Unexpected Magic book discussion

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I want one of these book things. Um, if you were watching my 18 Aurora coverage, you'll know I was enjoying this one a great deal.

[00:00:11]It's a kind of weird I picked it up uh Unexpected Magic. It's a bunch of short stories by Diana Wynne Jones, someone I never heard of.

[00:00:23]Um, I picked it up probably from one of the little free libraries maybe with some significant hesitation because it's not an author I recognize.

[00:00:35]Uh, it's it's not, you know, I'm figuring it's going to just be garbage, you know, because quite often when I do pick up uh fantasy type stuff, and this looks like it's going to be fantasy, it also says uh let's see.

[00:00:56]I don't know. It doesn't It doesn't really The back doesn't really give me a a view one way or the other.

[00:01:04]What it ended up being is this collection of short stories with one longer one at the end. Uh, probably a novella size, but it was published on its own as a little book apparently.

[00:01:19]Um, which just sort of buffet you around with you know, weirdness and whatnot. You have no idea uh what's going to happen.

[00:01:33]And then quite often there's a twist or a slap at the end that is enjoyable. The The writing is nothing, you know, it it's not like uh some kind of great literature or something. It's good writing, you know.

[00:01:48]>> [laughter] >> It's what you expect in a modern author, to be honest. Um, but then as I looked more into uh stuff about her, you know, just little missing on Wikipedia and whatnot.

[00:02:01]Um it turns out she was mainly a young adults or children's author.

[00:02:09]Most of the stories don't feel that way.

[00:02:11]Uh >> [clears throat] >> uh Some of the They feel Some of them feel like uh the old-school science fiction and stuff that always ended with a twist. Um or or or that often ended with a twist.

[00:02:34]This the her writing really keeps you kind of off balance in the sense that you have theories about what's going to happen and you're not necessarily right about them.

[00:02:46]Uh I don't know. I think I was right more often than not. When I did come up By the time I'd get a theory I But again, I felt very buffeted about by it and and you know, not able to come up with a solid theory from the beginning of most of these stories. Uh They're not high fantasy by any means.

[00:03:11]Uh They're usually >> [snorts] >> They come closer to magical realism than anything else to be honest. Uh in in terms of like not often being very close uh to to the modern world. Um or or or a not so modern world, but uh We're we're not talking about, you know, all kinds of different races and stuff like that.

[00:03:41]Uh you know, fighting the great evil or anything along those lines. Um the uh I'm trying to find the index here and across other books.

[00:03:55]Uh There were at least one or two in here.

[00:04:01]It's hard to tell.

[00:04:04]In particular that were science fiction.

[00:04:08]One of them kind of in a um uh sort of like a Dragon Riders type of Not not really. Uh but in that kind of universe where it's not clear that you're looking at science fiction but then you realize wait but you're on one planet and there's not a lot of technology until late in the game. It's in the story. It's it's it's more of a you know a pre-industrial um or at least pre-20th century type of world. You're not sure just where it is but people are you know in time but people are riding horses and stuff like that.

[00:04:53]Uh There were some that just you know kind of defy any kind of explanation.

[00:05:01]The first story here The Girl Jones there's no magic in it at all. It's it's just sort of a child's retelling of you know a particularly annoying day.

[00:05:16]It almost feels like it could fit in with like Mark Twain or something like that in his type of writing.

[00:05:22]Um when I did look things up about her not only did I find out that she writes mainly young adult stuff but I also found out that a whole bunch of people apparently cited her as uh you know an inspiration towards their own work whenever an influence on their their own work more than an inspiration.

[00:05:42]Um The only one that I remember recognizing was uh Terry Pratchett.

[00:05:50]And it's kind of funny because again, she's been put forward as sort of a children's story type of writer.

[00:06:00]But I compare There's some humor in in her work, too.

[00:06:05]I I compare her to like Terry Pratchett.

[00:06:08]And it's just like and also to because he is on my mind I picked up a book by him recently that I haven't started haven't read yet, but I may have more than one.

[00:06:22]Piers Anthony.

[00:06:23]Who I kind of take as these um epitomes of very juvenile seeming writing. I'm like, yeah, I can enjoy reading it. It's fine and all. This has none of that. This feels like it's written, you know, uh not in that It doesn't feel like it's written by a 13-year-old is I guess what I'm trying to say. Whereas the Pratchett and the and the Piers Anthony feel like quite often they're just I don't know.

[00:06:59]>> [laughter] >> I don't I don't know how to put it in what what it's about. It's sort of like this shyness about sexuality, kind of blushing look at it, and then this very like juvenile humor thrown in all over the place.

[00:07:16]It just it it feels that way. There's none of that here. But then again, a lot of the stuff that's like for young adults and stuff, I don't find particularly juvenile when I read it, either. I'm thinking here of things like Harry Potter and um um oh, what the uh The Hunger Games one.

[00:07:41]They feel like they're written about characters, you know, in in real situations, and it just happens to have younger characters as the protagonist. And that's quite often the case here. And it's not written in a way that's at all difficult to approach.

[00:08:04]But then again, most best sellers and most common modern fiction is is not written in a way that's difficult to approach, you know. You're not going to see Ulysses here, right?

[00:08:15]>> [laughter] >> Um, the one exception to that that I felt and it wasn't particularly juvenile, but it gave a little bit of a hint of it, was that final longer story.

[00:08:30]Um, it felt like there were moments in it, I don't know, where uh you know, things got resolved too easily.

[00:08:47]Friendships were made in the in weird sort of ways. Characters were more two-dimensional and everything. And uh I actually, you know, it was enjoyable again to read enough, I guess, but it didn't feel anything like the rest of the book. Um, maybe, you know, maybe her longer works are less intriguing in that sort of way. I did find that the short stories really really enjoyable. Uh I felt kind of let down as I was reading that final one.

[00:09:15]Although again, I I wanted to find get to the end of the story.

[00:09:18]And [snorts] I don't know if it had exactly a twist to it, uh but where it was going where it was ending up going to was obvious. The only question was really uh how clumsy or how clumsily it would get there. And I again, I felt like the way that it kind of tied things together, the unwillingness to have like main characters kill other people or uh have anybody good die or anything like that.

[00:09:48]Um even though there were a couple of deaths of good people or supposedly good people uh baked into the story uh was uh I- I- I- I- it just it didn't feel all that believable.

[00:10:04]Uh the rescues and stuff it all all felt I don't know, too contrived uh by a lot and was far and away the weakest thing in the entire book. Uh the short stories were very good. The if it was just that one little uh novella or whatever and I'm not sure it's the whole thing, but it seems like it is.

[00:10:32]Uh I I could definitely see because there were hints at places of stuff happening 100 years in the future in that location that like that would fit in a little bit more that that it could fit into a much larger work, but I don't think it's one of her serieses or anything. Anyhow, I had enjoyment enough with this that when you know, when I first picked it up and started reading it I was like, "Eh, this is probably going to be one I give away.

[00:10:59]I'm enjoying it, but whatever."

[00:11:01]Uh but I think I'm going to keep this one and keep an eye out for anything else she writes. You know, I I mean she's not a young author and this was um at the time of this is writing, you know, to be a to have an influence on Terry Pratchett she couldn't be very young, right?

[00:11:20]Uh this was in 2004.

[00:11:26]Uh so, you know, um it's just odd because it's someone that I never heard of and I feel like I should have at this point from you know what I'm running into and everything across it.

[00:11:45]I'd be interested in seeing other works of hers and see if they're if they fit more into the the short stories which I think are excellent and maybe this is just the cream of the crop or more into what that novella felt like which again kind of kind of sub par I guess but whatever. Anyway, that's that. I've got all kinds of stuff set up here starting starting to work on another another game get it set up and uh it's kind of been a halfway state right now. I don't know if any of it's showing. I don't think so.

[00:12:26]But uh and it's Saturday night so it's going to be a little while before I get this fully fully set up.

[00:12:36]It's got a lot of free set up in it which makes it more difficult. Anyway, let's send this one up.