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Product Description
A splendid, new, magical adventure from Diana Wynne Jones, set in the worlds of Chrestomanci! Conrad is young, good at heart, and yet is apparently suffering from the effects of such bad karma that there is nothing in his future but terrible things. Unless he can alter his circumstances -- well, quite frankly, he is DOOMED. Conrad is sent in disguise to Stallery Mansion, to infiltrate the magical fortress that has power over the whole town of Stallchester, and to discover the identity of the person who is affecting his Fate so badly. Then he has to kill that person. But can any plan really be that simple and straightforward? Of course it can't! And things start to go very strangely for Conrad from the moment he meets the boy called Christopher! This is trademark DWJ -- packed with laugh-aloud humour, insane logic, spot-on observations, organised chaos, and all wrapped up in a rattling good adventure which oozes magic from every seam. Literally.
Amazon Review
Apart from the occasional short story, Diana Wynne Jones’ fans have been starved of her most famous creation, the dressing-gown wearing magician Christopher Chant--star of all her Chrestomanci novels--for nearly twenty years. It’s been far too long! J.K. Rowling was knee-high to a grasshopper when the first book in this sequence, Charmed Life, hit the shelves in 1977 and, although this hugely talented fantasy author has gone on to create a myriad of other imagined and fantastically crazy worlds, it is her books featuring the world-hopping Chrestomanci that have remained her most appreciated and popular tomes.
In Conrad’s Fate, his uncle tells twelve-year-old Conrad Tesdinic that his constant and terrible luck is the result of a shocking dose of bad karma that within the year could threaten his very existence. He is despatched at once to Stallery Mansion, high in the mountainous Alps above his hometown of Stallchester, to work in disguise as a servant. There, in the magical fortress that seems to dominate the whole town, he must infiltrate its workings and seek out the person who has interfered so disastrously with his fate. Along the way, Conrad strikes up a friendship with a mysterious, self-assured older boy, who has a mission of his own--to find his friend Millie who has hidden herself thereabouts. The discovery that Stallery Mansion lays on a ‘probability fault’ adds gloriously to the wonderment and adventure that inevitably follows. In some ways a prequel to the earlier novels, in that this book features Chant as a teenager before his Chrestomanci guise, there is definitely no need, however, to read it first. Any of other titles such as Witch Week or The Lives of Christopher Chant will be equally superb introductions to this infamous creation and just as entertaining. (Age 10 and over) --John McLay
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