Books like Enchanted Glass

One thing I've always liked about Diana Wynne Jones' books for children is that she makes no artificial barrier between adults and children; they're all people. So rather than have the grownups dismiss or disbelieve the children's real concerns for no apparent reason other than that they're grownups, in her books parental and other adult figures listen, understand, and get stuck in to the magic. In Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones takes this a stage further: even though the book is obviously aimed at children and young teenagers, the main protagonist is an adult in his thirties — and a real adult at that, not just an older person with a childish personality. I found the switching of viewpoints between him and the twelve-year-old secondary protagonist a good way of showing that there is no real difference between people of different ages, just different personalities.In this book, Diana Wynne Jones takes a lot of themes she's touched upon in previous stories, reworking them and improving them in new ways. Melstone House has a very similar atmosphere to Chrstomanci Castle, with Andrew Hope as a more believeable and rather more interesting Chrestomanci reminiscent of a more sympathetic Rupert Venables from Deep Secret. There's a lot about names, their power and variation (think Eight Days of Luke); some clannish villagers, some wise, some annoying (like The Pinhoe Egg); and references to greater powers (Black Maria or, better, Power of Three). And I've always loved the way she depicts the working of magic: natural, powerful, and almost instinctive to the practitioner, not at all mechanical the way Harry Potter magic can be. There's a well-constructed plot, with a nice little — not so much a twist as a flourish— at the end, but this takes second place to the enjoyable character interactions and atmosphere. This was a nice gentle change for me from plot-driven books where bad thing after bad thing happens and only begins to start coming right near the end. I particularly liked her handling of Andrew and his half-forgotten memories of his grandfather, subtly hinting — but never explicitly saying — that his grandfather had made sure the memories would resurface as they were needed.I have a suspicion that in writing this book towards the end of her life, Diana Wynne Jones is deliberately looking back over her career and picking out some of her favourite ideas and giving them a work over. And I think she succeeds: it was certainly good enough for me to read it twice in quick succession, just because it was such an enjoyable world to be in, with such nice people to get to know.