Aug

13

Dog Days: Dog Star.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

August 13, 2007 |

Dogsbody by Dianna Wynn Jones

What if strange, supernatural beings inhabited each star, overseeing the destinies not only of the planets that orbit them but the individual creatures on each of those planets? And what if one of those beings were exiled, as punishment for a terrible crime, to life as a creature on one tiny planet? This may seem a bit farfetched, but Diana Wynn Jones’s book Dogsbody is, if nothing else, seriously entertaining fantasy, a book aimed primarily at young adults (I was eleven when I first read it) but good for fantasy fans of any age.

The being that lives at the heart of the dog star, Sirius Major, has a serious anger management problem. After killing a minor luminary with a mysterious object called a Zoi, Sirius is sent to Earth to recover the object. Born on the planet as a blind and helpless puppy, he’s nearly drowned and only escapes thanks to a young girl who happens to be by the riverside. With no memory of his previous existence, Sirius only has a dog’s lifespan to remember who he is and recover the Zoi which may or may not be somewhere on Earth. Luckily for him he’s helped by his young rescuer, a girl named Kathleen, as well as the Sun, a fellow star-being, and he gets even more help from a surprising source.

Diana Wynn Jones has written numerous fantasy and science fiction novels for young adults, including Howl’s Moving Castle, which was adapted as a Japanese animated film and is first of a series, as well as other series including the Chrestomanci Series, and the extremely strange The Homeward Bounders, another story of supernatural beings influencing the destiny of life not only on Earth but on countless Earth-like worlds.

Jones is wonderfully imaginative. Her official autobiography begins, “I think I write the kind of books I do because the world suddenly went mad when I was five years old.” That was 1939. She also will be celebrating her seventy-third birthday on August 16th. Happy birthday, Ms. Jones, and keep bringing a little lively fantasy into a world that hasn’t become any more sane.


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