I’ve been looking for cozy, comfortable fantasy reads lately, and I’ve seen several recommendations of Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle. Until recently, I had known this name only for the Studio Ghibli animation (which I have never watched either), and I was surprised to discover that it was a novel first. I have read and enjoyed some of Jones’s short stories, so I was hopeful about picking up this novel. Alas, my hopes were soon dashed.

The story follows Sophie, a young hatter who is cursed by the Witch of the Waste to turn into an old woman and to be unable to tell anyone about the curse. Sophie goes in search of someone who can not only break the curse, but recognize that there is a curse to break without her having to tell them. She ends up in the small cottage of the wizard Howl, which is enchanted to look like a mobile castle on the outside. Howl seems to take no notice of Sophie, but his pet fire demon Calcifer recognizes the curse and agrees to help her if she will in turn help him break his contract with Howl, which, for magical reasons, he can’t talk about either. So Sophie settles in as a sort of freelance housekeeper to Howl and his apprentice Michael, while keeping her eyes open for anything she can learn about Howl and Calcifer’s contract.

So far so fairy tale. It’s a strong beginning with a promising cast of characters an interesting set of problems for them to unravel. And then nothing happens. Nothing continues to happen for two-hundred pages, until the last twenty pages when all the plot that didn’t happen in the rest of the novel suddenly comes crashing in like five trains trying to run on the same track at once.

It’s not that the characters don’t do anything for all that time—there are trips to the royal palace, covert visits to sisters, and a jaunt to modern Wales, but none of them make any sense or accomplish anything for the characters. Indeed, most of what the characters do is senseless. Over and over again the novel repeats that Sophie does or says something “without knowing why.” Jones, of course, knows why, and most of these nonsensical acts turn out to be coincidentally relevant in the finale, but far too much of what happens in the story happens because the author is setting up what she thinks is a clever ending, not because it makes sense given what motivates the characters and what they know or think they know at the time.

Indeed, it turns out in the end that Howl knew about Sophie’s curse all along. So did her sisters, not to mention the powerful magic-worker one of her sisters was studying under, and they were all trying to help break the curse. In fact, almost everyone Sophie encounters over the course of the novel knew about her curse and was trying to help her all along, but none of them ever bothered to tell her so. Why not? For no reason I can see other than that it would have broken the dramatic tension before Jones was ready.

Although the story mostly takes place in Howl’s small cottage, I found the atmosphere more stifling than cozy. Howl is an irresponsible jerk who makes everyone around him clean up his messes (both literal and figurative) while he moons over one lady or another. He is moody and mean, given to sulking when he doesn’t get his way, and never shows appreciation for how much work the people around him are doing to keep him afloat. Sophie falls in love with him at the end of the novel, as a fairy tale demands, but for no reason that I can fathom.

The only interesting thing I can point to in the novel is how it cleverly remixes themes and elements from The Wizard of Oz. There is a living scarecrow, a wicked witch in a castle, a humbug of a wizard from our world lost in a fantasy land, and a girl in search of a way back to her familiar life. She even eventually acquires a faithful dog and magical traveling footwear. For all these echoes of Oz, the story never feels like a pastiche or homage; it reimagines and recombines these elements to form an entirely different story. If only that story were any good, it would be an impressive narrative feat.

Howl’s Moving Castle left a bad enough taste in my mouth that I think I’ve been put off Jones for a good while. Maybe someday I’ll give her other works a try, but I need to cleanse my palate a bit first.

Image by Erik Jensen

ICBIHRTB – pronounced ICK-bert-bee – is short for ‘I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read This Before’. It features book classics that have for some reason escaped our notice thus far.