~ HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE ~
Diana Wynne Jones

Review by: C. N. Rivera

After watching the animated film of Howl's Moving Castle, I thought: Oh, okay. Good film. It wasn't until the day after that the story and its characters really affected me, leaving me with the desire to see or hear more about them. There were also certain elements of the film that I very much wanted to see more fully explained. So, hoping for some satisfaction on both ends, I went out and purchased the book.

Howl's Moving Castle will forever be one of those novels that I put next to The Last Unicorn as a fantasy novel whose animated movie gets it mostly right, but which has a few omissions. There are a couple of points in the book where I said: Oh! Well, that certainly explains that . And for the most part, the movie stayed true to the story in all the ways that mattered — up until about halfway through.

After Howl's tantrum over his hair, the book goes off in a completely different direction. There is no war between cities, and the Witch of the Waste most certainly does not end up in Howl's castle. Wizard Suliman from the movie is, in fact, an amalgam of two characters from the book, and the black door turns out to be, well, a whole other world — but one that still links back to Howl's backstory. Oh, and Howl never actually transforms into a bird creature. Ever.

Nevertheless, I hold the film at no fault for not following the book completely. In fact, it was nice to see both versions – it was like getting to see two stories containing the same characters rather than one. And the characters are certainly worth it. Interactions between Howl, Sophie, Calcifer, and Michael (yes, Michael, not Markl — I'm just guessing, since all the other names were correct, that someone couldn't quite translate what sounded like ‘Markelu' into Michael from Japanese) are wonderful and entertaining at every turn, and I continually found myself wanting to know even more about them.

This is just as prevalent in the book as in the film. Diana Wynne Jones writes in a way that feels like you're skimming the surface of something ultimately deeper, and it makes you positively anxious to find out what that is. Good thing Miyazaki chose to make the animated feature. He and his teams have a knack for giving that very same impression.

One of the most entertaining things that Jones does is provide you with so many crossover meetings and mentions that you might want to draw a flowchart — and even then, you'd probably leave something out. There were many off-handed comments from characters that turned out to mean something in the end , and I couldn't help but laugh at how Jones had slipped them in so expertly.

In the end, I had most of my questions answered (on one or two occasions, the story gave me new questions while still answering my original ones), and I got to enjoy a little more time with Howl and Sophie and the rest. Next, if I'm ambitious, I can start Castle in the Air, which is the sequel, but I've already been told that the arrival of the Howl's Moving Castle characters can be chalked up to brief cameo appearances toward the end.

ISBN: 0-06-441034-X
Edition: M.M.Paperback