The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is best read when young, or by those with the ability to tap into their inner girl.I enjoyed the evil impostors who gleefully inflict child abuse. 'Wolves' is best read by kids who love to feel a bit of self-pity and delicious horror.Bonnie is a bit of a simpering t...
This book explodes like a firework in the brain, or perhaps like one of the thirteen volcanoes that encircle the misappropriated lake of the title. The ideas, the plot, the situations go beyond the merely outrageous and into the sublimely wonderful. This is a masterpiece of children's fantasy, an...
I first read this book when I was about 8 or 9 years old, and then somehow or other I must have lost the copy - because as an adult I could never remember the title of it, but it always haunted me as a story which I fell in love with. Then, about 7 or 8 years ago, when I happened to describe it ...
Despite being labeled "Wolves, #6" this was the fourth Aiken wrote; I think that discrepancy threw me when I came back to these books after having devoured them as a child. Not surprisingly, her writing style changed over the years, and it shows in these later Wolves books. (Or why there's still ...
Alas and alack, if Midwinter Nightingale felt underdeveloped, this is sadly undercooked, almost a short story. Nonetheless, Aiken's wit and invention are present on almost every page, just not the energy and not the proper momentum that a book featuring plots about Dido's search for a new heir to...
Man, I love these books. The Wolves of Willoughby chase is really good, and deservedly a classic, but where's the love for Dido Twite? Most people I know don't realize that this was a series (the connection to 'Wolves' is a loose one). I love the little spitfire. Anyway, these were so much fun th...
I first read this book (this entire series) fourteen years ago. Since then, it's been one of my favorite books of all time and Dido Twite one of my favorite characters. Dido and Pa is the Silver Chair of the Wolves Chronicles. It's darker, more complex, and it asks some very good questions. Most ...
Unless there is another Aiken book that starts with a boy meeting an annoying girl on a train, I've actually read this before, although I don't remember much about the plot. You'd think an evil werewolf, a missing king, and wantonly murdered cat would be memorable, though, wouldn't you? Maybe I s...
Not strictly a prequel to the Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence (our young hero Owen Hughes re-appears around the time of the plot to slide St Paul’s Cathedral into the Thames at a coronation, in The Cuckoo Tree), The Whispering Mountain can nevertheless be enjoyed as a standalone novel. It als...
A charming story of suspense and intrigue in Regency England, this is probably my favorite Joan Aiken novel read to date. What I find so interesting about reading her books is that they do not feel like "make-believe"...they have a very realistic and truthful component which results in an "anythi...
This book is fantastic--but it takes a little time before the magic has fully kicked in. I read this book out of order, so I can't comment on how it fits in the series...so it's even more impressive how much I enjoyed it.Cons: The beginning often feels cliched and heavy-handed, and you don't real...
I love the Edward Gorey cover. Aiken and Gorey go together perfectly well. Aiken and Gorey sounds like the name of some sort of weird and gothic medical drama, sort of like House, if House investigated talking warts and haemogoblins and phantom limbs where you have an extra pair of hands doing un...