I can’t identify where her sister Ursula Jones took over. Diana Wynne Jones sadly died before completing the book, but it’s seamless. There’s plenty of fun to be had with this as Aileen, the failed Apprentice Wise Woman, travels through each island to save Logra from its enchantment. The whimsical twist to the Islands of Chaldea is how very closely they resemble the nations of the British Isles, Skarr representing Scotland, Bernica Ireland, and Gallis Wales the isolated, bewitched kingdom of Logra is the Chaldean equivalent of England. The island setting is windswept, sun-bleached and saltily beautiful. That turns out to be just as well, by the time of the poignant but enthralling ending. They get their wish – not without struggle – but Phantom comes with a bonus foal. Paul and Maureen long to buy Phantom on Pony Penning Day she’s the wildest mare of the wild Assateague herd. The stories are based on real incidents, but Misty and its sequels (especially Misty ) have all the excitement and wrenching emotion of any fictional adventure. Not fictional islands at all, but real ones, off the coast of Virginia. Chincoteague & Assateague in Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry I rather wish Long John had reappeared in a sequel of his own… but at least he’s immortal. As events come to a violent climax on Treasure Island itself, Jim and John fight a battle of wits on hot and hostile terrain. Jim the cabin boy is not especially well served by his adult allies – the bumbling, big-mouthed Squire Trelawney, the righteous and rather smug Dr Livesey – but he has the best enemy possible in Long John Silver. Was ever a 19th century classic so page-turningly readable? You can practically smell the rum in the Admiral Benbow Inn, or the salt crusting the sails of the Hispaniola. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson “Not daydreams: dreams.” Their escape – which seems futile till the albatross arrives – is heart-crushingly dark and tense. Caspian and his friends never actually make landfall, but the things the crew hear as they row desperately away are more vivid than any sight, because: “Dreams come to life,” howls the castaway Lord Rhoop. ![]() “It was a Darkness,” CS Lewis tells us, and as she sails into it, the bow of the Dawn Treader has vanished from sight before the sunlight has left the stern. The first island that completely creeped me out.
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