While I don’t think you can possibly describe Diana Wynne Jones as a forgotten author, I think you can get away with calling her an under appreciated one.
Even though I’ve been reading her work for… most of my life? Yeah, most of my life. I am still astonished at how many books she wrote, particularly how many I haven’t read yet. And she influenced so many authors. Wikipedia lists Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Penelope Lively, Robin McKinley, Megan Whalen Turner, Dina Rabinovitch, Neil Gaiman and J.K Rowling as authors who cite her as an influence. (No, I don’t know all of them but there are some huge names on that list)
So it’s safe to safe modern fantasy, particularly urban fantasy, young adult fantasy and children’s fantasy, would look different without her.
Okay, the actual book I just read was Archer’s Goon, which I hadn’t read since around when it came out in paperback. And, honestly, the only thing I really remembered was the twist.
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Major spoilers
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Seriously, I’m going to talk about the big reveal
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Howard Sykes is a thirteen-year-old boy who comes home to find that a huge man with a tiny head sitting in the kitchen, claiming to be from Archer and that he needs two thousand typed words from Howard’s father.
As the story unfolds, we learn that the town is controlled by seven siblings with great, undefined powers. And they are trapped in the town and Howard’s father’s typing is apparently part of it.
(Neil Gaiman has stated that Archer’s Goon is one of his favorite children’s book he read as an adult. And Sandman is centered around seven dysfunctional siblings. Seriously, how much of the modern fantasy landscape exists because of Jones?!)
The structure of the story has Howard and his family hunt down the different siblings with the help of the goon and learning more about them. Each sibling controls a certain aspect of the town like crime or housing or electricity. And they have the interest and ability to rule the world if they were free.
Okay. Twist time. Big time spoilers.
Howard eventually learns that the goon was lying about working for Archer. He’s actually one of the siblings. And Howard learns that he was adopted and he’s one of the siblings too. He’s just going through his third childhood due to time travel shenanigans.
In fact, the real reason the siblings are trapped in the town in because it is the will of their parents to protect Howard when he is too young to use his powers or know himself.
I cannot emphasize enough how little we learn about what the siblings are. We don’t know where they came from, if they are human, how their powers actually work. We don’t even know if the parents are alive or dead. It’s really quite impressive.
What Archer’s Goon does do is explore the nature of families. We have Howard’s biological and adopted families, both of which are hot messes. However, his adopted family is loving and ultimately supportive which is something his biological family isn’t good at.
When Howard is able to see what his adult self was like, the one who set the whole time travel mess in motion for purely selfish reasons, he finds a total jerk who is actually worse than the other siblings. And while it isn’t quite explicitly spelled out, it’s clear that his adopted family is how he can turn out better than that.
I remember liking Archer’s Goon when I first read it back in the 80s. Now, though, I think it’s downright brilliant. It is enthralling character study as well as a commentary about family. It is important to note that the siblings are not depicted as monsters but as dysfunctional and that some of them are trying to do better.
Archer’s Goon may supposed to be a children’s book but I had to be a grownup to appreciate it.
