The Game

Diana Wynne Jones
Penguin, 2007

I am ashamed to admit that this is my fiftieth review on this blog, and only my first review of a Diana Wynne Jones book!

Time to set things right.

Haley has never met her cousins before. Her strict and fussy grandmother has always kept her away from the rest of her unruly family. But Haley has crept off to the forbidden mythosphere before, a place woven of colorful story threads, threads with ends that trail through the ordinary world. She's delighted to find that her cousins know about the mythosphere too, and joins them in their secret game, a sort of scavenger hunt where the players collect glass slippers, dragon scales, and golden apples.

There's more than mythical baubles out in the mythosphere. Haley finds clues to the location of her missing parents, her true identity, and the reason her Uncle Jolyon banned the family from the mythosphere in the first place.

Uncle isn't going to be happy.

This book is Diana Wynne Jones at her best--full of wild, world-hopping magic, bubbling with jolly chaos, bristling with danger, and grounded in honest emotion. A little piece of perfection, "The Game" blends real mythology and real life in fantastic ways. For readers twelve and up.