Jones, Diana Wynne - Deep Secret

[oyceter]

This book has got to be the best description of a sf/fantasy con ever.

Rupert Venables is the youngest Magid, tasked with overseeing the affairs of Earth, the Koryfonic Empire, and other worlds in the infinite worlds that no one else really likes to oversee. Unfortunately for him, his mentor has just died, he needs to find a new Magid, all the candidates are horrible, the Koryfonic Empire is falling apart, he needs to find an heir but has no clue how to, and somehow his bumbling neighbor Andrew keeps tangling up his workings. And when his mentor returns, it's as a ghost who puts classical music CDs on endless repeat.

Rupert isn't really having the best month by any means. So he decides to get all the Magid candidates in one place. As assorted fatelines and whatnot would have it, that place ends up being a major magic node and the site of Phantasmacon.

In the meantime, Maree Mallory, one of his Magid candidates, is off having dreams of a threatening thornlady while also attempting to live with her wretched aunt Janine, her less-wretched uncle Ted, and her not-at-all-wretched-but-occasionally-selfish cousin Nick.

Sometimes Diana Wynne Jones doesn't quite sweep me up in her zany plots, but this time, it worked. The hotel of Phantasmacon may be strange because it's caught up in assorted magic-workings, but the experience of having the furthest room from the elevator, having to take eight right turns to get anywhere, assorted room mixups, assorted panels, overpriced hotel food, crowded hotel bars, and general mayhem feels exactly like my own con experiences. Granted, I haven't had many, but Jones gets the energy of the con completely right, as well as the slightly baffling effect it can have on first- (or second-) time congoers.

Added to that, Maree Mallory and her cousin Nick are really wonderful characters, particularly Maree. I grew to really love Rupert as well, and Jones proves to be very good at infusing all the characters with stripes of selfishness, cowardliness or other such qualities while also making them very human at the same time, a la Howl's Moving Castle.

Actually, I wouldn't like the characters half as much if they didn't have their faults.

I had an incredible amount of fun reading this, which was precisely what I needed.

Links:
- pocketgarden's review

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

Nick waking up is reportedly a lovingly-observed description of Neil Gaiman. It never fails to make me laugh.

I wish I knew how she pulled off the switch to the mythic at the end, because it's really remarkable.

Also, I've apparently been to the wrong cons or the wrong floors of con hotels, because I've never seen an orgy.

[oyceter]

Nick waking up was so funny! I suspect I am sometimes like that, though not to the same extent.

I was really impressed with how she handled all the madcap shenanigans, and with how she resolved the plot mythically while keeping people in character.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

A lot of people don't seem to get along with Deep Secret, so I'm glad to see someone else who likes it. I should reread now that I have been to one actual con.

[oyceter]

I have that experience with DWJ's books; sometimes the zaniness works and sometimes it doesn't. But I dearly loved this one.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Phantasmacon is, I am told by people who were there, an only-thinly-disguised and slightly-more-weird-and-mythic retelling of a particular British Science Fiction convention. That hotel, all attendees concur, had unlabeled tesseracts in it (and she didn't in fact exaggerate the hotel at all).

[oyceter]

Hee! That rocks.

[(Anonymous)]

My own favorite bits of this were probably the spooky-eerie, the wait, while keeping the candles burning, for Nick and Maree to return from the Babylon, the journey to somewhere else based around one of my favorite songs ever, "This Ae Night." Loved it!

[oyceter]

Oh cool!

I loved the entire putting together of the Babylon poem.

[chomiji]

This is one of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books! I'm partial to the "witchy dance" scenes, and the scene at Will's (Rupert's brother's) house. Jones really is on-target with the convention experience in general - it also holds for anime/manga cons (but there you get the added plus of even more people in costume, all the time) and strategy/fantasy gaming cons.

Have you tried Fire and Hemlock, and Archer's Goon?

- Cho

[oyceter]

I love the witchy dance scenes as well! And I just love Maree in general.

Fire and Hemlock was actually one of the very first DWJ books I read, and it's still one of my favorites. I mean... Tam Lin! I haven't read Archer's Goon yet, though I think I will look that up in my library.

[chomiji]

Archer's Goon is in many ways a younger book, but it has the same madcap feel of "let's just follow this through to its logical conclusion - even if it doesn't make conventional sense." Bits of it have stuck firmly to our family's collective subconscious, so that we find ourselves suddenly discussing, quite seriously, whether Archer is to blame for certain types of incidents. I long to say more, but I don't want to spoil it.

Enjoy!

- Cho