The Game by Diana Wynne Jones
Her parents having died when she was too young to remember them, Hayley Foss has been raised by her strict, commanding grandmother and her more mellow, agreeable grandfather. Her grandmother, who homeschooled Hayley, seems to be completely under the thumb of Hayley’s Uncle Jolyon, and her grandfather less so. Having been very sheltered and isolated, Hayley is shocked when, for a transgression she doesn’t understand, she finds herself exiled to a family home in Ireland, where she’s surrounded for the first time by other children.
In Ireland, Hayley is somewhat taken in by her cousins Harmony and Troy, who are siblings, and heckled by another cousin, Tollie. She also discovers, and participates in, The Game, which the youths of the family sneak out to participate in at night. The Game is a scavenger hunt in which each child is given a mythic task (get a roc’s egg or a dragon’s scale, steal Sleeping Beauty’s spindle without waking her, pluck a golden apple, etc.) and must travel the different paths of a plane known as the mythosphere to get their prizes.
I’m a sucker for mythology and new takes on old tales, and so I very much liked the plotline and reveals of this book. Unfortunately, it’s more like half a book than a full book. DWJ’s books tend to follow a certain plotline, more often than not, and one that follows-sometimes loosely, sometimes closely-the traditional heroic journey. Here, we almost skipped straight from the displaced protagonist beginning to adapt to the strange new world to the climax, followed by a brief wrapup. I’d love for DWJ to revisit this as a longer work, or even follow it up with another short work that better develops things, but as it stands, this is an entertaining work with a lot of potential, but it’s not developed enough to be a really satisfying one.
In Ireland, Hayley is somewhat taken in by her cousins Harmony and Troy, who are siblings, and heckled by another cousin, Tollie. She also discovers, and participates in, The Game, which the youths of the family sneak out to participate in at night. The Game is a scavenger hunt in which each child is given a mythic task (get a roc’s egg or a dragon’s scale, steal Sleeping Beauty’s spindle without waking her, pluck a golden apple, etc.) and must travel the different paths of a plane known as the mythosphere to get their prizes.
I’m a sucker for mythology and new takes on old tales, and so I very much liked the plotline and reveals of this book. Unfortunately, it’s more like half a book than a full book. DWJ’s books tend to follow a certain plotline, more often than not, and one that follows-sometimes loosely, sometimes closely-the traditional heroic journey. Here, we almost skipped straight from the displaced protagonist beginning to adapt to the strange new world to the climax, followed by a brief wrapup. I’d love for DWJ to revisit this as a longer work, or even follow it up with another short work that better develops things, but as it stands, this is an entertaining work with a lot of potential, but it’s not developed enough to be a really satisfying one.