Review: Howl's Moving Castle

Title: Howl's Moving Castle

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Date Completed: 10 May 2016

I'm not entirely sure how I managed to never hear of this author considering my lifelong love of fantasy and that she's received all sorts of book awards. Howl's Moving Castle was even made into an Academy Award-nominated motion picture! I suppose it is comfortable living under my rock...

So the tale follows a girl who is cursed into being an old lady. She was reserved, shy, and afraid of failure as a girl, but as an old woman she doesn't care what she says or does and sets off on an adventure and falls in with the wizard Howl. It sounded like a fun premise, so I picked up the book at the library. The storyline mainly seemed to focus on daily life in the moving castle and a few things happening externally. I'm still not entirely sure how the love story thing fits in...threw me for a loop and didn't seem to make any sense based on the whole story...oh well.

The fairy-tale writing style/language Jones used in this book is not my favorite. I probably would have been perfectly fine with it when I was younger, but it made me feel more distanced from the world and characters. I like to be sucked into the the story to the point I lose track of my surroundings, but this book never made me want to visit their world. I'll be giving the animated movie a chance, and may attempt another one of her books in a different series to see if it was just this particular book that didn't captivate me.

P.S. While a HUGE departures from the book, the anime was cute. The love story made a bit more sense in the screenplay version. Howl sounded like Batman.