![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes just surviving to see a new day and a new beginning is the best happy ending there is.Īnd the language – those funny words like 'Margrave' and 'hoboy' and 'croopus!' I still don't know how much Aiken researched and how much she just made up. Her baddies are truly bad – though they have their reasons – but her goodies are, above all, resourceful. ![]() It can be rich and luxurious, but often it's harsh and cold and cruel. You can taste and smell it, rub it between your fingers and feel it beneath your feet. Set in a parallel nineteenth century, these books have such energy and invention that you never know where you are going to end up next: in a hot-air balloon, a Nantucket whaling ship, or down the sewers with the 'tosh-boys'? Luckily, Joan Aiken must have felt the same because over 40 years she wrote a series of books that became known as the Wolves Chronicles. More stories like that, and more of the characters you've grown fond of. When you find a book you love, you just want more. I'd never read anything quite like it! I always had my nose in a book, but my local library hadn't pointed me towards Joan Aiken. I can't remember if I managed to follow the entire story through that carrier bag of treasure, but I was hooked: blizzards, wolves and wicked adults with wonderful names like Slighcarp and Grimshaw conspiring against desperate, good-hearted children. I think it featured in the Diana comic for girls, which was a cut above Bunty, and June and Schoolfriend. It wasn't a cartoon strip but a proper serialised book. ![]()
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