Chapter Forty-Five: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci

I saw this series by Diana Wynne Jones (one of my favorite authors) on the shelves countless times as a kid, but I somehow never read them until a friend of mine sent them to me when she learned of my love of Jones's books.  They are fantastically fun, marvelously magical books!  There are seven in total: Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, The Wizards of Caprona, Witch Week, Conrad's Fate, The Pinhoe Egg, and Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci.  As you'll quickly find out, Chrestomanci is a title for a government official who is in charge of controlling magic in several series of related worlds (our own being one of them, but not the primary focus of these stories), and the Chrestomanci is chosen for one important quality: he is a (human) enchanter with nine lives (like a cat, but he's a human).  These are really fun tales of magic running amok and being put back to rights, peppered with Jones's typical humor and delightful characters.  I highly recommend them if you enjoy fantasy novels and having fun!