"Castle in the Air" by Diana Wynne Jones

That wasn't what I was expecting. (Side note: I was originally going to start that sentence with "Welp", but then I was like "I always start my posts with some form of welp", but then I looked back and realized I almost never do that.)

Anyway, don't let that dissuade you! This book has more of an Arabian Nights feel than Howl's Moving Castle (kind of English) or House of Many Ways (which I really need to review; don't know where High Norland is modeled after, but it tangentially involves mountaineering, so someplace Alpine maybe?). As such, the main love interest is named Flower-in-the-Night--seriously, I'm not making this up--and we have a main character named Abdullah. 

 

(Another side note: the king's cook from House of Many Ways shows up in this. As soon as it mentioned a guy with an irascible dog selling squid in the marketplace, my brain went "༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ heyyy i recognize you". And then it turned out his showing up in House was a reference to Castle/Air and not the other way around.)

 

The book brings in all sorts of characters from the other two, including but not limited to: Sophie, Howl, Sophie and Howl's son Morgan, the aforementioned cook, The King of Ingary, his toddler (but still princess) daughter, The King of High Norland (tangentially), Ben and Lettie Sullivan/Suliman, and Calcifer. Some of them are in different forms, including (MAJOR SPOILERS HERE) Sophie being |a cat| (fitting) and Howl being |a genie in a bottle|.

 

I also really liked Flower-in-the-Night, for all that she has a completely weird name. She's not the sort of princess you get in fairy tales who wanders around her castle all day knitting or whatever it is they do in all that spare time; instead, Flower wanders around her castle all day getting a proper education and cultivating her ability to be intelligent. Seriously, I was impressed with her. 

 

It's established fairly early on that everything will turn out okay. There's a !PROPHECY! about Flower marrying the first not-her-father man who sees her (hint: Abdullah) and another !PROPHECY! about Abdullah becoming "raised above all others in the land", so you know things will turn out okay in the end.

This book, like Howl's Moving Castle, gets four stars.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for mild suggestive themes, a couple scattered profanities, and fantasy violence. And also for Hakim, who is so stinking annoying that he would bump this thing from E10+ to T by himself. [Note: Take that last with a grain of salt.] Would it make a good videogame? About the same quality as Howl's, I think. 

Favorite lines:

    "It weakens you--having baths," the soldier said dubiously. "But I suppose I could wash Midnight [cat] as well while I'm at it." 

     "Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman," Abdullah said.

This one just struck me as funny. Page 185. (To the best of my knowledge, nobody uses a cat as a sponge.)

Also, Abdullah uses increasingly flowery language to try to flatter various sentient magic things, until the genie tells him it's silly. Abdullah's response to the Genie asking him "Where's all the talk about jewels and flowers and so forth?"
     "You told me you did not like it. I have discontinued it."

Page 208.

     "Really, air!" [Sophie] said. "This is disgraceful! You are going to have to let us breathe a bit better than this or we won't last out. Gather around and let us breathe you!"

Page 282.

Link to the actual post.