SUCH A GREAT BOOK. So wry! So witty! So cozy, as you say, and yet such sly little stabs at convention - Sophie's gaining a real personality only when she thinks she has nothing else to lose, Howl's constant beautifying in the legendary bathroom, &c. And the Donne poem is great, and the scarecrow and Witch of the Waste really terrifying. I know people who think Sophie and Howl hooking up at the end feels rushed or forced, but it's totally in the convention of screwball comedy, and as you say, Jones drops a lot of little subtle hints along the way - and they only click into place when you get there and realize, "of course, THAT'S what was going on all the time," which is one of my favourite methods of storytelling. I liked also that Sophie's stepsisters and stepmother are presented as flawed but not eeeevil beings - Fanny _does_ exploit Sophie, it's true, but it's also obvious she cares for her too, in her own way, and I loved her family all coming together at the end of the book. Like a Shakespearean romance, funny and silly and happy.
The sequels....ehhhhh. I liked the characters in the Magic Carpet, but there was enough racial stereotyping? that it made me uneasy and I was never quite sure whether Jones was sort of getting sucked into failiness or making fun of said stereotypes, so that kind of took the edge off the fun. And maybe I was grumpy when I read the second sequel, but it just seemed like the form was off -- it felt sort of rushed and rambunctious in the way Jones's style does to me when it's just not convincing, and I didn't particularly like the relationship between the male and female leads. I also REALLY didn't like how Sophie is treated in the last book. But I just might need to reread it when less cranky. I think both books suffered mightily from being sold as "sequels" to HMC, and I wonder how I would've read them as standalones; Sophie, Howl and Calcifer do show up, but just barely in the second, and they don't really do much in the third.
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Date: 2011-05-30 11:44 pm (UTC)The sequels....ehhhhh. I liked the characters in the Magic Carpet, but there was enough racial stereotyping? that it made me uneasy and I was never quite sure whether Jones was sort of getting sucked into failiness or making fun of said stereotypes, so that kind of took the edge off the fun. And maybe I was grumpy when I read the second sequel, but it just seemed like the form was off -- it felt sort of rushed and rambunctious in the way Jones's style does to me when it's just not convincing, and I didn't particularly like the relationship between the male and female leads. I also REALLY didn't like how Sophie is treated in the last book. But I just might need to reread it when less cranky. I think both books suffered mightily from being sold as "sequels" to HMC, and I wonder how I would've read them as standalones; Sophie, Howl and Calcifer do show up, but just barely in the second, and they don't really do much in the third.