Archer's Goon
by Dianne Wynne Jones

From the same fertile imagination that brought us The Time of the Ghost, The Ogre Downstairs, and Witch's Business comes this deliciously weird, madcap modern fantasy about a town run by a squabbling family of seven wizards. One "farms" power, another law enforcement, still another.crime; a third farms entertainment, a fourth sanitation, a fifth education, and so on. "Farm" here apparently means that each wizard has power over a particular area, and profits from it as well. It was an arrangement made long ago, only something has gone wrong.

Some of the siblings want to spread out and take over the world...but they find that they can't leave the city limits. This is because one member of the family-no one seems to know who-has connived against the others. It has something to do with a pudgy writer named Quentin Sykes, who for the past thirteen years has kept up a quarterly assignment of typing a two-thousand-word story and handing it over to a bank manager. Only no one, least of all Sykes, can say what his quarterly four pages of typewritten drivel is good for.

Then comes a day when one of Sykes' quarterly offerings goes astray. That day a seven-foot-tall, brawny, slightly daft Goon takes up residence in the Sykes home, filling the kitchen with his enormous legs, and claiming that Archer-the oldest of the wizard siblings-sent him to collect Mr. Sykes' quarterly two thousand. If that isn't enough, the other wizards who secretly run the town put in demands for two-thousand-word stories of their own. Not liking to be pushed around, and even less willing after he finds out that Archer wants to rule the world, Mr. Sykes puts his foot down.

So he and his family soon find out how inconvenient it can be when the seven wizards who run the town are upset with you. The Goon moves in to stay for an indefinite period. Public services and roads are disrupted. Police harrassment, criminal harrassment, musical harrassment, and a series of spectacular family rows ensue, as 13-year-old Howard and his younger sister, appropriately nicknamed Awful, try to solve the mystery of who has been taking their father's words and why.

I've gone about explaining this story backward. It really begins with Howard and Awful coming home to find the Goon in their kitchen, and unfolds irresistably from there. I just wanted to give you an idea of the clever, original idea behind this tale. Full of humor, family drama, romance, an intriguing mixture of magic and technology, a puzzling mystery, staggering surprises, and an ending that is equally astounding and hilarious, it also features a priceless character named Awful, who at one point says: "I'm going to be bad. I may scream. I feel it coming on."

Robbie Fischer
Arizona USA

Recommended Age: 12+

If you would like to contact Robbie, you may do so here.