magic using, in part, organic materials from him and his wife. Derk, for example, has approximately seven children. At every turn, it seemed to surprise me and revel in its own weirdness. When I first started reading this book, I was enamoured with the fact that I truly had no sense of what direction the story might take me in. In a world utterly steeped in magic, populated by fae folk, werewolves, dragons, griffins, wizards, gods, and demons, where adept magic users can bend reality at will and do the most wondrous things, all must band together to face a foe unlike any they have had to before: Capitalism. This novel, the first in a duo, immediately caught my attention because I’m not sure I’ve ever beheld a fantasy story like this before. I first picked up this book several years ago after learning that Jones was a much more prolific author than I had realized, making me determined to read something of hers that I’d never heard of before. Unfortunately for Derk and his family, that’s him. To do so, they’ll have to appoint the worst wizard for the job of Dark Lord.
Maybe, if they completely sabotage this year’s tours, nobody will ever want to visit again. However, after years of suffering the devastating consequences, the people of this fantasy land have had enough. Chesney, embark upon this journey to experience a real-life fantasy adventure, complete with dragons, battles between the forces of good and evil, and even a Dark Lord to vanquish at the end of their hard-fought quest. These guests, whom visit as Pilgrim Parties under the organization of a ruthless businessman named Mr.
Once a year, a magical fantasy land receives guests from another world. The Dark Lord of Derkholm is a 1998 young adult fantasy novel by author Diana Wynne Jones.
0 kommentar(er)
