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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
A delightfully magic romp! I was a bit unsure in the beginning but soon grew to adore the new characters and the adventures they went on. Fantastic!
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
lighthearted
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Castle in the Air is the second book in the Howl’s Moving Castle series, but it felt nothing like the first one.
We follow Abdullah, a carpet merchant who meets a princess named Flower-in-the-Night. When a djinn captures her, he sets off on a mission to rescue her.
This was a tough read for me. I really didn’t enjoy the main character. His overly flowery speech might have been meant to be charming, but I found it annoying. I also couldn’t connect with Flower-in-the-Night, whose main trait seemed to be that she was thin 🫠
What saved this book for me was the way it eventually ties back to the characters from *Howl’s Moving Castle*, along with Diana Wynne Jones’ whimsical writing style, which remains lovely even when the plot doesn’t quite land.
I’m really hoping the next one is better.
We follow Abdullah, a carpet merchant who meets a princess named Flower-in-the-Night. When a djinn captures her, he sets off on a mission to rescue her.
This was a tough read for me. I really didn’t enjoy the main character. His overly flowery speech might have been meant to be charming, but I found it annoying. I also couldn’t connect with Flower-in-the-Night, whose main trait seemed to be that she was thin 🫠
What saved this book for me was the way it eventually ties back to the characters from *Howl’s Moving Castle*, along with Diana Wynne Jones’ whimsical writing style, which remains lovely even when the plot doesn’t quite land.
I’m really hoping the next one is better.
Blatantly offensive to multiple groups of people. Not really interesting enough to continue in addition to being distasteful.
Abdullah is a carpet vendor harried by relatives to get married, but he thrives on make-believe stories he’s been telling himself since childhood, imagining that he’s a lost prince taken in by his father. When he buys a magic carpet from a dubious seller, he finds himself faced with the princess of his dreams–until she’s kidnapped by a mad Djinn. Now Abdullah needs to set out on a quest to find her, to rescue her, and to figure out what to do with this genie, this cat, this soldier, and all the others who seem to keep tagging along.
You might not realize it from the above description, but this novel is a sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle (the novel of which was adapted to the famous Ghibli film). You might also not realize that this novel bears no relation to Castle in the Sky, which is another, unrelated Ghibli Film.
This is a fun adventure meant for younger readers, probably in the early teens or pre-teen ages, and it excels in being simple effective fun. The back-to-back-to-back-to-back reveals of the last few chapters are a little tiresome, and I think it gets a little lost and loses steam in the middle, but there’s a lot of simple–if forgettable–fun here.
Overall Grade: B
lighthearted
medium-paced
I have a hard time giving anything by DWJ less than four stars because the woman was a genius; Castle in the Sky is a 3.5, but I rounded up. After all, I've read it three times.
This book is actually quite well constructed and imaginative, but suffers from being in the Howl universe. Every time I read it, I spend the entire first half of the book wishing for Sophie and Howl and Calcifer instead of focusing on the actual protagonists. Then, when they do appear (in bits and pieces), it's unsatisfactory until the last 15 pages or so.
On its face though, the book flows nicely. Compared to the Grimm style fairy tales that formed the premise for the first book, I am less interested in the Arabian Nights Entertainment stories from which the mythology of this book is loosely cribbed, but Abdullah is a silly and likable protagonist with a lot of heart and he gets even better once the Strangian soldier shows up, providing a foil for his eccentricities.
Overall, I see this book as more of an afterthought to the Howl universe (especially compared with The House of Many Ways, which feels like a direct sequel), sort of like Witch Week was to the Chrestomanci series. Love the idea of a different kind of romp through this world, but in execution I think she did all her new characters a disservice by making us wait so long for what we knew was coming.
This book is actually quite well constructed and imaginative, but suffers from being in the Howl universe. Every time I read it, I spend the entire first half of the book wishing for Sophie and Howl and Calcifer instead of focusing on the actual protagonists. Then, when they do appear (in bits and pieces), it's unsatisfactory until the last 15 pages or so.
On its face though, the book flows nicely. Compared to the Grimm style fairy tales that formed the premise for the first book, I am less interested in the Arabian Nights Entertainment stories from which the mythology of this book is loosely cribbed, but Abdullah is a silly and likable protagonist with a lot of heart and he gets even better once the Strangian soldier shows up, providing a foil for his eccentricities.
Overall, I see this book as more of an afterthought to the Howl universe (especially compared with The House of Many Ways, which feels like a direct sequel), sort of like Witch Week was to the Chrestomanci series. Love the idea of a different kind of romp through this world, but in execution I think she did all her new characters a disservice by making us wait so long for what we knew was coming.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No