#44: Diana Wynne Jones, The Pinhoe Egg (Chrestomanci #6)

[kareila]

Joe & Marianne Pinhoe are the eldest grandchildren of old Gammer Pinhoe, the matriarch of their clan of magicians. The Pinhoes and their neighbors the Farleighs are stewards of secret ancient magics and want nothing to do with the denizens of Chrestomanci Castle just up the road. But when Gammer Pinhoe and Gaffer Farleigh start setting their magics against each other, a full blown feud is quickly stirred up, and it will be largely up to Marianne and her new friend Cat Chant to set things right.

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Having now read through all the Chrestomanci books I'm aware of, I think this the best reading order:

1. Charmed Life - introduces Cat, Christopher, and Millie
2. The Lives of Christopher Chant - Christopher's childhood
3. Conrad's Fate - Christopher and Millie as teenagers
4. The Magicians of Caprona - introduces Tonino Montana
5. Mixed Magics - two of the four short stories include Tonino while visiting Chrestomanci
6. The Pinhoe Egg - takes place immediately after Tonino's return to Caprona
7. Witch Week - not really strongly connected to the other stories at all

My library's online Hoopla service had most of these available for loan, plus a bunch of other miscellaneous DWJ stories besides. Once I figured out that my used hardback copy of The Chrestomanci Quartet was incomplete, I was grateful to be able to download the others so easily.

Comments

[jadelennox]

I don't remember your Caprona review; I wonder, did it work better for you than for me, because of the singing? It's one of my least favorites, not because it's bad, but just because I don't connect to it at all.

(Also it's so interesting, in a Narnia sort of way, to see your reading order! I read them in publication order because I started as a child. I might have read Caprona before Witch Week, based on how old I was when i started reading them, but I know I read Charmed Life first, and everything after Witch Week was published after I started reading. So I've never even thought about them in non-publication order before.)

[kareila]

I was thinking so much about Narnia when I wrote that! I even went so far as to wonder whether Witch Week was the Silver Chair of the Chrestomanci series, lol.

Caprona worked better for me than Witch Week, I think not because of the singing because that's a pretty minor aspect of the story (and it's SO hard to write well about music, it's like dancing about architecture as the old saying goes), but because of the Shakespearean overtones of the setting, and because Tonino's family is so great - I think it's the only non-dysfunctional birth family in any of the Chrestomanci books.

Did you ever read Seraphina by Rachel Hartman? That's my favorite fantasy book about music.