The Spellcoats

I love this book! I think it is the best of the Dalemark Quartet.This is from the viewpoint of a girl, second youngest in her family. Her country goes to war. When the people of her village return from battle, they inform the children that they look exactly like Heathens, the people with whom they were at war.When their village turns against them, the children must look to their Undying for help.Totally awsome book!

When I first began this book (many years ago) I found it confusing at best, and terribly boring at worst. I recently picked it up at my local bookstore by chance over the summer and decided to give it another try, thinking it would pass the time before I returned to college. I found myself enchanted from the first page. The story (as others have mentioned) follows Tanaqui and her siblings as they travel down the River until their final confrontation with the evil Kankredin. As a child I couldn't really appreciate the humor and subtle narrative skill found in Diana Wynne Jones's writing. If you allow yourself to delve into the book, though, the words wash over you like the river in the novel and you become immersed in the world Ms. Jones has created. Just be warned, the narrative style is first person limited and the story itself is unlike most in contemporary youth fiction. It isn't as fast paced as most youth novels today, so if your children are looking for something with a lot of action, stick to Harry Potter. Even so, this book absolutely begs to be read aloud before bedtime, so give it a try and if the kids don't like it, read it yourself! The style and pacing take some getting used to, but this novel is absolutely worth the effort. Though appropriate for all ages, I think this book can be best appreciated by adults (both young and old).

Unlike the standard fantasy series, in which each volume follows the continuing adventures of a single cast of characters - aseries of tunes played on the same set of instruments - this one really is designed as a "quartet". Each of the first three booksis all but independent of the rest, told in its own distinct voice. They interlock, but in subtle ways - through commongeography, family names that link with the long history of Dalemark and its peculiar "gods". Diana Wynne Jones alwaysprovides the pleasure of well-told, formula-busting stories. In her Quartet, she also provides the pleasure of watching anintricate pattern unfold behind the stories.The third volume is the true heart of the series, epic and mysterious, bright-lit and misty, awash in magical happenings and still more magical lyricism. "The Spellcoats" is the only book in the Quartet which is told in the first person. The voice we hear belongs to a young girl named Tanaqui, living with her family and her family's collection of gods on the banks of the great River. She doesn't speak her story, or write it - she weaves the words into an intricately detailed "rugcoat", a kind of wearable diary. The time is many centuries before the Dalemark of the first two volumes. There are no guns or bombs, scarcely any musical instruments, and the continent has a different shape, dominated by the one huge brown north-flowing river, worshipped by Tanaqui's neighbors as a god in its own right.The surprising mythology of this dawn world comes slowly into focus for us as Tanaqui weaves her story. Neither her family, nor the river-worshipers, nor the "Heathens" with whom her whole country is at war, quite understand what the "gods" really are, or the predicament those gods are in. Their religions all have a piece of the truth, and the whole truth must be pieced together to defend the land from the evil mage Kankredin, who imprisons the souls of the dead in his far-flung nets.Just for rousing storytelling, I give volumes 1 and 3 four and a half stars, volumes 2 and 4 four stars. But the Quartet is morethan the sum of its parts, and the series as a whole merits five.

The third book in Diana Wynne Jones' Dalemark Quartet is _The Spellcoats_. This book is set in the prehistory of Dalemark, hundreds or thousands of years prior to the action of the first two books (and, I assume, the fourth). It deals with a family of children: Robin, Gull, Hern, Mallard (or Duck), and the narrator, Tanaqui, who is presented as weaving the entire story into the title "spellcoats". The so-called "Heathens" have invaded their land, and Gull and their father are recruited to fight -- a war from which Gull returns apparently mad, and from which their father returns not at all. At the same time, the children face hostility from their fellow villagers, because they are bright-haired like the Heathens. As an enormous flood strikes the village, they are forced to flee down the great River to the Sea. Along the way they receive mysterious advice from their dead Mother, and from a strange man, who seems to be a wizard, and who Robin falls in love with. They learn that an evil wizard, Kankredin, awaits at the mouth of the river, and that he seems to be calling Gull to him. After encounters with both Kankredin and the young King of the Heathens, they head back upriver with their own King, and with their strangely changed "Undying" figure. All the children must learn their own surprising destinies, and the true nature of their Undying, of their Mother, of the "wizard" Tanamil, of Kankredin and their River. Magic is closer to the surface in this book than in the other two, and the events closer to mythical events. It is partly a nation-formation tale -- it becomes clear that this is the story of how Dalemark as Dalemark came to be -- as such, an important set up, I would guess, for the final volume, which presumably will concern the reunification of the sundered Kingdom. Perhaps because it's such a "mythical" book, it's also darker, and perhaps grander, than the first two books. All in all, another very fine Diana Wynne Jones story.

Although this may not be Diana Wynne Jones's most glitzy or famous book, I think it is one of her most poetic, along with Cart and Cwidder. She writes so masterfully of the desolate river, the power of Tanaqui's weaving, and the way humans are godlike and the gods are human-like. These are books that you can live with as you grow older because you learn everytime you read them. Yes, this is a funny book, because she is always funny, but it is also a book that teaches you to fight the way Tanaqui fights, with words. As always, the characters are so clear. This is such a beautiful book!