The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1, by Diana Wynne JonesHarperCollins, 2007 (originally 2001)

This volume comprises two previously-published books: Charmed Life, which I’d read before, and The Lives of Christopher Chant, which I hadn’t. I owned a paperback copy of Charmed Life when I was a kid, and read it over and over: it’s just the right combination of magic and cleverness and humor and excitement. Eric (Cat) Chant and his sister Gwendolen live in a world much like ours, except that in their world, magic is commonplace. Gwendolen’s a witch with ambitions of power — but when she and Cat are sent to live in Chrestomanci Castle with the most powerful enchanter in the world, things don’t go quite as she expects. Chrestomanci himself is excellent: always wearing funny dressing-gowns and managing to be vague and stately and terrifying all at once: at one point he leaves a room “like a very long procession of one person” (p 51), a description that I think is about perfect. And so it was pleasing to read, in The Lives of Christopher Chant, about his childhood, his own magical upbringing and youthful escapades, including jaunts through a series of other worlds.