Reviews for Pinhoe Egg (Chrestomanci Series #6)

The average rating for Pinhoe Egg (Chrestomanci Series #6) based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-03-29 00:00:00 Patricia Harris Diana Wynne Jones does so much with The Pinhoe Egg and makes it look so simple and easy. I think that must be her special gift as a writer: exploring dark themes and complex messages within the pages of children's fantasy novels that remain bright and fun despite the darkness and disorder lurking beneath the sparkling adventures. This, the final book in the series, is about two children from very different cultures living side-by-side who somehow manage to be change agents despite everything including their own personalities working against them. It is rife with terrible things like mind control and past atrocities being buried and difference being imprisoned rather than celebrated and torture being chosen as an alternative to murder and religious fanaticism and uncaring adults willing to harm children and towns that revel in their toxic tunnel vision. And it is also a whole lot of light, pleasant fun that is exciting and ends on a a wonderfully positive note. ⇨ some vague spoilers approach All of the Chrestomanci books have been concerned, one way or another, with the evil that parents and parental figures and family members can do to their young protagonists and to children in general - often for the most banal of reasons. This book takes that theme to next level and widens its scope with whole villages willing to isolate, harm, and raise their children in ignorance in order to achieve their highly questionable ends. It was a bit breathtaking to realize how deep the evil ran. Jones did a particularly canny thing by setting the first 3 chapters, 50 pages worth, within one of these villages. The reader gets to see the rather charming misadventures of a whole clan of madcap eccentric types trying to move their ailing, senile matriarch into a new home while she tries to use the might of her magic to stop them. It was all so funny and human. By the end of the novel, with all of their misdeeds revealed, I was thankful that these terrible people had been given their moments of humanity despite the revelation of their close-minded villainy. ⇨ you can now lay to rest your fear of being spoiled Perhaps to counter all of the darkness under the surface of this cheery adventure, Jones really ratchets up the cuteness factor. I'm used to at least one grouchy, adorable cat per novel. Pinhoe Egg has a cat of that sort, and another cat more maternal in nature, a luckless donkey, a wonderfully quirky horse, a unicorn, and most loveable of all, a baby griffin. I just want to say that again: a baby griffin! The scenes featuring the griffin and the horse together were the best sort of cuteness overload. The Chrestomanci books are about how adults can harm children, but that's only half of the lesson - and not even the most important half. They are just as concerned with children being given the opportunity to follow their own hearts when deciding how they want to eventually live their lives; children learning to trust themselves and finding an inner bravery despite what fate has handed them. Valuable lessons! The series is a marvelous achievement.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-21 00:00:00 Tuan Nguyen This was another delight. I was hooked early, by a scene about a witch grandma who didn't want her family moving her out of her house. She poltergeists the live-in nurses! She melds herself into the bed! When the whole family tries to levitate her bed-self out, she resists and then flings herself into town, a bed on the run. What a great series. I wish there were more.