Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Four: Dark Lord of Derkholm

When looking for the book I read before Dark Lord of Derkholm, I came across that library's YA holdings by Diana Wynne Jones, one of my very favorite authors.  She has written dozens of books, most of which I haven't read (now that she's died, I don't want to go through them all too quickly--I'm sort of rationing them out).  But I decided it had been too long since I've read one of her books, and Dark Lord of Derkholm is a new title to me.  (It is also a fairly long book, which appealed to me because when I like a world I want to spend a good bit of time there, though it ended up reading pretty quickly, maybe because I hated to put it down!)  Anyway, Dark Lord of Derkholm was a delight, full of Jones's particular brand of humor, with a large yet interesting cast of characters, a mix of traditional mythologic influences and a unique version of magic, and a complex (some might say convoluted) multi-layer plot that ends up coming together quite nicely by the end, as her books tend to do.  If Dark Lord of Derkholm does feel like many of the other books by Jones (at least the ones I've read), that only made it more enjoyable for me, and it was certainly never predictable!  This is probably not the best book to choose if you are brand new to fantasy (or dislike fantasy), but if you enjoy fantasy and especially if you've enjoyed other books by Jones, I definitely recommend Dark Lord of Derkholm!