In Power Of Three, Diana Wynne Jones's seventh novel, she takes her skill with limited third person perspective and the naive narrator to a new level. Ayna, Gair and Ceri are siblings who live on the Moor, coexisting unpeacefully with the Dorig, water-dwelling fish-like humanoids, and the Giants, large and loud and strong. Ayna and Ceri have actual magical powers that they have to learn to use over the course of the story: Ayna can give a true answer to any question she's asked; Ceri can control others via Thoughts and mend anything that's broken. Gair's talent isn't revealed until later, but of course it's obvious that he has one even when he doesn't believe he does. The siblings' homelands are under attack by the Dorig because the Dorig want to drive the humans out of their lands, but the feud is made worse by a longstanding hatred between humans and Dorig, a feud caused by a curse and a murder years before. When their home, Garholt, is invaded by Dorig, Ayna, Gair and Ceri escape and find help among some Giant children, then make alliance with some Dorig children, and ultimately find a way to break the curse that's been driving the three groups apart.None of the above is true.The events of the story play out as I've described. The title refers in part to the individual magic powers the children have, the power they have as siblings, and the power of three races working together. But the story is entirely funneled through the perceptions of Ayna, Gair, and Ceri, and while in Dogsbody it was easy for readers to identify the things that Sirius saw because they were familiar objects, Jones takes advantage of the alienness of the children's world to completely fool the reader about who and what the humans, Dorig, and Giants are.One of the things I like best about this book (aside from the total mindgame Jones plays) is the rather adult complication of the politics behind Dorig and human relations, and the politics of the Giants' intentions for the Moor. Each of the three races has its own well-defined culture that turns out to be part of a single religious/magical system. The underlying theme is that differences between people often turn out to be as simple as seeing things a different way. Breaking the curse, in the end, requires the help of all three races, with a final declaration that echoes Huck Finn's resolve to break an unjust law even if it means going to Hell. Add to this Jones's skill with characterization, dialogue, and description, and you have a complex novel suitable for readers of all ages.
Twelve-year-old Gair, middle and most ordinary child of famous parents, has been brought up to fear and hate the other two peoples who live on the Moor: the water-dwelling, shape-shifting Dorig and the warring Giants with their strange magic. But thanks to a wrong done to a Dorig by their uncle when he was a boy, everybody on the Moor is living under a curse of misfortune. And Gair may be the one with the key to lifting it.I adore this for everything DWJ-ish about it, but it is a little bit of a mess. The first half is great: DWJ does family so well, and the three siblings have a lightly drawn but wonderfully believable dynamic with each other and with their parents. The tone is great too: the realism and humour of the character voices melded with a more folkloric kind of world than DWJ often writes reminded me a bit of Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen or Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain books.The tone is the problem, though, because it can’t support the introduction of the Giants, when they come in. Everything about Gerald and Brenda, their world and their voices and even their names, grates on the mood of the book. And I guess the culture clash was intended to be the point, to a certain extent? But it just threw me out of the story. The differences in Dorig society and cultural assumptions were fascinating, but the Giants’ differences just made the whole thing feel awkward, to me.This book also has one of those DWJ plot resolutions that just isn’t explained clearly enough for me to understand it. Most of the time I love the way she thinks, the way magic works, the way cause and effect work in her books. But in a few of them I read the explanation over and over and it still doesn’t come clear.There’s also some uneven treatment of a fat character. Brenda is a fairly sympathetic character – I have trouble caring about either of the Giants, but I care about her as much as I do Gerald – but the fact that she’s fat comes up every time she moves. Other people walk out of a room; she huffs or plods or stomps. It makes a certain amount of sense for the POV – Gair and the others are already over-awed by the heaviness of giants, so a fat Giant is especially going to be defined by that, for Gair – but still: not good, that part.
What do You think about Power Of Three (2003)?
What I love about (99% of) Jones books is that, regardless of my current reading mood or habit, I can pick one up, be drawn in, and enjoy it the whole way through. In that respect, Power of Three did not disappoint.The plot moves at an ambling pace, most of the cast is quickly sketched with more detail filled in as the mostly main character comes to understandings and realizations, and the ending is a little abrupt and too neat, even compared to Jones' normally abrupt endings.Still, I enjoyed the story and these flaws/stylistic choices were easily overlooked. It's a great guy or girl read and portrays several timeless questions common to children, teenagers, and adults, among them those of one's self worth, one's perception of others, and coming to terms with the undesirable parts of one's character.Short, fun read. Good for a rainy day.
—Kel
The Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones takes places on the Moors, a place where full of by rival tribes, water dwelling Dorig and clueless giants stumbling about. In it, the chief’s three children learn their land is under a curse and hope to overthrow it. Their investigations take them on excursions into the court of the Dorig and the “land of the giants.” There, the nature of their world is revealed to the reader, though it takes the characters a bit to catch on.Diana Wynne Jones has the gift of presenting children in fantasy environments and making them seem ordinary, everyday, and completely natural. Long before the plot kicked in I was interested in their tribe’s society, their customs and culture, their hunts and feuds. I was sympathetic to the political and familial tensions. It was a nice little read.
—Caroline
DWJ Book Toast, #14Diana Wynne Jones is one of my favorite fantasy authors, growing up and now, and I was saddened by the news of her death. I can't say I'm overcome with emotion - as personal as some of her work is to me, its not like I knew her after all - but I wish I could put into words how I feel about her no longer being out there, writing new adventures and laughing at all of us serious fans thinking so hard about her words when we should simply get on with the business of enjoying them.And that's...what I'm going to do. She's left behind a huge body of work, a large amount of which I haven't read yet, so I'm going to reread all my old favorites (and hopefully some new). An early Jones book and a disappointingly bland one too. I don't know how much of that must come from the fact that Jones changed and rewrote most of the rules for young fantasy stories, everything that would have made this book interesting has been appropriated and reused by other authors and Jones herself.First we have Gair who insists and whines over and over and over again about how Ordinary he is, he doesn't have special powers. He's only smart and kind and good at hunting and the heir to the chiefdom of his people. His sister and brother have, respectively, the ability to know the future and where things are, but only when asked. Most of this book would have been solved in three pages if someone had, I don't know, asked them one or two obvious questions.Then we have the Giants and the Dorrig, a race of shapechangers, who have their own adult and youth representatives. There's a long-standing curse and self-discoveries and "Boy we're not so different after all" moments, but there was little of that sense of fun or insight that Jones usually bring into play.The Power of Three takes a long time to build up and a lot of the elements we spend so much time on never come into play. It was mostly "world-building" for the sake of world-building. I've heard good things about books that came before this one, but it seems to me that this book is definitely from a Diana Wynne Jones that is still in her apprenticeship. This is for completists only.
—Myles
