The Game

This novel is fun, very exciting and just what you expect from Diana Wynne Jones, with human and fantasy worlds colliding and characters moving between human and godly creations. Sent away from her grandparents’ house in disgrace, Hayley arrives at a castle in Ireland to be looked after by a colourful collection of relations, all previously unknown to her. Introduced by her cousins to ‘the Game’, she finds herself in the Mythosphere where characters and actions from myth, legend and folklore enact their lives in a mix of the ordinary and the fabulous. That the family are themselves parallel characters from the Mythosphere means that the mystery of Hayley’s parents’ disappearance turns out to be the result of offending the gods. Finding and freeing them includes real car chases to real houses as a background to the characters’ use of the explosive power of gods. It’s exciting, clever and seemingly effortlessly created – and in case you need it, there’s the prosaic explanation of the myths at the back of the book. There’s a wonderful, early scene, where Hayley is dangled by her ankles through a narrow window to unblock a downpipe that is sending water cascading through the house, which reminds us of the power of Diana Wynne Jones’ imagination, moving from the everyday to startling, exciting and breathless action which dissolves the world’s boundaries. The rest of the book is mostly in a lower gear and the dominance of the other world takes some of the edge, although not the humour, out of the telling.