Mixed Magics

 

A slight entry in the Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Mixed Magics consists of four stories featuring the great enchanter to greater or lesser degree, published in 2000 to celebrate the reissue of the Chrestomanci series. 

 

I wasn't a massive fan of the first story, 'Warlock at the Wheel', a laboured comic tale of the Willing Warlock and his escapades in a world very similar to our own. The second novella, 'Stealer of Souls,' starring Eric Chant and Tonino Montana from The Magicians of Caprona, is much better, and takes up about half the volume. 

'Carol Oneir's One Hundredth Dream' was fun, though I was slightly sad that Christopher Chant as Chrestomanci had evidently almost completely forgotten Oneir, his only childhood friend at boarding school. Surely you don't forget the boy who takes one of your nine lives by whacking you with a cricket bat. 'The Sage of Theare' barely features Chrestomanci at all and was one of those logic puzzle stories that Diana Wynne Jones obviously enjoyed constructing, but which I personally find a little contrived and confusing for true pleasure (I'm thinking of Hexwood, which muddled the heck out of me).

Mixed Magics is nice to have, but not essential.