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Archer's Goon
566 Plays24 days ago
I hate Mum, I hate Dad, I hate Howard and the Goon.
Big brothers and bigger brothers, good words and bad infrastructure, the power of being a megalomaniac evil wizard, and the power of having parents that you actually trust.
Transcript available here. We'll be back in two weeks with a double-length episode for Fire and Hemlock!
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Transcript
Welcome and Introduction
00:00:20
Speaker
Hello, good morning and welcome to another, our fifth episode of the second season of Eight Days of Diana Wynne-Jones. I'm Rebecca Framo. And I'm Emily Tesh.
Introducing 'Archer's Goon' and Context
00:00:31
Speaker
And today we are talking about possibly my favorite book of the 1980s, although it's a hard choice. Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne-Jones.
00:00:40
Speaker
ah Yeah, I know. And this is this is a strong decade. Strong decade.
Book's Tone and Themes
00:00:46
Speaker
We've come off a strong run. And I love this book, but I opened it up to the first page and I immediately was like, oh, she came off Homeward Bounders and Which Week in Time of the Ghost and was like, let's do a silly one.
00:00:59
Speaker
mean, it's a silly one, but it's... Yeah, I'll say that. It's lighthearted. It's comedy, but it's not a fluff. Oh, no, it's comedy with a bite.
00:01:11
Speaker
mean It's ah pretty tough
Comparisons with 'Nine Princes in Amber'
00:01:13
Speaker
stuff. And it is. OK, the first thing say is this is the culmination of Diana Wynne-Jones' Nine Princes in Amber phase, which we talked about quite a lot this season. And we argued, I think convincingly, I'm convinced,
00:01:26
Speaker
ah that it's there in the background of Homeward Bounders and it's there in the background of Time of the Ghost. But Archer's Goon, I think she actually confirmed this herself, Archer's Goon is very clearly a riff on Nine Princes in Amber by Rogers Lasny. 1000%.
00:01:40
Speaker
thousand percent ah Oh, you want some evil wizard siblings. I can do evil wizard siblings. Okay, but specifically, Nine Pritchers and Amber, the first book of the Amber Chronicles, opens with the main character who has amnesia ah going to see his evil wizard sister and trying to work out what the hell is going on without admitting he has amnesia.
00:02:05
Speaker
And Anna Wynne-Jones read that and thought, cool, great. What if that was the entire book? And she's right. It's the best part of the book. She's absolutely right. Archer's Goon is a book.
Complexity and Dual Narratives
00:02:16
Speaker
Okay, this is the other thing. This is where we're starting to push the limits of children's book, I think, because this is a really, really complex book to put to hand out to a 12-year-old. And I know that because I read it for the first time when I was 12 and I did not get it.
00:02:30
Speaker
You have to read this one twice. Right. yeah yeah At least twice. You are not gonna get everything she's doing. If you don't get to the end, go, oh shit, and then go back to the beginning and read it again.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yes, it's the first of several Diana Wynne Jones books i think really need to be read twice at least. And when we get to Hexwood, I think I'm just gonna have to make a diagram and post that one.
00:02:51
Speaker
But that's for the future. Right, so Archer's Goon is kind of two books. Which is why you have to read it twice. Yes. You read it the first time and it is a story of a 13 year old boy, our hero, our protagonist, Howard.
00:03:06
Speaker
The most normal boy wave that there ever was. Yeah, a totally normal boy living in like an English country town, a very familiar feeling English country town to me at least. It's like it's got a little marketplace, it's got Corn Street, there's the school, there's the cathedral in the middle of town. I'm like, is this Bristol? Is this Wells? I've been to this place, I'm pretty sure.
00:03:28
Speaker
um Actually, I ah kind of live in it. um In this very like familiar, normal country town, there's Howard living his normal life. He's got ah loving parents. His mum is a music teacher. His dad is a writer and teaches at local polytechnic, ah which is, those are kind of going or gone, the polys. But in the 80s, they were, you know, ah part of the movement for education opened up to more people. I think i think the US equivalent is community college. Yeah. Yes, that's right.
00:03:59
Speaker
um Okay, so Quinton teaches at the Poly, but really he's a writer. ah It's not hugely clear what he writes, but it seems to be SFF of some kind. It's very sympathetic women. Right, and Howard has this perfectly normal, perfectly nice life when one day comes a gloom.
Plot Setup and Conflict Introduction
00:04:19
Speaker
And the goon arrives in Howard's kitchen and demands 2000 for Archer. 2000 of something. Right. And it's like this eruption of, ah and here's another like Zelazny nod, I think, this eruption of like urban thriller.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yes. yeah And ah the the the goon feels like he comes from ah an evil underground. There's an implication of crime. It turns out, though, that the 2,000 he wants is not 2,000 pounds or whatever. It's 2,000 Quentin owes 2,000 words every quarter to a mysterious figure called Archer.
00:04:58
Speaker
And Howard spends the rest of the book trying to figure out who Archer is, who Archer's weird family is, and why they all care so much about him and his family. Yeah. In the course of which a lot of very funny, very silly stuff happens.
00:05:12
Speaker
Right. So that's the book that you read the first time. And you're like, well, this is weird and funny and silly. Right. But you remember I i said it's a Zalazni riff, right?
00:05:24
Speaker
yeah it It's a riff on your protagonist has amnesia. Howard finds out what's really going on and who he really is in chapter 14 of this 16-chapter book. And once you get it, you have to finish the book and then read it again.
00:05:40
Speaker
go. It's so much fun to look at all the ways. So this is a book about families. The first time you read it, I'm going to argue, the first time you read it, the family that you are looking at is Howard and his parents and his sister and the goon, who over the course of the book sort of becomes a weird part of they fit their family. They more or less adopt this family.
00:06:02
Speaker
evil wizard low level enforcer minion is just what they think that he is. um oh and the Fifi who is the student who helps babysit Awful who... who Yeah, but and they had they have a live-in student au pair who's called Fifi and they they it's a sort of a welcoming family that invites people in and the goon, this enforcer, ah finds himself welcomed in and ends up sort of as part of the family unit. They all get into cahoots. It's your favorite thing. Exactly, it's delightful.
00:06:30
Speaker
of So that's the thing that you are looking at the first time you read this book is this immediate family, Howard and his immediate family.
Family Revelations and Power Dynamics
00:06:36
Speaker
In chapter 14, what you discover is that all seven evil wizards, and in fact, more or less everybody that you meet in the book is part of Howard's family, because Howard is in fact the youngest of the seven evil wizard siblings, who has given himself amnesia and accidentally turned himself into a baby 13 years ago to be raised by this other family.
00:07:00
Speaker
So then you get to read the book the second time. Read the story of this bigger family, which is bonkers. Right. So here's the other nine princes in amber. Jones has clearly read it and gone, right, first of all, too many princes. Let's cut a couple.
00:07:17
Speaker
So we have a mysterious, unclear origins group of siblings who have magical powers and who are controlling and secretly running the town where Howard lives.
00:07:30
Speaker
There's seven of them. Five male, two female. So there's only two sisters. Otherwise, this is all about the boys. We'll talk a bit about the of gender in this book later on. yeah um And they've divided up the power in the town among them and they talk about it as farming.
00:07:45
Speaker
So Archer farms power, Shine farms crime, Dillion farms law and order. And they all farm the taxes. And they all farm the taxes. They're all using the money from the taxpayers of the town to fund their lives of evil wizard crime. And there's a great moment ah in the middle of the book where ah Quentin Howard's adoptive father is discussing this with his wife, Katrina.
00:08:10
Speaker
And Quentin just goes, face facts, you stupid woman. This town is run seven megalomaniac wizards.
00:08:20
Speaker
And sentence, but it's completely accurate. a town is rabbi by melitmaniacquisards Which is the other part of this that's a Zelazny riff, right? Because what happens in Nine Princes of Amber is Corwin, our protagonist, spends the first half of the book amnesiac, and around the middle of the book he figures out that his nine megalomaniac wizard siblings, eight siblings I guess, he's one of them, are all fighting to rule the world. And he's like, huh.
00:08:46
Speaker
I guess I would also like to throw my hat in the ring to rule the world. And the back half of the book is about him fighting with his other siblings to rule the world, his his home world, reality, the most real world that there is.
00:08:57
Speaker
We get to chapter 14 of this book, when all of the wizard siblings are preparing to go out and fight to rule the world. And Howard's like, no, I don't want to farm anything. I don't want to rule the world.
00:09:09
Speaker
I don't think you guys should either because you're all terrible. Yes. And I'm terrible. Oh, yeah ah we'll get to that. Oh, yeah, it's brilliant. it's it's It really is, I think, Raider's a commentary
Power, Family, and Personal Growth
00:09:22
Speaker
on Amber. It's about this guy sucks.
00:09:24
Speaker
What would fix him? But... What was I going to say? In the meantime, I'll jump in with a quote, which I think is it's when he goes to meet crime sibling, who is Shine.
00:09:36
Speaker
And Shine tries to lure Howard and his little sister Awful into being on her side and being one of her minions for the life of crime. ah Which sounds quite exciting. And a week ago, Howard would have nodded.
00:09:48
Speaker
But criminals were people who took what they wanted or tried to make you give it to them if they couldn't take it. He had spent a week now being one of the people they tried to take things from. It made you think. He shook his head and tried to smile politely.
00:10:01
Speaker
So this, I think, is one of the central theses of the book, which is it may seem fun and glamorous to be a wizard who tries to rule the world. It's not so fun if you're one of the people who's... life world is being run roughshod over by people who feel like they can do this just because they can do this.
00:10:18
Speaker
Right. But also, it's not actually fun to be one of the evil wizards either. Like that becomes very, very clear on your second read of the book when you're reading it as right weight. It's about this other family. You're like, oh, these guys are miserable.
00:10:33
Speaker
yeah Some of them don't even know they're miserable, but you can see how much Howard loathes being one of them because they're all having perfectly horrible lives despite all their power and despite...
00:10:46
Speaker
everything they're capable of, all they do is sit around hating each other and spying on each other and plotting to rule the world. Yeah. And it is, I think, it is really interesting to read this book in context of where it is in the eighty s So we start the 80s with Magicians of Caprona, which is, I think, very deliberately a book about a happy family, a book about a a family where, you know, that The parents love their children, children love each other, the threats come externally, imposed from the outside, but within the family unit everything is very supportive.
00:11:18
Speaker
Followed immediately by Time of the Ghost, a book about an unhappy family, a book about siblings who are simultaneously the only thing that keeps each other up and constantly trying to claw each other down as their terrible parents ah neglect them and ignore them, and about the intensity of that experience.
00:11:38
Speaker
And then we get a break for a couple books. And now we are here with Archer's Goon, which I think is simultaneously a much more realistic portrait of a, maybe the most realistic portrait that she's given us yet, of a family that works, of parents that are, broadly speaking, good parents, parents that make their children feel safe around them, and of a deeply dysfunctional family, deeply dysfunctional siblinghood, of what it feels like to be set against your siblings instead of in cahoots with them.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yep, I agree completely. That's the thesis. This is a book of two families ah in contrast, in parallel. And it's a book about having a role in your family and what that role in the family is and what it yeah does for you.
00:12:26
Speaker
So, I mean, this is, this point, Jones is beyond like point of view control as a tool. She has fully mastered it and now she's having fun with it. That double layer of like the story Howard thinks he's in and the story he's actually in is so well done. I was rereading it this time and being like,
00:12:44
Speaker
OK, one of the key twists in this book, ah given to us fairly late, chapter 13, I think, ah is that the goon who turns up at the start claiming to be working for Archer was never working for Archer. He's actually one of the evil wizards himself.
00:12:58
Speaker
yeah He's the second youngest Erskine. ah So he's the one who was closest to Howard in age. And he's the only one who immediately knows who Howard is. And he's there to keep an eye on Howard and figure out what's going on.
00:13:12
Speaker
But over the course of the book, what you really see is these two are brothers. Over and over again. Really, really alike. They are very, very close. They are similar in like their physicality and the way they move through the world.
00:13:26
Speaker
It's pretty clear that Quentin and Katrina react... to underreact, Howard thinks, to the goon in their house. Because from their point of view, this to is just like this is just Howard, but a little bit bigger.
00:13:37
Speaker
ah yeah um He's our large adult son and our larger adult son. Yeah, I was really going through this book, reading it for the however many is time. I was really struck by the conviction that even though to Howard the goon looks like an adult, you know one of the first points of the first comparison that we get about them is, you know, he sees the goon and says, Howard was big for his age.
00:13:58
Speaker
On the other hand, so was the goon big for whatever age he was. um And we're constantly getting the comparison between the size that Howard is, which is large for a child, approximately adult sized, but he is a child. Everyone knows he's a child.
00:14:12
Speaker
And the goon who is large for an adult. But, and and, you know, we've seen this before. We've seen this as far back as Ogre Downstairs, when the younger children look at Douglas and go, that's a large adult man. He's not a large adult man. He's 15.
00:14:25
Speaker
um But to Howard's parents, I think it's very likely that the goon looks like a large teenager, because immediately they look at the goon and they're like, oh, you poor dear. Yeah.
00:14:38
Speaker
Right, and they start parenting him really quickly. They're like, he needs a place to sleep. ah He needs something to eat. he needs a cup of tea. Can you go and get the drums from the car, please? So he needs to do chores around the house. right And the goon, who is centuries-old evil wizard,
00:14:56
Speaker
goes along with it. He just does it. And increasingly through the book, it's clear that not just that the goon is doing it, but he's enjoying it. He likes being part of this family. He is jealous of Howard for turning himself into a baby and getting adopted by nice, normal people.
00:15:13
Speaker
There's a sequence of... So Howard's younger sister, normal human younger sister, awful.
Character Dynamics and Development
00:15:19
Speaker
Her name is actually Anthea. She's known in the family as awful because she is awful. And this is a type she's before many times. Whenever, almost any time you have, there are two sorts of youngest siblings, I think, that we've seen so far in Diana Wood Jones books.
00:15:32
Speaker
There's the youngest of two, who is Kat, who is in then ah who is the the very sweet, mild-mannered younger boy ah with the dominating older sister. So we've seen that. But then we've seen the youngest of several, who as we eventually do learn, Awful really is the youngest of several, who's a monster, who just goes after what they want, and you point them in a direction and let them go, and they are your secret weapon, just as you are their secret weapon.
00:16:00
Speaker
Tremendous power. And in fact, the way we meet Awful in this book is Howard goes to pick her up from school, because he's her older brother, so he's like he's doing a job in the family, he's taking responsibility. And he arrives at school and Awful comes pouring out of the gate, chased by 20 little girls she's picked to fight with. And he's like, my brother's here, he's going to beat you up.
00:16:19
Speaker
And then Howard, this large 13-year-old boy, is swarmed by angry little girls. And he's like, well, I can't actually hit them, they're little girls, but also there's 20 of them. And I'm losing this fight. So our first...
00:16:32
Speaker
experience of of how Howard's experience of siblinghood is getting beaten up by 20 little girls who call you names and be like what am I supposed to do about this Howard who is again let us remind you a powerful evil wizard but what's brilliant is that for quite a lot of the later half of the book Howard and Awful are being followed everywhere they go by a gang of youths who are working for Shine the criminal evil wizard And the goon is doing what Howard did, protecting them, chasing off the youths, standing around looking threatening, never actually doing anything to the youths because he's a giant evil wizard and they're normal human teenagers.
00:17:11
Speaker
He's just older brothering the same way that Howard older brothers. And this is what you see over and over again. The scene and I was about to talk about was Awful has a tantrum during dinner time, goes down under the family table, refuses to come out and announces she's going to be sick.
00:17:27
Speaker
She's a very realistic, annoying little girl. my God, she's incredible. um So Howard goes down under the table, they're like, well, I'm her brother, it's my job to coax her out. And he tries to bribe her out by offering her some coloured pencils. She's like, no, I don't want them. I want to be sick.
00:17:41
Speaker
So Howard gives up. So the goon gets down on his knees under the table um and negotiates with all four and eventually they agree on a being sick competition. Which all wins? yes And it's the morning after that that we get this first paragraph of the goon had really settled in. moved the sofa around so he could watch breakfast television and was basking there with a big grin on his face and a mug of tea in his hand.
00:18:04
Speaker
He's like, because the goon's like, by this family. What a great idea. i He's loving being an older brother in this household. Yes.
00:18:15
Speaker
And the first, this also ties in really with the way that we know, i think the first way that we know that Quentin and, would you pronounce it Katrina or Katrina? I'd say Katrina. It's my daughter's name.
00:18:27
Speaker
That's right. It had forgotten. ah hello All right. So Quentin and Katrina, we know our good parents because the first thing when the goon first shows up, um you I had this quote a second ago.
00:18:40
Speaker
So Howard thinks Howard is terrified when the goon shows up because a large adult man has shown up in his house and is threatening him and his family. Quentin and Katrina... as we've said, immediately sort of treat him as he's no big deal, presumably because he looks essentially like a teenager.
00:18:56
Speaker
And Howard says, it was a weight off Howard's mind. The goon had scared him, but if neither of his parents were worried, then that made it all right. If... Quentin knows that if his parents are not upset, he doesn't need to be upset because his parents will take care of him. There's sort of the this fundamental level of trust that I do not know that we've seen before in Diana Wynne Jones.
00:19:20
Speaker
Right. What's really striking in this book is the way the family is a source of safety. The good family. The bad family is very much a source of non-safety. And they're not perfect. They're quite realistic.
00:19:32
Speaker
Yeah, there there are various moments when all of them ah screw up, fail. um There are moments when Howard's like human adoptive father is an inspiration to him. Moments when he's just like the most embarrassing man in the world. my god.
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah. and There are clear moments when the parents are failing, when they are arguing in front of the children, when they are frightened and not handling it well, because a lot of things that happen in the book are in fact quite scary for the parents. A lot of the threats that this family end up facing are adult threats.
00:20:05
Speaker
yeah And you had some points about that, I remember. Yeah, definitely. So one of the things about these evil wizards is they are farming infrastructure is that the things that they do in order to try and menace 2000 words out of Quentin Sykes and Quentin Sykes quite early on digs in his heels and says, I shan't do it. I won't do it. It's a matter of right and wrong.
00:20:24
Speaker
I will not. do anything for evil wizard who are trying to take over the world. That is my moral principles stake. To be clear, ah for most of the book, everyone thinks that Quentin's 2,000 words are somehow magically the thing that's trapping the evil wizards in this town. And part of the comedy of the book is you have these seven megalomaniac wizards and they're all stuck in the tiny local council and manipulating this one single market town. It's nowhere in particular.
00:20:52
Speaker
They are treating it like world domination. But in fact, all they're doing is digging up the road and making the buses late. Right. but they all believe the reason they're stuck working on such a small scale is Quinton's 2000. And Quinton believes it too, because that's what they tell him.
00:21:09
Speaker
And we actually the we believe it, yes. We believe it because we've just come, i mean, we in particular, but have just come off Witch Week, where the power of words is the most important thing that there is, the greatest form of magic in existence.
00:21:21
Speaker
And we, the general reader who's ever read a Diana Wood Jones book before, knows that the power of words is the greatest magic in existence. So of course, you're like, ah, yes, the famous writer's 2,000 words. That must be what's keeping the wizards in check.
00:21:33
Speaker
but So Quentin puts his foot down. Quentin first actually meets Archer. Yes, the oldest sibling. Archer is the oldest sibling. In fact, there's an extraordinarily funny joke, which I did not get until I read it this time, which is at some point in the middle of the book, Archer, who farms power and therefore controls all electronics in their house, starts making whenever they turn the TV on, a message comes up.
00:21:56
Speaker
Archer is watching you. This book was published in 1984. He's the biggest brother there is. He's literally Laskin and Howard's big brother watching them in the house as they go about their lives. it It made me laugh so much. Yeah, this is a book about your big brother.
00:22:18
Speaker
It's in the title, Archer's Goon. This is the big brother book. i Terrible big brother, which again you know, I think there are a lot of ways in which Both Quentin and several of the older siblings are flattering, unflattering self-portraits from Diana Wynne-Jones, who often puts herself into the oldest sibling and often puts herself into the writer character. ah This is very much a departure in that the oldest sibling is not...
00:22:46
Speaker
benevolent. ah The younger ones do look up to him. um you know they In fact, the the youngest, Howard, or his his evil wizard, ah alter ego Venturus, we are told he worships Archer. He admires him. He wants to be just like him.
00:23:01
Speaker
And when they first meet Archer within the course of this book, Archer seems reasonable and he seems fun and he seems like somebody that Howard sort of wants to be. he's cool.
00:23:13
Speaker
yeah think I think it's really important that Archer from the first time you meet him is a cool guy ah who lives in a secret hideout full of cool technology and is handsome and talented and clever and can provide you with hamburgers on demand with a cool machine he has, which I thought was an interesting detail because how Archer to me feels American in style and the hamburger part of that.
00:23:36
Speaker
And it's all about being rich, powerful, ah technologically minded, capable of anything. In fact, what Archer is, is a horrible tech bro who wants to rule the world, which is very prescient from many people before.
00:23:52
Speaker
Like, depressingly prescient. Anna, how did you know? Well, aren to fair, technological oligarchs have been around for a while. True, true, true. But Howard, who dreams of designing spaceships, that's all he wants to do is with his life is design spaceships and scan banks of instruments with his keen eyes and view alien worlds.
00:24:13
Speaker
And this minute that arch Howard meets Archer, he goes, Archer's eyes clearly were eyes that spent all their time scanning banks of instruments, just as Howard had always longed to do. Right. Howard's instinct is to admire Archer, but Quentin is there, this father figure whom he trusts who makes him feel safe.
00:24:31
Speaker
And he, Quinton instantly sees through this man. It's yeah really clear from beginning the beginning that Quinton is, he's not a perfect man, but he's a very good judge of character, specifically with a man like Archer, who he recognizes immediately as totally hollow, totally selfish, totally evil.
00:24:50
Speaker
Yes. There's the moment when when Archer says, ah the first thing that Archer says is he tries to ah claim that he's not at fault by again comparing himself to Howard. He's the eldest. Everyone always blames the eldest and Awful and Howard immediately are like, oh, yes, that's right. Awful always blames Howard for things that she do.
00:25:08
Speaker
the Youngest always blame the right. And arch Archer and Howard are sort of parallel older brother stories. Yes. But when Archer sort of airily says, ah you know, Quentin looks at the extremely expensive, enormous, fancy tech room in the back of the town bank and says, how did you get the money to start?
00:25:26
Speaker
And Arthur says, I got the money from taxes. We all farmed the taxes. He says it with his agreeable smile. And Howard could see that the cool way Archer said this made Quentin very angry. This town seems well and truly bugged, Quentin remarked.
00:25:39
Speaker
He still sounded calm, but Howard was could tell he was getting angrier every second. Looking at this place, he said, I'm surprised you haven't taken over the world by now. Oh, I intend to, Archer said cheerfully.
00:25:49
Speaker
As soon as I've stopped the person who's stopping me. And he finished his second hamburger, obviously quite unaware that by saying this, he had turned Quentin utterly against him. But Howard knew. He saw it in his father's eyes.
00:26:01
Speaker
And from then on, Quentin's like, that's it. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing any words for anybody. i am never writing another word again. He padlocks his typewriter melodramatically.
00:26:14
Speaker
He goes into, makes long speeches, but the as the the wizard siblings sort of bring their power to bear on Quentin, it becomes quite clear that if he never writes another word again, there will have real serious, there could be real serious adult consequences.
00:26:32
Speaker
Right, these evil wizards are not evil in the way that they like do cool magic, they're evil in the way that they hurt people. And what Quentin ends up threatened with is... your wife will lose her job, you'll lose your job, you'll lose the house, you'll have to pay a £23,000 tax bill.
00:26:48
Speaker
It's layers and layers of adult threats, adult consequences. Your children will be hurt, your children will be in danger, you won't be able to take care of them or feed them. These are ah normal ways, normal things that could happen to adults and that are adults are afraid of.
00:27:04
Speaker
You're going to lose your power, your your gas mains will explode. The pound budget is going to change in such a way that people are going to lose their jobs and among them is your wife. It's not fun. it you know It's fun for us to read all of these things going dramatically wrong for the family and the family figuring out ways to cope.
00:27:22
Speaker
But it is not fun magic. It is not silly magic. It is not wizard duels. It is not sword fights. It's banality. It's banality cranked up to extreme. as these powerful people use the layers of bureaucracy and infrastructure at their disposal to particularly make life difficult for one family because they've decided that they don't like them.
00:27:44
Speaker
Right.
Satire and Power Critique
00:27:45
Speaker
And there is a level of like, satire in the whole thing there's a satire of local government of town bureaucracy uh the the sequences of the um one of the younger siblings hathaway sends his men to just dig up the road outside their house and it gets more and more ridiculous and more and more annoying until they end up with a moat outside their house that they have to leap over every morning to get out to school yeah And Howard goes and asks, you know, he he wants to find, um, the one who farms transit is Hathaway. They haven't been able to find Hathaway and he wants to find him.
00:28:16
Speaker
So he goes out to the men digging up the road in front of his house and says, uh, how do I find Hathaway? And the guy says, ah who's Hathaway? Um, and, uh,
00:28:27
Speaker
He's the one who did told you to dig up this road, Howard explained, and the men looked at each other and shook their heads. Don't think so, said another one. We get our orders from the highway office. Mind you, I think they've gone around the twist this time, said a third, but none of them's called Hathaway.
00:28:39
Speaker
So there's these layers of sort of protective layers of bureaucracy within the town. Right. It's so difficult to get at these evil wizards to come. You can't come close to them unless they let you, unless they want you to. Like at one point they tried to visit a sister number, but the third sister, Dillian, and her house disappears.
00:28:59
Speaker
They just saw it a moment ago and now it's vanished. But if you have the goon with you, the largest adult man, or largest man that there is, who knows the those sort of back ways through these routes of power, one of the things that happens frequently to Howard when he's with the goon is I think you pointed out that this is sort of a power fantasy of being very large and just being able to do what you want.
00:29:18
Speaker
Because the goon just strides right into all of these places behind which power hides. He just walks into the university, he walks into the town council, he walks into the bank and asks person after person after person, where's Archer, where's Archer, where's Archer? And then eventually, you know, you you get to the point where everyone's so intimidated by the goon.
00:29:38
Speaker
that you've said the right words and the secret door behind the layers of bureaucracy in the bag pops open and you're in the wizard's way, the wizard's lair. Like you can just do that. You can open the right door and find the powerful person who really is behind all the problems that you've been having.
00:29:53
Speaker
Right. That sounds lovely. like Just ask enough times when you're seven feet tall. And Howard finds it embarrassing. This is something that there that also I think is really drilled in, especially in the early half of the book.
00:30:06
Speaker
The goon marches in and Howard like sneaks in after him feeling like surely someone's gonna someone's going to escort us out. You can't just do this. There are rules and procedures and we're breaking all of them.
00:30:18
Speaker
And it turns out that you can, you can just do it. Right. if If you are, and I think this is important, if you are already an evil wizard yourself, you can just ignore all the rules that exist to stop people from bothering evil wizards.
00:30:30
Speaker
Right. but The metaphor writes itself really. We don't need to expand that any further. But also there is a sense in which which physical size is standing in for something harder to to pin down, a sense of power, of belonging, of already being one of the chosen, one of the special. I think one of the most striking moments in the book for me is near the end when Howard starts to regain his memories.
00:30:55
Speaker
And he realizes that when you are an evil wizard. When you are this powerful inherently and you've always been that way, it is really easy to treat ordinary people like they're nothing. They do seem like nothing to you.
00:31:08
Speaker
ah The effect of power on you is to turn you into the kind of person who brushes ordinary people out of the way. Yeah, and there's something also, I think, to dig into the metaphor a little bit more, about the way that as we learn that all of these things in the town, in the infrastructure, That, you know, you sort of you're a 13 year old, you sort of assume that the things that are going on have good reasons behind them, that if you you know look behind the layers of bureaucracy, you'll find something that makes sense that you don't have to care about because you're 13.
00:31:35
Speaker
And you look and you peel back the layers. And no, it doesn't. Instead, the harder you look, the less sense it makes and the more it becomes sort of just the incomprehensible whims of powerful people. And the town becomes more and more strange and weird and inexplicable the harder you look and try and make sense of it.
00:31:53
Speaker
It's sort of, I think it's very postmodernist in a way, in the way that the the sort of increasing absurdity of the backstory is layered over into the way that, like, as Howard and Awful navigate the town that they think they know, the town makes less and less sense.
00:32:09
Speaker
the Until you'll get you get to the point where like the the Bishop's Palace next to the cathedral is lighting up um with ah the lights of a casino because that's part of the town that Schein rules. Schein who farms crime, she can do that if she It's a beautiful description. I'm just going to read it out. They're they're wandering around, they're trying to find Hathaway. they think he's you know They're going to the old part of town to try and find him because they think that Hathaway lives somewhere old.
00:32:32
Speaker
And they're they're going down, you know, this area that they know really well, with has which has these like very normal modern shops and the bishop lives there. um And ah he says it was evening and the lights were coming on.
00:32:44
Speaker
Kitty clothes and body care, which are the modern shops, both had huge blue and green signs that flashed on and off. Another lighted up as Howard and Awful passed it. Palm Beach, it said in white and red. It seemed to be a club of some kind.
00:32:57
Speaker
I didn't know they had those here, Awful said. Another sign lit up as they passed. This one said the Evil Weevil in green. Before they reached the posts at the bottom of Corister Lane, there were six more flashing on and off.
00:33:09
Speaker
And when they came down into the tangle of narrow streets at the bottom, the whole place seemed alive with colored signs, spinning, crawling, hopping, all colors that life could be. And then again, as they're coming up the hill, when they turned into that lane, they saw it winding uphill ahead, chock full of lighted signs, blue, green, orange, red, purple, advertising every kind of amusement.
00:33:30
Speaker
At the top, where Howard knew the bishop lived, a huge wed red sign was blinking on and off. Miter Club, it said. Gambling. So it's like, you know, these these spinning dizzying lights come on and just make this whole extremely familiar landscape completely unfamiliar.
00:33:46
Speaker
Right. It's it's the um the unreal and the real kind of layered together. And it turns out that what you thought was real and solid and reliable, like the oldest parts of your town and all these like ah important buildings and and religious buildings, it all sort of slips away because the real that's underneath is this handful of powerful people exploiting the world at large for their for their own benefit.
00:34:10
Speaker
And one of the things that that really comes out about Archer when he describes how he'll rule the world, he says, you know, it's lucky I'm not a cruel person. I'm not cruel. I'll be quite good at it. And this is actually something all the siblings agree about. One of the very few things the siblings agree on is like, yeah, Archer would be good at ruling the world.
00:34:29
Speaker
We're not denying that. He's competent. He's effective. Erskine, the goon, ah describes the kind of things Archer can do with technology and he and he says genius artist.
00:34:43
Speaker
ah It's clear there is like something impressive about Archer and that's possibly why the original version of how adventurous the youngest brother admired and wanted to be him so much.
00:34:57
Speaker
At the same time, Archer is a complete failure as an older brother. And Howard knows that now because he is an older brother. He's big brother. This big brother sucks. And also all the wizard siblings, none of whom have except Howard at this point, have learned to take the lives of well and Hathaway, but we'll get to Hathaway, um have learned to take the lives of ordinary people into account.
00:35:19
Speaker
think particularly much of Archer's habit of flying into rages that endanger the entire town because he controls power and infrastructure and can start an electric fire with a ah touch of his mind.
00:35:31
Speaker
The person who actually turns the tables and, you know, sort of forces Howard to really come up against Archer once and for all is the leader of the gang of evil children who's been following them around all book.
00:35:44
Speaker
He has a, ah you know, right around the same time, Howard sort of manages to actually talk to him and explain to him that he's been mind whammied by evil wizards, which obviously makes him very indignant. Then they have sort of a little two chapter intense David and Luke bonding.
00:35:59
Speaker
It really does feel honestly like... David and Luke in Eight Days of Luke, point of view, you are
Character Insights and Growth
00:36:05
Speaker
Luke. You are the youngest child of a family of evil gods who are up to no good, and they're all furious with you for what turns out to be a very good reason.
00:36:16
Speaker
It does, in the end, become clear that the reason these seven evil wizards are trapped in this one tiny market town is because Howard keeps turning himself into a baby. He's done it twice now.
00:36:27
Speaker
ah So Venturus keeps accidentally, well, the first time was an accident, the second time used to be on purpose, going back in time and in the course of that turning himself into a newborn. And these older siblings were all long ago magically compelled by their parents to take care of Venturus and not leave him behind. Right, because when they're...
00:36:47
Speaker
So as long as Howard is a child without his magic powers, they can't go anywhere. And we've got to talk about them and the parents because I think there's some implications there. But to get back to Ginger Hines for a second.
00:36:58
Speaker
So Ginger Hines, like David, ah is a boy from a clearly, you know, this is very lightly alluded to, but I think it's clear in the text, a boy from an abusive family who sort of accidentally rescues and Howard and his family are imprisoned and Ginger Hines gets them out.
00:37:14
Speaker
And then, ah as, you know, after Howard figures out who he is, Ginger Hines offers to help them, but under one condition- He says, that Archer, he scares me. Awful here says he wants to rule the world, right? And do it better than Hitler, says Erskine, only like this in a temper.
00:37:31
Speaker
Have to keep him happy. He flies off like this when he's happy sometimes, Howard said. You know he does, Erskine. And at this point, Archer is, again, blowing up the power mains in the city with enormous sparks and explosions all over the place.
00:37:44
Speaker
Bound to, said Ginger. He's that type, like my old man, and shines another. So what Ginger, who is just an ordinary kid, recognizes better than any of the other siblings, except now Howard, who has been an ordinary kid himself, is that a person who is only good at ruling the world when you have to keep them happy, who ah who will fly off into rages and will hurt anyone in the vicinity when he's upset,
00:38:09
Speaker
because he himself is upset, cannot be trusted with taking care of anybody, whether it is a child or the world. And so Howard makes Ginger Hines a promise that he's going to stop Archer. And that's the thing that gets Howard to come into his powers and stand up for himself more than anything any of the siblings do.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, I do actually wonder if if in some ways the Archer's goon of the title is not... the goon who we've had all book, but actually Howard himself. The goon as ah a follower, hanger Howard, in hit as venturous as the youngest of these siblings, has always been Archer's follower and hanger on.
00:38:45
Speaker
And it's only when he's able to reject that identity and the desire to emulate this older brother and it says say, no, he's evil. We need to get rid of him. that he comes into his own identity as Howard Sykes, as this ordinary kid adopted by ordinary parents. And he would rather be that person than be a powerful evil wizard. Yes.
00:39:08
Speaker
Because all the powerful evil wizards are miserable. They're lonely. They are such miserable, lonely people. There's a ah quite a telling sequence where Howard Venturist goes into his own evil wizard lair, which is a temple.
00:39:24
Speaker
a temple that he's built himself. Have you got the quote describing it? I've got the quote when the spaceship comes into view. it is so, so funny. The mist hardened and hardened and the lines of the temple that started to appear.
00:39:38
Speaker
soon as he did, Howard almost let go and let it spring back into the future again. Ginger made a scornful noise. Ginger was right, Howard thought. The temple was plain ridiculous. If he had not known he made made it himself, he would have called the person who built it a lunatic.
00:39:52
Speaker
Four towering statues of Venturus held up a roof which was a head-adventurous giant-sized looking heroic and noble and to Howard's shamed eyes utterly stupid.
00:40:04
Speaker
Right, it's a temple to himself. That's Venturus's wizard lair. But of course, all their wizard lairs are effectively temples to self and to selfishness. ah But anyway, there's the sequence where Howard inside the temple stumbles on Venturus's spy setup where he spies on everybody else's wizard lair.
00:40:22
Speaker
And he sees all the siblings except one. We haven't really talked about Hathaway yet. We will. All the siblings sitting alone, miserable. Yes. They're different kinds of miserable.
00:40:33
Speaker
They might be having a temper tantrum. ah They might be complaining about something. They might be brooding sadly on the cathedral steps, but they're all miserable, lonely, horrible people.
00:40:45
Speaker
And Howard looks at this, and he's realized this point that actually he's been stuck in a time loop. Ventress did the turn into a baby thing once by accident, got to age 13, realized who he was, got his powers back, and then went back and did it again on purpose yes a second time.
00:41:04
Speaker
And it's pretty clear that Ventress didn't... keep doing this out for for no reason it's because he was so miserable and lonely himself he would rather repeatedly turn himself into a normal human child uh than live as one of these evil wizards his plan had been two turn himself into a baby let robots finish building him a spaceship leave in the spaceship and fly away and leave the rest of his family forever First time round, he comes into his powers, he becomes an adult, he steps up, he sees he's programmed the robots wrong, the spaceship is not done, he can't get into it and fly away.
00:41:38
Speaker
So his only choices are to go and be among his siblings again, or turn himself back into a baby. Back into a baby it is. He would much rather be adopted by Quentin and Katrina.
00:41:51
Speaker
um And I think that first, so to get to Hathaway, the first real clue, I think the first person that it's conceivable that anybody reading this book could figure out what is going on is when Howard goes to see Hathaway, who's the middle sibling.
00:42:06
Speaker
And Hathaway tells him that he's adopted. And it's, which Howard hadn't known to that point. And it's pretty clear, I think, that howard at that point or Hathaway at that point recognizes Howard and identifies who he is, which makes sense because unlike the rest of their siblings, Hathaway has figured out how to live with other people.
00:42:25
Speaker
Hathaway is a family man. However, he can only do that for some reason by going and living in the 16th century. This is a Shakespeare joke. It's just a Shakespeare joke.
00:42:37
Speaker
I love how like in in every book, Jones just can't resist her layers and layers of intertextual jokes. So Hathaway, you can only access by visiting the museum and going through a door which leads into the past.
00:42:50
Speaker
And then you find Hathaway living there with his human wife and their human daughter Anne. And for a second, Howard is like, wait, is she really the Anne Hathaway? So my name here is Moneypenny.
00:43:01
Speaker
um And then Howard is like, wait, but my mum's maiden name is Moneypenny. And it turns out that Katrina and Quinton are in fact both descendants of Not just that, but almost anyone that we've met in the current time is a descendant of Hathaway.
00:43:14
Speaker
but Right, every local family is descended from this guy. Ginger Hines is descended from this guy, and Ginger Hines, who's been a threat throughout the whole book, Howard comes out again and is like, oh, he's just a sort of cousin like my Aunt Mildred, but I can't be scared him.
00:43:29
Speaker
Howard actually seems quite genuinely disappointed by this. that's i mean, you don't have to read Ginger Hines and Howard as like a weird homoerotic vibe, but it is funnier if you do. It comes out very quickly in the last two chapters, but it's very, very clearly there.
00:43:44
Speaker
Anyway, Hathaway. so Hathaway tells Howard that he's adopted and immediately ah both Awful and Howard start reacting to Hathaway like he's their dad. It's very cute. It's very funny.
00:43:56
Speaker
Well, no. Awful reacts to Hathaway like but like he's their dad. Howard reacts by turning into Quinter. That's true. And that really struck me. that When Howard finds himself in front of a person who he likes instinctively, who he trusts, the one good member of his Awful family...
00:44:13
Speaker
The person he behaves like, the person he wants to be when he's being honestly himself is Quentin Sykes. And I found this actually very moving as a character arc. Howard is faced with a choice in this book. is And it's ah it's ah it's a coming of age choice. yeah It's a what kind of adult do you want to be? What kind of man do you want to be? yes And he's given two choices. On the one hand, there is Archer.
00:44:38
Speaker
this immediately attractive, cool, handsome, powerful, magical wizard who wants to rule the world, who'd be very good at it, who is surrounded by the technology Howard admires so much, ah who can do anything he likes whenever he wants.
00:44:53
Speaker
And on the other hand, there's his his father, Quentin Sykes, who is a short, fat, bad tempered, rather silly man with so much principle that when seven evil wizards are threatening everything about his life and even threatening his job, his wife, his children, he won't back down because it's a question of right and wrong. And this is...
00:45:15
Speaker
wants to be Quentin. Right. This is the choice he makes. it's This is a better role model than Bloody Archer. And this is, so a couple of things about Quentin, I want to go back to Hathaway at this moment, but ah let's seize the opportunity to talk about Quentin, because he is, like I've said, I said earlier, I think, but this is very clearly a kind of loving, mocking self-portrait of Diana herself. Quentin is a famous author.
00:45:39
Speaker
He's short, he's round. his you know when When the kids talk about what what he's like when he's writing a book, it echoes the things that Diana has said you know her own children find irritating when she's writing a book.
00:45:51
Speaker
um He's got a sense of his own self-importance as a famous author, but no one else takes him seriously. Because, you know, he's he doesn't make much money as a writer. He's... The whole joke of the book is that everyone thinks that his 2,000 powerful magical words are what's holding everyone in place. And they've never been doing anything. It was all Howard all along.
00:46:10
Speaker
So he's just got this overblown sense of his own self-importance of the power of writing. And also, he's got a great sense of humor. He's got the... the the ethics that will ground the book, he is fundamentally the model for what Howard should be.
00:46:25
Speaker
So even when she's writing a little joke on the power of the writer and on the the figure of the writer, it does come down to fundamentally, this is a character who has an ethical core and that is the power of the writer.
00:46:41
Speaker
It is funny because ah we've had so many books where I was like, Diana Wynne Jones, secret trans themes. And then we finally get, here's me if I was a man. And she is very, very clear. this is ah This is a comedy man. This is a comedy man.
00:46:55
Speaker
Married to Katrina, who is taller than he is, who is competent, who makes the money in the household. and it ah You pointed out as well, Quentin and Katrina is pretty clearly Clennan and Lenina. They match up 100%.
00:47:12
Speaker
um But the difference between Clennan and Lenina, a marriage that does not work, and Quentin and Katrina, a marriage that I think fundamentally does work, even though most of what we see is them arguing, is that Katrina is also an artist.
00:47:25
Speaker
She is a musician. she's ah She teaches music. to school orchestras. She goes around and helps them play better. She has like a real understanding of how music comes together. There's this great scene where Katrina comes to visit Howard's school orchestra and Howard is so embarrassed because his mom is coming to visit his school orchestra.
00:47:44
Speaker
And then he finds himself having ah really good time because she really knows what she's doing and she actually can pull music out of this terrible school orchestra in a way that seems impossible. And I think that you pointed out Katrina is also in this way a self-portrait.
00:47:59
Speaker
You know, she's she's doing the school visit. She's bringing her art into classrooms.
Parental Influence and Role Models
00:48:04
Speaker
She's the mom in a way that I think like ah ah um a mother who cares and worries about her children in a way that we have not yet seen directly in this close a portrait from Diana Wynne-Jones.
00:48:15
Speaker
And I think she's in both these parents. I think i but I will add to that. I think both parents are portraits of Diana Wynne Jones, but also I think both of them are portraits of her husband, John Burrow. yes um Katrina in being tall, thin, brilliant teacher, makes the money.
00:48:33
Speaker
But also, Quinton, one of my favorite sequences in the book is early on when Howard and Awful go barge into one of Quinton's lessons at the Poly. And we get just a moment of Quinton teaching his ah university students.
00:48:46
Speaker
And there's a, for heaven's sake, woman, I don't want to know what the structuralists think. I want to know what you think. And I was like, oh, Diana was married to an academic. Yep, yep, yep.
00:48:57
Speaker
That's a real life moment. So much of what's in the adults in this book, so much what makes them appealing and charming, ah so much of what makes the Sykes family appealing and charming, that you can see why Howard would choose this family over his original evil wizard collection, is that that they their humanity, their very grounded character,
00:49:21
Speaker
Realness in the love of their jobs, their weird little arguments, the way Katrina comes into the house with her eyes closed, sits down and listens for her whole family until somebody brings her a cup of tea. It's the routines and the the personality and the the touches of realism. Yes, and the fact that they like their children.
00:49:43
Speaker
This is really explicit. And it becomes after Howard learns that he's adopted, you know, he goes through as you know, we talked about the the finding that your your city that you thought was familiar and understandable.
00:49:53
Speaker
has now become strange and inexplicable and unrecognizable. And Howard obviously goes through that echo of that journey with his family, with himself. Yeah, he has does it this emotional crisis where he, as you would expect an angry, upset teenager to do, storms around, slams doors, ah shouts for no clear reason, um refuses to explain what the actual problem is. Right.
00:50:13
Speaker
But when he actually gets around to asking his father about it, What his father says is, we enjoyed you, Howard. It's, we seem to teach us how to be happy. Do believe that. Everything started to go right after we found you.
00:50:27
Speaker
This is a family that loves being parents. They love having their children. They love their children in a way that is really fundamental to how they are as a family. And that's it.
00:50:38
Speaker
The adoption story is honestly so cute when it's told and particularly good is that Awful is there listening and then it's like, now say how you adopted me. oh we we We don't know what we did to desert you.
00:50:50
Speaker
or awful To be clear though, she is awful. And in fact, one of like the part of the climax of the book is the realization that because the whole town is descended from Hathaway, Awful is double descended from Hathaway and she is, Erskine points it out, a chip off the old block.
00:51:07
Speaker
She's a potential evil wizard herself. And Awful has the potential to become an evil wizard queen in her own right. Yes, and we will, we have to come back to that because I also want to talk about other Awful as a reflection of Cheyenne and Dillion.
00:51:20
Speaker
But before we get there, let's get back to Hathaway. Let's get back to Hathaway. There's so much to say in this book. Go on, right so Hathaway. So back to Hathaway. Hathaway, who lives in the past with his family, who has figured out has Who has to be completely distant and cut off from his family, the evil wizards, in order to have this family this loving family in the past.
00:51:39
Speaker
ah What he says, the first thing he says when he starts trying to tell Howard who, you know, trying to hint who Howard is, as he starts describing Venturus.
00:51:50
Speaker
He says, it interests me that neither Erskine nor Venturus has threatened their father. It's almost as if they want you to suspect them. That suggests to me that they're covering up for a third person, and I think that person has to be Archer. Venturus, being the youngest, admires Archer almost to the point of worship.
00:52:05
Speaker
He tries to imitate Archer. The way Hathaway said this made Howard feel that Hathaway was trying to tell him something else, something behind the actual words, but he had not a clue as to what it could be.
00:52:15
Speaker
So the the only way that Hathaway knows to try and get through to Howard and to think to hint to Howard about who he really is, is to tell him how he feels about Archer. I know who you are. You're the kid who wants to be Archer.
00:52:28
Speaker
And Howard has no idea about this, can't recognize this vision of himself at all, because at this point, especially right here, as you've said, when he's meeting Hathaway, he's the kid who wants to be Quentin.
00:52:38
Speaker
He's not the kid who wants to be Archer. he's He's taken a different role model and it's turned him into a different person. And when they leave Hathaway's point in the past, He's actually, you know, he likes Hathaway instinctively.
00:52:50
Speaker
And he thinks, and that worried Howard. He'd been alerted to things that were wrong with Archer by the look on Quentin's face. He wished Quentin had been with him this time to tell him about Hathaway.
00:53:01
Speaker
He was not at all sure he could be right on his own. So again, he walks out of that conversation where he's turned into Quentin and thinks, I wish I could understand people like Quentin did because I can't trust myself to tell who is trustworthy.
00:53:13
Speaker
But I know that Archer isn't. Right. I think it's also telling that immediately following that conversation with Hathaway, They're back with the goons. And at this point, because they went to the 16th century where you don't drink the water, they've been given wine. Awful, who was eight years old, has been given wine.
00:53:31
Speaker
And she drank a lot of it because Hathaway did a little spell to make it taste nice because she complained. And Awful is now absolutely appallingly drunk. She's trash. Very funny.
00:53:42
Speaker
So this extremely drunk little girl has decided that she loves Hathaway more than anyone in the world and is wailing about it, and refusing to move. So in comes the goon and is forced to physically pick her up and carry her out of there.
00:53:57
Speaker
And his feelings are hurt. Because they like Hathaway more than him. And I think it's it's not just Awful. It's pretty clear his feelings are hurt about both of them liking Hathaway more. And then Awful sees it and reassures him, you're my favourite goon in the whole world.
00:54:13
Speaker
And the next time Howard can see his face, it's it's gone an unusual brick colour. But there's this, the growing relationship between Howard and Awful on the one hand and Uskin, the goon, on the other is I think it's it reflects Howard's own growth.
00:54:32
Speaker
Venturus has had the chance to be a part of this family and be transformed by it. And now here's Erskine going, what about me? Can I be adopted into this family?
00:54:43
Speaker
It seems very clear that he has been, even when, you know, one of the things with this family, as we've seen, you know, we've talked a bit about Awful, is one of the ways they show their love is that they trash talk each other. And Awful the next morning wakes up with a hangover and she goes, I hate mom, I hate dad, I hate Howard and the Goon. Like, he's listing off all the members of her family and how much she hates them. Bob is cross, dad is fat, Howard is stupid, the Goon is ugly. The only one I like is Hathaway.
00:55:13
Speaker
That is also a form of being included into this family, is having awful make-up stupid little rhymes about you and say how much she hates you. There's also the point at which the goon completely loses his temper and breaks the TV, at which point Katrina and Quentin have your large adult son broke the TV. No, your large adult son broke Right, exactly.
00:55:33
Speaker
Oh my gosh. um But we haven't yet talked also about the other way that the goon is projecting his failings of wanting to fit into this family, which is Fifi. We've got to talk about Fifi. Fifi is a weird character. and Yeah. So Fifi is the young student who lives with the family as an au pair. She gets their tea for them. She picks them up from school sometimes.
00:55:56
Speaker
And for the first sort of, First half of the book, really, she is a heroic character. Like she's the one who's bravely standing up to the goon as ah like but actually terrifying to have this very, very large, threatening man come in and plant himself in the house and refuse to leave.
00:56:13
Speaker
But Fifi's the one said, let's go and find Quentin. And they go, they all go to the university together to find him. yeah um And Fifi also goes with Howard and Awful to meet Dillion and try and get the 2000 words which it turns out Dillion stole back from her. Fifi helps protect Awful from that the gang of Shine's gang of boys. um you know It says a lot of big boys just sit on her.
00:56:38
Speaker
Fifi knocked their heads together, said Awful. I kicked. The goon and Howard stared at Fifi. It was hard to imagine her that warlike. But she protects Awful from A criminal gang. Right.
00:56:50
Speaker
this This is like a brave girl who who is one of the household, who is a member of their family, ah who they all seem to care about and who cares about them, and who is presumably a 19-year-old student living in their house, probably an employee. She's almost certainly getting paid for yeah doing the au pair work, at least in like rent and board.
00:57:10
Speaker
Halfway point in the book, Fifi meets Archer, and that zooms her. And I don't know how... thoughtful this is in the way Jones chooses to ride it is true that meeting a man like Archer can be doomed for a 19-year-old girl.
00:57:24
Speaker
Fifi falls for Archer instantly. ah he's so beautiful, he's so clever, he's so important. You have to work for him, Mr. Sykes, to write in the 2000 words, how hard could it be?
00:57:36
Speaker
And after that, she's out. She's not in the family unit anymore. Awful calls her Yeah, that is the death sentence, I think, is, you know, our awful judge, awful judgment in throughout this book in its own way, I think is as important as Quentin's.
00:57:50
Speaker
You know, there's a point where they meet. The moment early on where Awful announces it's all Howard's fault made me laugh and laugh because she's completely right. She's always right. If you read this book and you take a drink every time Awful is right about something, you will not survive the And found it really notable towards the end. So Torquil is the second youngest sibling after, you know, it goes Torquil, the goon, Erskine, and Ventress.
00:58:14
Speaker
And the goon, ah Erskine, has been thinking terribly of Torquil for years and years and years. Everyone thinks that Torquil is also out to cut you know to try and rule the world. But Awful says, I think he's nice, really. He winked at me.
00:58:25
Speaker
And then they meet him again towards the end. And Howard and Awful go in together to talk to Torquil. The goon is hiding outside because he and Torquil have had terrible fights in the past. um And Awful says, again, i think he's nice, really. The goon told me to tell you if I thought he was.
00:58:40
Speaker
So Erskine trusts Awful's judgment more than he trusts his own. And as soon as Awful says, no, actually, I think Torquil's all right. Erskine's like, right. I knew it all along. He's clearly one of the good ones.
00:58:52
Speaker
But it does eventually turn out that Torquil and Hathaway actually have both been working against their siblings, trying to prevent them going off to rule the world, but in a plausibly deniable way. But when Awful says, ah Awful is the person who realizes, you know, Fifi says, Mr. Sykes, Archer's the most wonderful person in the world.
00:59:10
Speaker
Of course, you'll write something for him. The goon's mouth opened, everyone else stared, Awful suddenly exclaimed, oh, boring! Fifi's in love with Archer! Boring, boring, boring! And from that moment on the narrative loses interest in Fifi, because Awful has said she's boring.
00:59:25
Speaker
And Awful is always the final arbiter of judge the book's judgment on people. Fifi has been doomed by heterosexuality. And in fact, there are some very funny sequences as it turns out, Archer feels the same way.
00:59:39
Speaker
and Despite being a centuries-old, terribly powerful, evil wizard, he behaves more or less like a 19-year-old emotionally. So he and Fifi are on the same level.
00:59:50
Speaker
um um And you got get him turning up in his very fancy car to ask Fifi out for a drink ah while Awful commentates on the side, which is possibly the worst way to ask someone out for a drink, with an eight-year-old telling you you're disgusting.
01:00:03
Speaker
And in fact, Archer and Fifi are having a very beautiful YA urban fantasy romance. And when up when Archer goes into his terrible, you know, his terrible blowing up the city rage, that is a classic YA boyfriend rage. Someone has kidnapped my girlfriend and I'm tearing everything up to try and get her back.
Sibling Alliances and Plot Resolutions
01:00:20
Speaker
Yeah, no, Fifi is getting everything she wants here. Archer falls for her. ah He adores her, apparently. ah They get to be together forever. But Fifi also has a parallel in this book.
01:00:32
Speaker
which is Maisie Potter, another student that we meet early in the book when they go to see Dillian. And we haven't talked at all about Dillian and Shine, the two sisters. Shall we talk about Dillian and Shine first? Yes, let's do that.
01:00:45
Speaker
The only two sisters. And this is interesting because Nine Princes in Amber, right, is about the princes. these This group of ah evil wizard siblings in Zelazny does include some sisters, but they are never important or interesting for anything because I don't think Roger Zelazny had heard of women doing that. Whereas Dillion and Shine are siblings two and three in the group of seven. No, sorry. Yes.
01:01:09
Speaker
Shine and Dillion. Shine shiine is next after Archer, second oldest, Dillion's third and they are very important and very powerful. What's clear is that Archer power farms power, Shine farms crime and sees herself as a counterweight to Archer. She says I don't want to rule the world, I want to rule the world's crime. I like fighting back against someone.
01:01:32
Speaker
And then Dillian III farms law and order, ah but has always secretly wanted to be Shine. And Dillian, which is actually one of the earliest of the movies. think the very first one, you don't count the girls. She might be.
01:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, she and she is exquisitely beautiful. ah When Howard sees her, he thinks of fairy princesses, awful thinks of Miss Britain, which kind of tells you a lot about the characters. ah She turns up wearing a white silken ball gown. She has beautiful long golden hair. it castle? Yes.
01:02:01
Speaker
and She lives in a castle surrounded by flowers and fountains. She is a Maisie Potter, ah who is the student who is entranced by Dillion in the same way that Fifi is entranced by Archer.
01:02:13
Speaker
Pretty clearly exactly the same way. I think it's very yeah clearly a ah lesbian adoration here. Maisie calls her the eternal feminine. That's what Dillion is. She is femininity in its ultimate final form, which is Barbie Cop. And Awful have her on sight.
01:02:31
Speaker
Awful, who one of the first things we learned about Awful, familiar to Diana Jones's Little Girls, she loves being taken for a boy. She walks into the house of Barbie Cop Dillion and immediately starts behaving the worst, probably the worst she is in the entire book. She takes a scounder to Dillion like no other.
01:02:49
Speaker
Right. And she's correct. Awful's judgment is always right in this book. Dillion is a monster. She's extremely nasty and dishonest. And she tries to mind whammy all of them and nearly succeeds, except that Awful is the one who sees through it and ah points it out to the others what's actually happened here.
01:03:08
Speaker
So that is Dillion and then much later in the book they finally meet Shine who for quite a lot of the book they assumed was another brother. We don't find out Shine is a woman till fairly late which is an echo I think of Awful's love of being taken for a boy.
01:03:22
Speaker
And if Dillion is the eternal feminine Shine is the eternal fuck you to that. Shine is fat. It's one of the first things we're told about her and I thought it was a really interesting evolution in the way that Jones writes about fat female bodies ah Because we've had them the unsympathetic 1970s treatments of Brenda and Julia, ah the the wobbling pink giant, the really nasty descriptions.
01:03:46
Speaker
ah We've had in the 80s, the much more sympathetic ah Nan who can't climb a rope cart this ah forced into little girl clothes when she has a ah big and powerful, big, powerful mind and big, powerful body.
01:03:58
Speaker
But Shine is the first time we see female fatness written as power. yes Shine's fatness is the equivalent of the goon's hugeness. She takes up space.
01:04:09
Speaker
She is not ashamed to take up space. She loves it. She wears all black leather all over. Howard describes her as like a creaking when she moves like a kind of leather walrus.
01:04:21
Speaker
But this is not like a repulse description because it's also really clear that unlike Dillion, who's horrible, Shine is really attractive. Like Shine is the most, really the most successful of these siblings are actually winning over Howard and Orthal to her side.
01:04:39
Speaker
um It is an attempted mind whammy, but Howard enjoys this one. He's like, yeah, maybe I would like to be a ah crime boss and work for you and go on cool international travel to do crimes. An awful, whose judgment is elsewhere so good, is also instantly attracted to Shine, finds her interesting, wants to be like her.
01:04:59
Speaker
Shine is the most honest of the evil wizards. She's probably the most straightforwardly evil of the evil wizards. Yes. and And she's so cool.
01:05:10
Speaker
She's so cool. are So, you know, this is this is the point where Howard has the realization about it's not so fun being a criminal and taking things from people when you're the person having things taken from.
01:05:22
Speaker
It's meeting Shine and having Shine put the mind whammy on him and then realizing, no, I don't like this, actually. like This is attractive, but I don't like this. I hate this. you are You are using your power to take me over and I don't like it.
01:05:35
Speaker
And that's what he then goes on. What allows him to go then win over Ginger Hines is explaining she's using her power to take you over. She is taking over your free will. And Ginger Hines is horrified and disgusted because he thought that he was working with Shine and was one of Shine's, you know, leader of her gang because he wanted to be.
01:05:53
Speaker
And to learn that he's doing that without free will is appalling. Shine exploits you, uses you, tempts you with the thought of power and success and doing things on your own terms. But actually, it's always going to be on her terms.
01:06:07
Speaker
And also the threat she presents the Sykes family is by far the most direct one. as She's the one who says, I think your father will write me the words if I start cutting pieces off you and send them to her in packages.
01:06:18
Speaker
Yep. Yep. There's no hiding behind bureaucracy with Shine. Shine is very direct. Shine does actually have an infrastructure. I forget what her infrastructure job is, but she has one. She just doesn't do it. Industry. And that's because of the joke is they later go out to the industrial estate and ah everything's kind of collapsing.
01:06:34
Speaker
which actually is just 1980s Britain and industry is collapsing. But like yeah, Shine just doesn't care. It's also kind of a fun joke on the connection between industry and the mob, you know, building companies, etc.
01:06:44
Speaker
ah But there is, you know, this very direct, very unsubtle portrayal of Shine as gender criminal. And Dillion, who wants to be the gender criminal, can't be because Shine, there's already a woman in that role and we can only have one.
01:06:59
Speaker
ah Each sibling only gets to be one thing has to therefore take the second best role of gender right and this and this is womanhood these are the options these are the cut I think all the siblings are sort of models of a kind of person you could be and the options on a future for awful are Dillion and Shine. And it's really clear that Shine is the better choice by some way, but also Shine is a monster.
01:07:25
Speaker
Yes. And when we get so to the, at the end of the book, when Howard goes, so in order to figure out that he's venturous, Howard has to go into the future. It's, you know, Hathaway goes into the past and can't come back because if you go into the past, then you age in the present.
01:07:39
Speaker
If you go into the future, you become young in the present if you stay there too long. So Howard goes up into his future temple and becomes adult venturous and is horrified to see himself as adult venturous because he wants to be 13 year old Howard. Yeah, there's a great many. He looks in the mirror and he's like, what a dipshit.
01:07:56
Speaker
Right. in So many words, but that's clearly what he's thinking. Yes. um And Awful runs up and we get this great description of Awful running up the stairs to the future and we see what Awful will look like. And it is, I think, a direct echo of Cart in Time of the Ghost.
01:08:14
Speaker
ah She goes through the same stages of growing that Cart does. By the time she was on the third step, she was a large fat school girl in a maroon uniform with a sudden strong look of shine. In fact, she was completely a fair haired version of shine.
01:08:27
Speaker
She heaved up onto the fourth step. There she was suddenly skinny and awful again, but nearly six feet tall. with this right that That enormous size of the family. yeah um That sign of evil wizardhood, the the giveaway is always the way they take up space. An awful, who is a potential evil wizard herself takes up space.
01:08:47
Speaker
And then she came up onto the marble floor and became a student about Fifi's age, but much better looking, which is the transformation that Cart goes through. She's a little girl, and then she's big and fat and too large for her size and sort of frightening to the other siblings.
01:09:01
Speaker
And then she's a very attractive student. Right. It comes into her own sort of this model of happy, confident in yourself womanhood. That is very hard to reach. And as part of that, you need to embrace your gender criminal self.
01:09:19
Speaker
Yes, exactly. you have to honest And it's clear that Awful would love to embrace her gender criminal self. 100%. I also think, speaking of Awful, ah it is... And speaking of this future sequence, so this sequence where Howard Venturus is in the temple and Erskine finds him there and sort of forces him to confront the fact that not just is he Venturus, but he has gone through this this experience twice.
01:09:41
Speaker
He has lived through being adopted by Quentin and Katrina two times around. And Erskine says, interesting, the past was not the same, exactly the same both times. Awful wasn't there last time and Fifi wasn't there either.
01:09:53
Speaker
um We do know that one of the things that Howard did after living through the first 13 years as Howard ah was he learned enough to feel sort of responsible for Quentin and Katrina for adopting him, but not enough to not go back and do it all over again and convenience everybody again and still be, you know, horrible venturous.
01:10:10
Speaker
So what he did was he arranged for Quentin to not have to pay taxes and to write the 2,000 words a quarter, which originally was set up as a way to help him get over his writer's block.
01:10:21
Speaker
um And then he goes back in time. And so the difference, the one difference that we know between the first round of 13 years and the second round is that Quentin got over his writer's block sooner and the family was under less financial strain.
01:10:35
Speaker
That produces Awful. you I think that's convincing. am persuaded. Happy, cheerful, well-off parents are more likely to have more children. yeah And so as a result, Awful is in is in the mix in a way that she wasn't before. And I think that it's pretty clear that the thing that really changes Howard is not just having good parents.
01:10:57
Speaker
But having to be an older sibling and involved and an engaged older sibling to a younger sibling, whereas he had spent his entire life being the youngest sibling and being the one who manipulated all his older siblings.
01:11:10
Speaker
And that's what makes him a human person, a person who understands how to have these human connections, rather than just ah young the youngest one of these seven evil wizards. Right. Erskine tells us Ventress was a...
01:11:22
Speaker
terrible kid he says awful right um and it's always like the the the fantasy here perhaps is imagine punishing your horrid younger sibling by giving giving them an even younger even horrid younger sibling i and that it works the the change works and so uh shall we talk about the end i Hang on, what ah what a there was something else I wanted to say about Dillian and Shine and Fifi.
01:11:50
Speaker
Maisie Potter, we didn't do maisy pisup Maisie Potter. So when Fifi meets Maisie Potter and sees Maisie Potter fawning over Dillian, she is horrified and disgusted because Maisie Potter is so gormless and has lost all her agency, just does whatever Dillian wants.
01:12:07
Speaker
But this is exactly what happens to Fifi with Archer. It's exactly what happens to Fifi. Because this is one of the one of the ways in which they take you over, these evil wizards, these powerful figures. Yeah.
01:12:18
Speaker
And I do think that So as with Witch Week, this is a book that I love tremendously and I don't fully think the ending works. One of the ways that I don't think the ending works is that once we've written Fifi off, we have written Fifi off.
01:12:32
Speaker
Justice Fifi! Justice for Fifi! Right. So one of the ways in which the goon wants to get into the family or tries to get into the family is developing a terrible crush on Fifi in the early part of the book.
01:12:44
Speaker
But yeah by the end, that seems to be gone as well, because Fifi is no longer in the family. So it doesn't matter. And we'll come back to what he thinks of instead. So the ending of the book, Venturus realizes he's got he's one of this family of awful wizards, evil wizards. He doesn't want to be. He'd rather be Howard Sykes, Quentin's son, Katrina's son, awful older brother.
01:13:04
Speaker
In order to do that, he has to somehow deal with the fact that he's got these terrible older siblings trying to take over the world. He works out, Erskine, it turns out, is not so bad.
01:13:15
Speaker
Erskine would like to be in the family too. That's something. And Erskine says specifically that he doesn't want to rule the world. He just wants to travel the world. He wants Quentin to teach him how to write a book, which I think is really cute.
01:13:27
Speaker
But also, it's pretty clear that like the siblings took it in age order to decide which bits of the town they're getting. Erskine as the second youngest, so not the special youngest who everyone has to protect, just like some kid who's also there.
01:13:40
Speaker
Erskine got stuck with sewers. And he's been living in a sewer for 26 years while we went around the time loop. And he's very, very unhappy about it because, among other things, he's very, very tall. oh He's not been having a good time. And Erskine is justifiably furious with his younger brother.
01:13:56
Speaker
Ultimately, they are allies. And Erskine has come round in the same way Howard has come round to actually Archer is the worst. yeah um And this family is better. This new family, this human family.
01:14:10
Speaker
Erskine makes a point of paying for things at the stores, which is also very cute. is You can tell that he sort of makes a production of it because when they're going to the shop with Torquil and Torquil's like, and Erskine is like, remember you have to pay for things. I don't always forget.
01:14:29
Speaker
Right. So Erskine's an ally now. Hathaway was always better than everyone else. And it turns out that Torquil, we've barely talked about Torquil. Torquil is extremely funny because ah we will see him again in future books because he's Hal.
01:14:43
Speaker
I would argue that he's also David Bowie. a Torquil turned up halfway you through the book, accompanied ah by the cathedral choir and 20 disco dancers yeah to interrupt to Howard's orchestra lesson and declare that he wants the 2000 words. He doesn't. He never did. He just wants to cause problems for his siblings because he hates Right. He's making a huge production of being an evil wizard. And I think it's really funny that like when when the whole all the families start going on at the Sykeses and causing them problems, all of the others are causing them real-life problems. They're cutting off the power. They're sending them back tax bills. They're doing these really horrible, fit like boring infrastructure things.
01:15:20
Speaker
And Torquo is like... Your piano plays by itself. It's haunted. All of the drums are going off. All the radios. Every instrument in your house is suddenly possessed. There are the drum pipers practicing outside your house all day. right these are These are insane magic problems, but they're not like...
01:15:38
Speaker
big problems. They're fun and silly. They're met the fun and silly because Torquil is the only person who ever fears to be having fun being an evil wizard. Torquil forms art and music and shops.
01:15:49
Speaker
And it turns out that you know he's he's creativity. Katrina comes under Torquil because he does music. And of course it turns out that Torquil has been secretly fighting against his other horrible evil siblings the entire time because how do you stop ah the creeping power takeover is with art and music and the power of creativity.
01:16:07
Speaker
Absolutely. And the power of great outfits. It's its it's really clear that Torquil's main interest in life is having a fantastic outfit and then showing up in a huge parade. Anyway, so we've got an alliance now between the four younger evil wizard siblings, but the three oldest...
01:16:23
Speaker
Archer, Shine, Dillion are all monsters who want to rule the world and have to be stopped. And that's the problem we're faced with at the end of the book. watch Once we've unpicked all Howard's memory issues and identity issues, we're like, what do we do about Archer, Dillion and Shine?
01:16:40
Speaker
And the solution that I think it feels like Jones comes up with rather than the characters come up with, the plot solution is we'll put them on Venturus' spaceship and throw them into space, never to be seen again.
01:16:52
Speaker
ah But the plot device that they use to get them all there is Fifi, because Shines kidnapped Fifi in order to make Archer mad. Archer's blowing up the town because he wants Fifi back.
01:17:04
Speaker
And so they're like, all right, well, we're going to put Fifi in the spaceship, and then all the other siblings will come to the spaceship to have it out, and then we'll send them all off into space together. Fifi, that's fine. Fifi wanted Archer. She and Archer were going to get married. So this is clearly what she wants. This is a happy ending for her, is to go off in the spaceship to Alpha Centauri with three evil wizards.
01:17:24
Speaker
This is your au pair! She's 19!
01:17:29
Speaker
Right. And ah long last, the power of the power of creativity comes into its own as Quentin takes the magic typewriter Archer gave him, which turns out has the magical power to make things come true.
01:17:42
Speaker
And Quentin writes out the ending, forcing the evil wizards to live out the ending as he writes it. Yes. it's a really fun sequence. He's getting, he's like, oh, these are such great characters. I'm getting, Dillian pulls out a gun and everyone's like, dad, why did you write Dillian with a gun? He's like, I got carried away.
01:17:58
Speaker
She's just such an evil, which again, I think it's a joke of Diana Wynne-Jones telling on herself, she always gets carried away with making the gender, you know, the, the, you know. but A high femme villain is what Diana Wynne-Jones loves to write. And at the last minute when Dillian turns up with her hair streaming and a giant gun, you're like,
01:18:15
Speaker
you're having too much fun. Absolutely. And Quentin knows he's having too much fun. He's like, I love writing this kind of character. She's just my type. Right, so poor old Fifi and Archer are ah reunited on the spaceship. There's a great moment. Quentin's like, how slushy should I make the next bit? And everyone's like, Dad, fade to black.
01:18:35
Speaker
Please don't. And then Shane turns up and Quentin sends her onto the ship with two of her minions. And everyone's like, what, Dad? Why did you? And he's like, listen, she clearly never goes anywhere without minions.
01:18:46
Speaker
And also I've got to balance out the genders on the ship. So Quentin is doing compulsory heterosexuality on the evil wizard spaceship.
Family Bonds and Ending Reflections
01:18:54
Speaker
So justice for Fifi, but also justice for Shine's minions. Justice for Shine's minions!
01:18:58
Speaker
They're going to Alpha Centurion, can't escape! And then Didius and the ship, and the ship goes off into space with your three evil older siblings. So you have got rid of...
01:19:10
Speaker
Archer, this this hollow model of the perfect man who was all you ever imagined you could be. um You have got rid of both Dillian the Eternal Feminine and Shine the Gender Criminal. They're just as bad as each other. Let's dispose of women entirely.
01:19:28
Speaker
And now at last, that's not quite fair, actually. Katrina gets to be the the final, the last one standing in terms of adult women, the final female role model.
01:19:39
Speaker
And there's actually, when Dillian gets carried away with her gun, it's Katrina who shouts out the window at her. Woman, I've got my children up here. What the hell are you doing? And sort of motherhood wins out. which But it is, you know, it's this very sort of pat solution, right? Which is you can send the worst bits of your family, the worst bits of yourself, the worst possible models for who you might turn out to be off to outer space. And then you never have to think about them again and everything will be fine.
01:20:09
Speaker
Which doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel emotionally true. That's that's the real point. the yeah Sure, Howard can probably fire his siblings into space if he wants to. That like has been set up adequately within the book.
01:20:22
Speaker
But it doesn't feel like it solves the emotional problem of Howard has always, Venturist, aspired to become Archer. Yes. Like, are you really going to kill the Archer in your head that way? Yes.
01:20:35
Speaker
And it also doesn't resolve... You know, one of the things that's been... ah stated over and over about this horrible wizard family is that as much as they fight, as much as they can't stand each other, as much as they crime against each other, they also all live on top of each other. They can't really escape from each other. even Not just because they're trapped in the town, but like the ways that they choose bits of town to live in are all specifically on top of each other, interlinked. And Howard compares it to the way that you know you fight with Aunt Maisie, but she always comes for Christmas.
01:21:02
Speaker
There is something about... family that ties you to it. And one can't help but feeling that even though they put them in a spaceship and sent them away, they are just going to come right back.
01:21:13
Speaker
Archer is a genius and a vision. It's specifically better at technology than Venturus. This is something he's always been able to do. and you're like,
01:21:25
Speaker
15 years from now, that spaceship is coming back specifically to kick Howard's ass. Yes. And by which point, I think Fifi and the two minions will have been engaged in a complicated romantic swarm between all three of them.
01:21:39
Speaker
Because there is nothing to do on that spaceship except have polyamorous evil wizard drama. I think even more than Quentin coming, or than Archer coming back to kick the Sykes family's ass, Fifi is coming back to kick the Sykes family's ass.
01:21:52
Speaker
And quite right too, Justice for Fifi.
01:21:58
Speaker
But in the end, you know, Quentin even tries, you know, he says, I was going to end this story and they lived happily ever after, but it really doesn't seem likely it does end.
01:22:09
Speaker
but He tries to write it on the magic typewriter and everyone's like, no, which is probably quite true. But the other sort of hint that it's not all as neatly resolved as that is Erskine says, well, I know I'm off to travel the world, but I'll come back and visit every year.
01:22:24
Speaker
And Howard is pretty clearly aware that what Erskine's actually saying is I'm going to come back when all falls old enough. yeah because he's seen future awful first that ah teenage shine and ah the gender criminal then growing into the very pretty student and Erskine already tried once to get in on the family by dating the pretty student yeah and there's a better version here who's always wanted to be an evil wizard queen and Howe's like oh gosh my duty now is to prevent my sister from marrying Erskine and becoming an evil wizard queen yes that's my job as older brother
01:23:03
Speaker
Yeah, ah hang on, let me see if I can find the quote. So, no, I didn't i didn't get it because I was running out of time. um But basically he looks at Awful, chip off the old block.
01:23:14
Speaker
and says, I can't see Awful grow up to be as bad a lot as the rest of us. It's my job to stop Awful from growing up to be a horrible, easeable wizard. Erskine's going to come back and offer Awful the chance to farm some of the world, probably.
01:23:29
Speaker
And if I'm not there saying that's stupid, don't do it, she will. Because none of my siblings did that for me. And it it's Howard's final commitment to sibling parenthood. that ah ennobling role that has so often appeared in Diana Wynne Jones' family. yeah Quentin and Katrina, the good parents.
01:23:48
Speaker
um You know, when Howard comes back alone after they've had sort of mid book adventures and he sent Quentin an awful lot of somewhere safe, but he comes back alone to find Katrina and Katrina says, Where's Awful? I told her to look after Awful. And Howard says, well, she keeps she's with Quentin. She's like, she says, I don't trust Quentin.
01:24:05
Speaker
You're the one I trust. You're the responsible one. Quentin's too absent-minded. You don't trust your co-parent with the child. You trust your eldest child with the younger child. Howard, of course, is is really here, the eldest daughter of the family.
01:24:18
Speaker
And no one, you know, I think it's also quite striking in this book that even though we reading it are like, the These wizard parents who abandoned their wizard children, especially when one of them was still a child and said to the older ones, you take after our youngest wizard child, we're done with all of you.
01:24:36
Speaker
judge them quite harshly, but no one in the book judges them particularly how harshly. Yeah, Howard's like, well, look at look at what we're all like. I can't blame them for thinking that we're all terrible and leaving us. But actually, you didn't end up that way by accident.
01:24:51
Speaker
Right. Perhaps a set of parents who kept trying until they had a powerful seventh child and then gave up when their powerful seventh child was still a child um are not ideal.
01:25:03
Speaker
ah But we're never we're never really given more than that, a tiny glimpse of that failed family background. I did want to talk briefly about the house. The house, the house, the house. One thing that comes up in the Hathaway sequence when Howard is trying to figure out how to judge Hathaway and if he can trust his own impression of Hathaway is he finally thinks not of Quentin but Katrina and we're reminded Quentin is not the only moral centre Howard has to fall back on Katrina is another Katrina's request to look after his sister but also Katrina's advice to him if you want to understand a person look at their house and yes and Howard thinks about Hathaway's house and
01:25:41
Speaker
which is ah happy lived-in family home with toys left lying around and people running around doing things and someone gardening. Trying to get cat out of the tree when he looks in on them from his like spy spy temple. Yes.
01:25:54
Speaker
And Howard recognises that's the house of a good person. And in the same way, the family house, the family home of the Sykes family, is a really important like character in the book, I think.
01:26:06
Speaker
Not as a place of safety. In fact, things are constantly going wrong in the house because the evil wizards are constantly interfering with it in various ways and power is going off and electronics are spitting and the drums are booming in the cellar.
01:26:19
Speaker
But the house is a shared challenge that the family is working to solve.
Conclusion and Preview of Next Episode
01:26:24
Speaker
together it's their shared living space they all care about it and they all survive in it and they all deal with the challenges as they come up and one of the moments when it's clear the goon is being accepted into the family and becoming one of them is when he proposes the power's gone out why don't we all camp out and eat in the garden and they indeed they all go out together and cook sausages over a campfire and it's a moment of haha we have solved a house problem together right And one of the things I think the the first thing that made me look at this book and go, oh, she decided to write a silly one, is that she starts it, which I don't think she ever does again, with a series of adages. She says the book will prove the following 10 facts.
01:27:02
Speaker
I'm not going to read them all out now because we're running out of time. But number six, the one of the ones that's not sort of twisted or altered or played with it a fun way, is an Englishman's home is his castle.
01:27:13
Speaker
They do end up with a moat. That's very much a point. They end up with a moat. And it's a fun, you know, it again, it's an echo, right? Because so many of these siblings do live in real lonely, terrible castles.
01:27:28
Speaker
Temples to themselves, right. And there's never any sense, even in the the glimpses we get of Venturus's memory, that they've ever really lived together as a group, except possibly Erskine and Venturus, who were the closest in age.
01:27:40
Speaker
Yes. And meanwhile, the Sykes House, which does become a castle when a moat gets dug around it by ah for no reason at all, except they're being harassed by evil wizards. But it is it's the place where they come together is the place where they form a family unit and where the goon becomes part of that family unit.
01:27:57
Speaker
Right. And that family unit is defined by meeting challenges together, taking responsibility for one another, caring about each other. And it is so much more appealing as a place to belong than Venturus' temple to himself.
01:28:15
Speaker
But it's not surprising. Howard time looped himself twice trying to keep it. Yep. Shall we end it there? Let's end it there. Ah, great book. ah Next week, we're going to be doing Fire and Hemlock, which I suspect will be even longer than this one. We've booked ourselves two slots to talk about it. We've got two recording sessions set for this one.
01:28:36
Speaker
um Fire and Hemlock is... a hell of a book. I shouldn't use i my thoughts on it already. yeah ah But it is definitely, I think, the culmination of this 1980s flourishing phase.
01:28:50
Speaker
And I can't wait to talk about it. Me neither. Talk to you then. Bye.