Howl's Moving Castle

Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Published: April 1986 (First printing); August 7, 2001 (HarperCollins)
Category: Fantasy/YA

I really loved the movie version of this book, but some things were a bit confusing, especially the terms of Sophie's curse. I thought that reading the book would clear things up. Unfortunately, it didn't really clear anything up. It made some things more complicated and revealed to me that the movie version made Sophie's aging curse much more complex than it was in the book.

In short: Sophie the boring eldest daughter of a hatter isn't expected to do much with her life because she's the eldest (Jones has set her world up as a sort of fairytale spoof). It turns out that she has some magical ability (not in the movie) and this attracts trouble from the Witch of the Waste, who confronts Sophie and casts a spell on her, causing Sophie to age about 65 years and not tell anyone how it happened. Sophie leaves her home and winds up in the castle of the Wizard Howl. While he's out, she makes a deal with his fire demon Calcifer, promising to break him free from his contract to Howl in exchange for his breaking her spell.

Of course, there's a happy ending, but it got all weird and unnecessarily complicated at the end what with the second fire demon and the weird patchwork wizard/prince. And I really didn't like Howl. I thought he was flaky for most of the book, chasing after other girls, and at the very end he reveals that he cares for Sophie? Uh-uh. I'll stick to the movie version because I fell in love with him there.