The works of Diana Wynne Jones, in order, one decade at a time, with Emily Tesh and Rebecca Fraimow
Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones is a DWJ readalong podcast, winner of the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Fancast. You can find us on Zencastr, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
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S3 E6: Crown of Dalemark
Mitt at last came out with the real cause of his disappointment with the North. "They told me it was free here," he said. "They told me it was good."
North and South, history-time and story-time, past kings and future kings, bicycle horses and evil-haunted trains and a really truly impressive array of bad dads all meet on Dalemark's green roads in the book it took Diana Wynne Jones fifteen years to write.
S3 E5: Hexwood
This wood is like human memory. It does not need to take events in their correct order. Do you wish to go to an earlier time and start from there?
It's a portal fantasy! It's a space opera! It's an office comedy! It's an epic romance! It's an exploration of parenthood! It's a metaphor for authorship and creative control! It's King Arthur! It's Siegfried! It's ten books in a trenchcoat playing 4D chess with each other, and we could probably talk about it for another four hours and still have more to say.
S3 E4: A Sudden Wild Magic
The restraints of knowledge harmed this wild power. In order to use it, Zillah could not know what it was. It would only answer a being as untrammeled as itself.
Time for elves, centaurs, demons, gods, witches, monks, princes, soulbonds, spaceships, sex, death, and an ever-present toddler, in undoubtedly the wildest book of Diana Wynne Jones' career to date.
S3 E3: Black Maria
What's the good of being civilized? That's what I want to know. It just means other people can break the rules and you can't.
The gender dictatorship, the horror of conformity, the limits of word power, and how to stop your mother-in-law from living rent free in your brain.
S3 E2: Castle in the Air
‘That djinn has taken liberties with a person's castle,’ Sophie said. 'Unless I'm entirely turned around, this used to be our bathroom.'
Richard Burton's Arabian Nights and Edward Said's Orientalism, fairy tale and retail, big dreams, big crimes, and Diana Wynne Jones' empire of the imagination.