Electro-optical and Infrared Systems: Technology and Applications III (Proceedings of Spie) Book

In her twelfth published novel, Diana Wynne Jones again does something new; The Homeward Bounders has a little bit of Dogsbody, a little bit of Power of Three, but mostly it's just itself. Young Jamie goes poking around where he shouldn't and is found by Them, mysterious cloaked creatures who appear to be playing an enormous strategy game with the world--and they deal with Jamie's intrusion by making him a Homeward Bounder. Now Jamie is forced to travel between worlds, pulled by an insistent demand he can't predict, with the promise that if he can find his way Home he'll be allowed to stay. As he travels for months and years without aging, Jamie visits hundreds of worlds with hundreds of societies, some pleasant, some hostile, never allowed to stay long enough to make a home, holding on to just the tiniest hope that he will return Home someday.

While the varying societies Jamie visits are fascinating (DWJ was endlessly creative when it came to making new worlds) this book is very much about people and how they treat each other. Jamie's experiences make him cynical, naturally, and when he finally acquires some companions, he's unable at first to trust them or see them as anything but burdens. Helen Haras-uquara has her own issues, and Joris the demon hunter can't seem to stop talking about his "owner," the great demon hunter Konstam. That the three of them can become friends at all is due to DWJ's understanding of how people work. Their relationships are prickly, slow-growing things, but they do grow in ways dictated by who each of them are.

As a role-playing gamer, I love the way that wargaming comes into the story. Adam, an enemy turned friend (something we'll see again in other DWJ books, particularly Archer's Goon) provides the key to defeating Them through his and his father's enormous wargame terrain. While the other characters have supernatural abilities that let them fight their unseen enemy, Adam and his sister provide support in other ways, particularly through knowledge.

The revelation of how They are playing their game and what it will take for Jamie and the others to defeat them is complicated, typical for a DWJ novel. There's never anything simple about her solutions, and in this case understanding it requires a way of thinking about the world that reminds me of the ending of Fire and Hemlock--if one thing must be true, then another can't be. Jamie's solution to the problem hinges both on his ignorance (knowing who Prometheus is would have ruined everything) and his profound understanding of the puzzle. He sacrifices everything to keep Them from returning to power, and the final sentence of the novel makes me cry every time I read it.