More Narnia than Potter! (Lives of Christopher Chant, The - Diana Wynne Jones)

Member Name: catatonic

Product:	Lives of Christopher Chant, The - Diana Wynne Jones
Date:	19/09/00 (127 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a good entertaining read / alleviates Potter withdrawl.

Disadvantages: As a series disappointing - I wanted more Cat!

Having suffered major withdrawl symptoms after racing through my last Potter book, and reluctant to wait a year to satisfy my craving for the next!, I started on the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones. Some of you may have already read my previous opinion on the 'first' book in this series 'Charmed Life' for those of you that haven't - if you find this interesting then you may want to take a look!

The Lives of Christopher Chant, despite being book two in the series, is actually a prequel.... nothing terribly wrong with that except for the fact that I quite like the idea of continuing with the same characters! Set twenty-five years before the events in 'Charmed life' it tells the tale of a little boy called Christopher who is destined to become the next Chrestomanci ( a kind of head wizard for want of a better definition! ) and suffers the unusual affliction of having nine lives.... now if you've read Charmed Life this will all be sounding rather familiar!

Whilst there are obvious similarities between this story and it's predecessor this isn't a simple re-hashing of the same old plot. Marginally meatier than Charmed Life ( it has 60 odd pages more )this story concentrates on Christopher's ability to escape his dysfunctional home life and visit what he believes to be 'dream worlds'. When his ability to cross worlds is uncovered by his unscrupulous Uncle Christopher finds himself caught up in a web of deceit which threatens the whole world of Chrestomanci.

This book contains a generous dose of magical moments; a troublesome goddess, an abundance of cats, mermaids and dragons and of course the proverbial happy ever after where good wins through. It's also a pretty good read! Whilst this is generally considered to be the second book in the series I don't think it would matter if you hadn't read the first.... in fact the same could be said of all the books in this series as th
ey really don't inter-relate that much!

If you're looking for something to fill in the Potter gap then this may well suffice. Be warned though, I've now read most of the books in this series and each one seems to use different characters, so if you're looking for another Harry to latch on to I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere!

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