But one of them is keeping the others from branching out and controlling the world, and it has something to do with those 2,000 words that Howard's father Quentin provides every month.

Each one (there are seven in total) “farms” or runs a certain part of the town – for example, Archer runs the banks and power companies, Shine handles crime, etc. But what I'm truly impressed with here is the way the plot unfolds, starting with the Goon in Howard's kitchen and proceeding through the introductions of the seven siblings. Episode 2: Howard comes face to face with two of the strange family who are really running the town. In the climax to the story, both plots intersect, with Quentin Sykes's words being the device that keeps the world from being run by the megalomaniac Archer--a scene that is a true delight.Even so, they are an intriguing group, and it’s fun to try to work out what part each plays in the story. I don't have a favorite Diana Wynne Jones book; I have a cluster of five favorites and six more second-tier favorites. Diana Wynne Jones's signature delightfully spewing plot structure and irrepressible characters kept me racing to the end.

And I'll stick with that, since an actual description of the plot couldn't give you ANY idea of how good it is. Not only do we have the seven siblings who "farm" Howard's town, we also have Howard's family, their live-in student Fifi, and Shine's bully boy Ginger Hind, and all of them have well-developed, interesting, but above all unique personalities.It effortlessly blends past, present, future, ordinary contemporary, fantasy, and sci-fi, of which I have NEVER seen the like. Hints as to the identities of the seven magical siblings come from the mention of sun, moon and star, and the link of Archer with Alpha Centauri, all suggesting astrological and zodiacal significances.

It's fun for that whimsical inventiveness along with the dry reactions that each new frustration evokes, and the plot moves at an admirably efficient clip to introduce our memorable cast of characters and speed us to a conclusion. I've owned this one for a while, sort of keeping it around as something extra special to anticipate. When even random daydreams are important signifiers you know you are in the grip of a superbly plotted extravaganzer. Diana Wynne Jones skillfully guides the reader through a riveting, twisty plot, with satisfying surprises at every amazing turn. Written and published during the Reagan-Thatcher years, when it felt as though some of the world at least was taking a dangerous lurch towards an confrontational and authoritarian triumphalism, Archer’s Goon explores some of that state of affairs in what presents merely as children’s fantasy.Even when it feels too self-aware, the joke is expanded on, or compounded, in a way that makes it very clear from where Hilary McKay inherited some of her style.

Diana is magnificent author… Archer’s Goon is set in a city very much like Bristol, where she lived. On the contrary, the ending seems unnecessarily drastic and thoughtlessly takes out several civilians without comment. Howard Sykes is an average 13 year old boy who lives with his parents, younger sister and their au pair in the fictional town of Holisbury. This time marked an important moment in Diana Wynne Jones’s life, where her writing ambitions were magnified by, in her own words, “early marginal contacts with the Great.Diana Wynne Jones spent her childhood in Essex and has been writing fantasy novels for children since 1973. Consider this a more cheerful version of Jones' Eight Days of Luke with a hint of Gaiman's Endless thrown into the mix. Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep my sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college.