Why you should be reading Howl's Moving Castle and its sequels

It's not often that work gives me an enjoyable assignment, but my job in 1998 practically demanded it. I had just been hired to shelve books at my local library after school and my boss handed me a book and ordered me to read it before I came in for my next shift. The book was Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle and it was absolutely essential reading.

Many wanderings and many agendas

This is one of those books where the age of the audience doesn't matter. I enjoy it differently as an adult as I did as a 17-year-old, but it infuses the mysterious and the mundane. Sophie Hatter doesn't mean to stumble into a magical quest, but who ever does? Michael, the wizard's apprentice, is part of a star-crossed love story, but is absolutely earnest in his work. Calcifer reminds me of the genie in Aladdin in his quest for independence. And the wizard Howl himself has a lot of growing-up to do, especially as the senior member of the household.

You may have heard of and/or seen the anime adaptation by Studio Ghibli and that certainly has merits. There are so many points at which they diverge that it is hard to see them as the same story. I do recommend watching it because it handles the complexity of the storyline well, but I encourage more reading on in the book series.

Castle in the Air seems to be a separate entity entirely, since it tells the somewhat doomed love story of Abdullah and Princess Flower-in-the-Night, but as the story progresses, it turns out that we are in the same world as Howl and Sophie. The book is inspired by the Arabian Nights, but the quest to free a kidnapped princess is tied to that of a pair of djinn brothers and their and a troublesome genie.

In House of Many Ways, Charmain is left to look after the house of her uncle who happens to also be a Royal Wizard. This is a familiar trope for the people who remember Sophie being a wizard's meddlesome old housekeeper in the first book. Charmain is set on a quest to remedy ills in the kingdom of Norland and locate a lost gift.

While the original book and its counterpart film are fun and intriguing in equal measures, any lover of fantasy can find merit in the stories told by the entire series.