Fourteen short, and one not-so-short stories geared towards young readers. A few were intriguing and some tied into Diana Wynne Jones' other books. Unfortunately, the were a few stories that went just a little too long or lost the reader's interest. Since the stories are completely unrealated to one another it also gets slightly confusing. Personally, I enjoy Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series which is geared more towards teens, "Mixed Magics" has a wide variety of stories, some of which are not written nearly as well as others. Certain stories got rather frustrating. It was almost as if Diana Wynne Jones was planning on ending it in the middle but decided it was not long enough and tried to stretch it out. Most of the time, this stretching out did not work. Sometimes it appeared that she was trying to stretch it out by adding more action, but then later on it works better than you would assume. Each story has it's own plot line. One story is in the view-point of a cat! After reading the story ahead of that one sometimes you forget what point of view the story is in. Therefore, it is much more helpful to finish one story, wait, and then read another story. Otherwise it gets very confusing as to which story you are reading. "Mixed Magics" is also definietly geared towards younger children. The writing style is more like a children's book and there is no hard vocabulary. It is easy to understand but gets boring for older children. Although I enjoyed certain stories, there were a few that I did not enjoy.
It's my preference for short story collections not to give star ratings to each story, but to mark whether I felt positively or negatively toward them when I finished each. 1. The Girl Jones + 2. Nad and Dan adn Quaffy + (fun)3. The Plague of Peacocks + ☺ (love when people get what's deserved)4. The Master +5. Enna Hittims +6. The Girl Who Loved the Sun +7. The Fluffy Pink Toadstool + ☺8. Auntie Bea's Day Out +9. Carruthers - (main character was a brat from the first moment)10. What the Cat Told Me +/- (not worked out well)11. The Green Stone +/-12. The Fat Wizard +13. No One +14. Dragon Reserve, Home Eight +15. Little Dot + (read this in another anthology a few days ago)16. Everard's Ride + (the novella in this collection)As every story in this collection had been previously published elsewhere, I think this particular publication of them is best for those who already know DWJ's work and are fans of her. The type of story changes so much from one to the next, the age of the intended audience is so different from one to the next, and it starts with a story that is probably only really interesting to those of us who are interested in DWJ as a person, that for this to be an introduction to her would probably be somewhat disastrous. I quite enjoyed it, however.
What do You think about Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories (2006)?
This is probably a really good book to start with if you don't know DWJ yet. It's a collection of (magical) short stories and one novella (Everard's Ride), which was also my absolute favourite piece out of the book. It's a very dense story, not quite a fairytale, rather a sort of medieval tale, really gorgeous.What I love most about DWJ's stories is that magic, in all of her writing, is an everyday thing - it's part of life, usually not mentioned as something special. She makes it seem natural and you begin to feel that everyone has a little magic after all.
—Judith
DWJ's short stories are varied in tone, but the themes are familiar from her longer works. Etta Hittims shows the downside of having a Sophie-like mind, while also echoing Hexwood. My favourite story is The Fat Wizard, which I would have loved to see extended to booklength. Mind you, it has elements of Enchanted Glass, so maybe it WAS. Other stories, including the Plague of Peacocks and The Fluffy Pink Toadstool, remind me of Joan Aiken's stories about Mark and Harriet. That's all good, since I like those stories too.
—Sally
I didn't read the whole collection this time - though I should have. Instead I had the craving to read the particular short story "Little Dot". Over and over on of my favorite things in stories is where an odd bunch of characters all use their unique talents to defeat a foe, and in this case, even though they're cats, it's still a marvelous story. Love it!I should take the time to read the other stories in this collection, but "Little Dot" was just calling to me this time. So good.DWJ's short stories are every bit as magnificent as her novels, and it makes you wonder at all the other stuff she might have unfinished somewhere.
—Jeremy
