Castle in the Air
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the unrelated film by Hayao Miyazaki, see Castle in the Sky
 Cover from the American edition. |
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| Author | Diana Wynne Jones |
|---|---|
| Country | Great Britain |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Castle Series |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Children's Literature |
| Publisher | Various |
| Released | 1990 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-06-447345-7 (American Paperback) |
| Preceded by | Howl's Moving Castle |
Castle in the Air is a novel written by Diana Wynne Jones. First published in 1990 (US in 1991), The story is set in Ingary, the setting for Howl's Moving Castle, though the two works are only loosely related.
[edit] Story
Castle in the Air follows the adventures of Abdullah, a handsome young carpet salesman from the Sultanates of Rashpuht, "far to the south of Ingary". Abdullah tends to day dream constantly. So much in fact that he has built up an entire life story, in which he is a prince. One day a strange traveller comes to his humble stand with a threadbare carpet which he claims is magic. Abdullah, after testing it, buys the carpet delightfully.
During the night he goes to sleep in his stand but wakes to find himself in a beautiful garden with a young woman. To Abdullah, she is the woman of his dreams and that is beautiful beyond all comparison. The woman mistakens Abdullah for a woman because she has not seen any other men except for her father and introduces herself as Flower-in-the-Night. Enchanted by Flower-in-the-Night's beauty, he offers to visit her again with hundreds of pictures of various men to prove he is not a woman as she believes.
Abdullah returns to her the next night with said pictures to show Flower. Presented with concrete evidence, Flower concedes that Abdullah is a man and becomes annoyed that her father for kept her in such ignorance. She reveals that is supposed to marry a Prince of Ingary (Ochistan as the people of Zanzib refer to it), but has decided for herself she will marry Abdullah instead. Abdullah tells Flower about his magic carpet and how it needs a command word. They plan to elope and Abdullah returns to his stall to prepare. However, his father's first wife's relatives soon intercede and try to marry him off to two fat young women. Abdullah manages to put off marrying them and escapes to Flower-in-the-Night's garden to elope with her. Unfortunately, he arrives just as she is snatched away by a huge djinni.
Soon after Abdullah is captured by the Sultan's mercenaries. He discovers that Flower is actually the Sultan's daughter and that it was prophesized at her birth that she would marry the first man she saw aside from her father. Enraged that his attempts to ensure Flower would marry an Ingarian Prince have been thwarted, the Sultan decides to imprison Abdullah, find his daughter, marry the two of them, and then kill Abdullah so Flower can marry someone else.
Fortunately, Abdullah is saved by his magic carpet, which appears to him because his neighbour Jamal's dog had fallen asleep on it. Abdullah escapes from Zanzib, leaving a large sum of money for Jamal and his dog to escape Zanzib on their own. Abdullah ends up in the desert and reaches an oasis. After beating several criminals, the carpet maker acquires a bad-tempered djinni who grants only one wish at day while trying to cause as much harm as possible with that wish.
As a result of a wish, Abdullah ends up travelling with a bitter Strangian soldier in Ingary. The soldier, who happens to be underhanded and selfish and angry that Ingary has taken over his country of Strangia, takes advantage of Abdullah and his djinni and ends up making Abdullah's quest to find Flower-in-the-Night more complicated than he would like. The two are soon joined by a cat who can change her size and her kitten, affectionately named Midnight and Whippersnapper respectively by the soldier. Abdullah reluctantly allows the cats to travel with him, despite the fact he is wary and dislikes Midnight especially.
As they travel, they run into the djinni who kidnapped Flower. The djinni, Hasruel, reveals that he intends to kidnap every princess in the world because his life is in the hands of his younger brother, Dalzel, who intends to marry all the princesses. All the princesses he has acquired so far have been placed with Dalzel in a castle in the sky. Furthermore, Hasruel also reveals that he has been responsible for making all of Abdullah's dreams, both good and bad, come true and that he now intends to use Abdullah to kidnap the young Princess of Ingary.
Abdullah, after leaving the carpet, his djinni, the soldier, and the cats at an inn, goes off on his own to find one of the Royal Wizards of Ingary to get to the castle in the air. When he arrives at the home of the Wizard Sulliman, he is greeted by his wife Lettie. As Abdullah explains to Wizard Sulliman and Lettie that a djinni will kidnap Valeria, the Princess of Ingary, Midnight enters the house and is soon recognized by Lettie as her sister Sophie, the wife of Howl Jenkins, the other (currently missing) Royal Wizard.
After Sulliman restores Sophie's true form, she explains how Howl divined a malevolent presence approaching their moving castle and Princess Valeria. After sending away his two apprentices, he attempted to do the same to Sophie, who had been carrying their son at the time. Their arguing distracted Howl from the djinni, who stole the castle while a distracted Howl ended up transforming and sending away his wife and then disappearing along with the castle's resident fire demon, Calcifer. Sophie, as a cat, gave birth to their son Morgan a week later.
With the spell on Sophie broken, Morgan has returned to being human as well. Meanwhile, while the soldier panics over the fact that the kitten has become a child, Hasruel steals Princess Valeria. Abdullah, Sophie, and Lettie return to the inn to find the soldier, Abdullah's djinni, and Morgan are gone. Abdullah and Sophie decide to pursue them and head towards the stolen moving castle in the air on the magic carpet.
When they arrive, they find their lost friends, which ends up including Jamal and his dog, as well as thirty other princesses, including Flower-in-the-Night, Princess Valeria, and Princess Beatrice of the recently conquered Strangia. Together, they devise a method to escape by tricking Dalzel into revealing to Abdullah where Dalzel has hidden his brother's life. Once Hasruel is freed, Dalzel is exiled to a happier place with Abdullah's two fat fiancées as Dalzel's new brides. Abdullah's djinni and carpet are freed and return to their true forms: Howl and Calcifer respectively. The Strangian soldier, who only agreed to help everyone as long as he could marry Beatrice, is revealed to be the missing Prince Justin, who ran away from Ingary because he initially refused his older brother's order to marry Beatrice. Calcifer, at Abdullah's request, returns the castle to the ground.
Sophie and Howl, along with their son and Howl's apprentices, return to living quarrelsomely but happily in their moving castle. Abdullah and Flower marry in a double ceremony with Beatrice and Prince Justin. The grateful King of Ingary designates Flower and Abdullah as Ambassadors of Ingary, where they live happily just they way they had always imagined.
[edit] Trivia
In the third to last chapter, In which a soldier, a cook and a carpet seller all state their price, the elderly princess of High Norland remarks that it is unfortunate that the floating castle is above the clouds because "There's no weather to make conversation of." This is probably a reference to a scene in Guilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. Mabel's sisters, feeling awkward and in the background while Mabel and Frederick are having an intimate conversation, begin talking about the weather, while trying to listen in at the same time. It is also, in fact, the eldest sister who suggests it.
| Books by Diana Wynne Jones | ||
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Chrestomanci series: The Lives of Christopher Chant • Conrad's Fate • Charmed Life • The Magicians of Caprona • The Pinhoe Egg • Mixed Magics • Witch Week Dalemark Quartet: Cart and Cwidder • Drowned Ammet • The Spellcoats • The Crown of Dalemark Castle series: Howl's Moving Castle • Castle in the Air Derkholm series: Dark Lord of Derkholm • Year of the Griffin Magids series: Deep Secret • The Merlin Conspiracy Other: Archer's Goon • Dogsbody • Eight Days of Luke • Fire and Hemlock • Hexwood • The Homeward Bounders • Power of Three • A Tale of Time City • The Time of the Ghost • More... |
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