Conrad's Fate - Diana Wynne Jones

As my house moving steps up a gear, I am back on the children's books!

“Conrad's Fate” is one of a subset of Diana Wynne Jones's books which feature the character Chrestomanci, an immaculately-attired, nine-lived enchanter and one of the many fictional characters I quite fancy. These books take place in a universe with magic and generally follow the form: a bunch of kids get into worse and worse trouble, until finally Chrestomanci turns up in his tophat and tails, looking humpable and saves the day. Alas, in this book, he is only 12, so you can't lust after him or you'll be hauled away by the police*.

Anyway, back to the plot. Conrad lives is a small resort town in the English Alps with his mother (a renowned feminist author) and his uncle (a bad lot). His uncle runs a bookshop and Conrad has to work in the shop and do all the housework because his mum can't allow herself to be exploited. Looming over their town is the huge castle where the count and countess live. The magic practised there is rumoured to be responsible for all the bad luck in Conrad's family, and the reason his end of the village can never get TV reception. Conrad's evil uncle convinces him that he has terrible Karma due to failing to kill someone he should have killed in a previous life. Conrad is then dispatched with appropriately dire magics to the castle to get a job as a footman and redeem himself when the opportunity comes. On the way he meets a mysterious boy called Christopher who can use magic and claims to be searching for his missing friend.

I enjoyed this book up to the end where, sadly, the denuement really didn't work for me. I am decades older than the intended audience and very fussy, but this was rather a disappointment. It turns out that the Count and Countess are actors and the real Count is the person we all thought was the butler. We are supposed to believe that the Count wanted to see his residence restored to its former glory by the use of magical equipment to play the stock market stored in the castle's wine cellar and the only way he could do this was to disguise himself as his own butler. Bollocks! Come on DWJ, you can do better than that!

*For anyone else who likes Chrestomanci, here's a breakdown (as far as I can remember) of which books he's grown up in, and which he's a child in.

• baby chrestomanci : Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, Conrad's Fate

• grown up: Witch Week, The Magicians of Caprona