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Feb. 17th, 2009 10:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA Tale of Time City is probably not the most coherently plotted Diana Wynne Jones book, but I love it anyways, and rereading it was massive amounts of fun. Also it is always going to be my formative association with the London Blitz evacuees, because it is the first book I read to present me with the concept - which is actually why I had the craving to reread it, because I caught the evacuation scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on TV a week or so ago.
Basically, the story follows Vivian, a London girl who gets caught up in case of mistaken identity and kidnapped . . . where she is mistaken for a mythological figure who may or may not exist, the place she is kidnapped to is a city that travels backwards through time, and her kidnappers are a couple of adolescent boys who have decided they're destined to Save the City, but mostly because they're bored on their school holidays. A lot of interesting and complicated plot follows, involving history going unstable, timelines colliding, mysterious plot MacGuffin-boxes, paranoid androids, and badly translated ancient texts.
. . . okay, like I said, the plot can be confusing, and some parts seem sometimes like a pastiche of other DWJ books (Elio and Yam, separated at birth?) but I love it anyways for the characters and the timewarp and the wonderful Jonesian humor. The scene where Vivian tries to translate the ancient prophecy is one of my favorite things in all of ever, and I think in fact I am going to share a bit with all of you because I love it so:
"One large black smith threw four coffins about," she read.
Jonathan hastily stuffed a doubled-up length of pigtail into his mouth. "Oh, did he?" Dr. Wilander said placidly. "To show off his strength, I suppose. Carry on."
"So that they turned into four very old women," Vivian read. "One went rusty for smoothing clothes. Two went white in moderately cheap jewelry. Three of them turned yellow and got expensive, and another four were dense and low in the tables -"
"So now there were ten coffins," Dr. Wilander said. "Or maybe ten strange elderly ladies. Some of these were doing the laundry while the rest pranced about in cheap necklaces. I suppose the yellow ones caught jaundice at the sight, while the stupid ones crawled under the furniture in order not to look. Is there any more of this lively narrative?"
"A bit," Vivian said. "Four more were full of electricity, but they were insulated with policemen, so the town could learn philosophy for at least a year."
"Four more old women and an unspecified number of police," Dr. Wilander remarked. "The blacksmith makes at least fifteen. I hope he paid the police for wrapping themselves round the electrical old ladies. It sounds painful. Or are you implying that the police were electrocuted, thus supplying the townsfolk with a valuable moral lesson?"
OH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS. I feel Vivian's pain, and so I love her! And I love the disorientation and culture clash she feels at being plunged from the 1940s into Time City, and the serious consequences that may result. There are also wonderful high-speed chase scenes to try to find the town's High Grand Important Person's appropriate ceremonial slippers, and a fabulous moment where the android is like "oh, I am not much injured, it is only a foot-long scratch, I am very ashamed of myself for bearing up so badly under it" and everyone else goes "ELIO THAT IS SERIOUS," and the android is like ". . . oh. I didn't know! I've never been injured before! Um, maybe I have in fact been showing impressive levels of endurance then?" I also love that Time City, as a post-future (and timeless) place, does not default completely white (although it may default culturally British). The leading family of the city - to which most of the non-Vivian characters belong - are the Lees, of Chinese descent; Jonathan, the main character after Vivian, has a Lee for a mother, and I would guess his father's heritage is Indian.
Also, the Mind Wars that Diana Wynne Jones posits as happening in the future are creepy as hell.
Basically, the story follows Vivian, a London girl who gets caught up in case of mistaken identity and kidnapped . . . where she is mistaken for a mythological figure who may or may not exist, the place she is kidnapped to is a city that travels backwards through time, and her kidnappers are a couple of adolescent boys who have decided they're destined to Save the City, but mostly because they're bored on their school holidays. A lot of interesting and complicated plot follows, involving history going unstable, timelines colliding, mysterious plot MacGuffin-boxes, paranoid androids, and badly translated ancient texts.
. . . okay, like I said, the plot can be confusing, and some parts seem sometimes like a pastiche of other DWJ books (Elio and Yam, separated at birth?) but I love it anyways for the characters and the timewarp and the wonderful Jonesian humor. The scene where Vivian tries to translate the ancient prophecy is one of my favorite things in all of ever, and I think in fact I am going to share a bit with all of you because I love it so:
"One large black smith threw four coffins about," she read.
Jonathan hastily stuffed a doubled-up length of pigtail into his mouth. "Oh, did he?" Dr. Wilander said placidly. "To show off his strength, I suppose. Carry on."
"So that they turned into four very old women," Vivian read. "One went rusty for smoothing clothes. Two went white in moderately cheap jewelry. Three of them turned yellow and got expensive, and another four were dense and low in the tables -"
"So now there were ten coffins," Dr. Wilander said. "Or maybe ten strange elderly ladies. Some of these were doing the laundry while the rest pranced about in cheap necklaces. I suppose the yellow ones caught jaundice at the sight, while the stupid ones crawled under the furniture in order not to look. Is there any more of this lively narrative?"
"A bit," Vivian said. "Four more were full of electricity, but they were insulated with policemen, so the town could learn philosophy for at least a year."
"Four more old women and an unspecified number of police," Dr. Wilander remarked. "The blacksmith makes at least fifteen. I hope he paid the police for wrapping themselves round the electrical old ladies. It sounds painful. Or are you implying that the police were electrocuted, thus supplying the townsfolk with a valuable moral lesson?"
OH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS. I feel Vivian's pain, and so I love her! And I love the disorientation and culture clash she feels at being plunged from the 1940s into Time City, and the serious consequences that may result. There are also wonderful high-speed chase scenes to try to find the town's High Grand Important Person's appropriate ceremonial slippers, and a fabulous moment where the android is like "oh, I am not much injured, it is only a foot-long scratch, I am very ashamed of myself for bearing up so badly under it" and everyone else goes "ELIO THAT IS SERIOUS," and the android is like ". . . oh. I didn't know! I've never been injured before! Um, maybe I have in fact been showing impressive levels of endurance then?" I also love that Time City, as a post-future (and timeless) place, does not default completely white (although it may default culturally British). The leading family of the city - to which most of the non-Vivian characters belong - are the Lees, of Chinese descent; Jonathan, the main character after Vivian, has a Lee for a mother, and I would guess his father's heritage is Indian.
Also, the Mind Wars that Diana Wynne Jones posits as happening in the future are creepy as hell.
