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    The Dark Lord of Derkholm
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    The Dark Lord of Derkholm
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    The Dark Lord of Derkholm
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Dark Lord of Derkholm

    Written by Diana Wynne Jones

    Narrated by Jonathan Broadbent

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A humorous fantasy adventure from the Godmother of fantasy, Diana Wynne Jones. Winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature in 1999.

    A humorous fantasy from Diana Wynne Jones. In a world next door to ours, the tourist industry is devastating the population by its desire to experience all the fantasy clichés - Dark Lords, impoverished villages, dragons etc.

    The Head of the University resolves to shut the tours down; the only problem being the ruthless tour-master - and his all-powerful demons. To save them all, the incompetent wizard Derk is appointed as Dark Lord in the hope that he will ruin the tours, and sure enough proceeds to fail at everything due to his general uselessness. But can failing at everything lead to a win this time?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateAug 29, 2013
    ISBN9780007527434
    Author

    Diana Wynne Jones

    DIANA WYNNE JONES was born in August 1934 in London, where she had a chaotic and unsettled childhood against the background of World War II. The family moved around a lot, finally settling in rural Essex. As children, Diana and her two sisters were deprived of a good, steady supply of books by a father, ‘who could beat Scrooge in a meanness contest’. So, armed with a vivid imagination and an insatiable quest for good books to read, she decided that she would have to write them herself.

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    Reviews for The Dark Lord of Derkholm

    4.5/5

    44 ratings17 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Well, the good news is that this is an engaging page-turner. The bad news is that by the time you get to the end, you discover that the plot is a mess, and that nothing really adds up. Which is a pity. Before the final few chapters, I thought this was a much better book than it turned out to be.
    • 5/5
      I laughed so hard I cried in places. A delightful send-up of stale fantasy tropes, along with characters to care about, and a satisfying come-uppance in the end. Jones had an awesome ability to throw an enormous amount of information and hilarious detail at the reader, all while threading a plot and character development through the whole. As a reader, I was delightfully overwhelmed, charmed, and ultimately emotionally satisfied (but, not TOO much). Highly recommended. Especially for the carnivorous sheep and the pilgrims' horrified response to the monster flower-bed toward the end.
    • 4/5
      A world of wizards and dragons and magic is being exploited by a man from another world, who uses their world as a magical fantasy tour theme park. Powerful wizards consult an Oracle to discover the means by which they can take back their world.Then, things start getting a little out of hand.Dark Lord of Derkholm is a satire of the classic epic fantasy genre. The hero's quests are faked expeditions undertaken by tourists instead of actual heroes, and when Derk and his rather unusual family are placed in charge of this year's quests, everything goes awry.Fantastic book! Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Substance: Interesting premise of a world held hostage to a promoter with a demon in his pocket (literally), where everyone wants out of the deal. Other-world "pilgrims" experience a hands-on adventure with faux Dark Lords, who are real wizards, and all the trimmings. The catch is that the dirt, cold, wounds, and death are real. Entertaining characters, some depth in moral dimensions; not entirely sure if there is a conclusive "moral to the story other than it is evil to play around with other people's lives for profit (or anything else). Style: Straight-forward, some humor. A few continuity problems.
    • 4/5
      It took me a while to get into it this time, but the ending is excellent - good and sensible tying-up of all the loose ends (well, most of them...)
    • 5/5
      Derk is an excellent wizard, but he just wants to be left alone with his experiments. No such luck -- he's been appointed the Dark Lord this year so that Mr. Chesney's Pilgrim Tours (tourists from another world much like ours) will have an archenemy to fight. None of the denizens of Derk's world like the tours, because they're expensive and disruptive, and every year people are killed and crops are spoiled due to the wars staged for the Pilgrims. Mr. Chesney, however, has a pet demon, and it doesn't do to cross him. So Derk, his wife, Shona and Blade (his two human children), and his five griffin children (they're magically-genetically engineered, and are very much part of the family) must work to transform their homestead into a Dark Fortress and pool their talents to carry off the illusion the Derk is a formidable opponent. This is all hard enough, but when Derk is injured in an unfortunate encounter with a dragon, his kids have to take on the majority of the organizing. Chaos, of course, ensues.What I really enjoyed about this was that it's absolutely hilarious and does a great job of sending up the high fantasy genre, but the characters are also very well drawn and reading about Derk's odd family is truly a delight. I'm really looking forward to reading Year of the Griffin, the sequel.
    • 4/5
      I've only read a couple Diana Wynne Jones books before so I wasn't too sure what to expect. Lately I've not been reading reviews or even blurbs before starting a book because I want to go into it with a completely open mind. Unfortunately my previous experiences with her books led me to believe this would be aimed at a younger audience so as things started getting a bit darker I was a tad perplexed.

      Eventually I managed to get my mindset in the right place and realise that this book was intended for young adults and the dark behaviours seemed less out of place. And at times it could be rather grim and a little unsettling. Derk has a little bit of a Dr Moreau meets Dr Doolittle feel about him. Blade needed (and I think at the end of the book still does) a good kick in the ass. That character annoyed me the most. I quite liked the griffins and Scales. I would have liked to have seen more of Mara and Shona. They got relegated to the sidelines for the most part.

      Apart from requiring me to shift my preconceptions out this book was really enjoyable and I can see why Diana Wynne Jones was such an acclaimed author. I look forward to reading more of her work.
    • 5/5
      I really think this is one of the best works by Diana Wynne Jones - equal to the Crestomanci Series. It has quiet humor, heart twinging action scenes, lots of loving family, and of course, Gryphons. It works well for both teens and adults. Its just a good, well told story.
    • 5/5
      One of a handful of DWJs published under an adult rather than a juvenile imprint. This could be considered a follow-up to 'The Tough Guide to Fantasyland'; that ripped the piss out of fantasy tropes, while 'Derkholm' is set in a fantasy world – which, of course, is simply everyday to its inhabitants – which has, for forty years, been plagued by Pilgrim Tours from the next-door world and is, as a result, suffering economically, ecologically, sociologically, and in almost every other way imaginable. The wizard Querida decides that enough is enough, and appoints wizard Derk as Dark Lord, believing he’ll make such a mess of it that the tourists will give up. Derk is a quiet man who would much rather be left alone with his genetic experiments, but he turns out to be surprisingly competent up until an encounter with a dragon puts him out of action. But there are other factors working against the tours – if they can ever all get themselves on the same page.A delightful book, and often very funny. The odd thing about it is that Derk really ought not to be a likeable character at all, his experiments (which include growing nylon plants and breeding winged horses, friendly cows, carnivorous sheep and a giant hen) being at least borderline unethical; five of his seven children are griffins, after all – but he’s actually so lovely that one just handwaves this away. And all his animals, except perhaps the sheep, adore him.The action gets confusing at times, and I have often wondered how the talented griffins manage to cook and craft without, one assumes, the benefit of opposable thumbs, but overall this is one of DWJ’s best.
    • 5/5
      I love this book! During a period of Harry Potter withdrawal I found this book by Dianna Wynne Jones and it completely answered my craving for intelligent, well written, Tolkienesque storytelling. I'm inclined to think this is her best book, and I've pretty well read them all. (Deep Secret is my second favorite DWJ book.) Both of these books seem to be written with an older audience in mind. They are sophisticated, subtle, and completely engaging. Why someone hasn't tried to make a movie of this book is beyond me. Studio Ghibli, Dreamworks, and Disney, come and get it, please!
    • 5/5
      A must read for anyone who thinks Eragon is decent fantasy -- brilliant satire of tourism and imperialism, but at heart a parody of the epic fantasy cliches that she skewered so well in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.
    • 3/5
      Imagine if the Earth we lived on was right next door to a planet where magic was the norm, and dragons, elves and dwarves (among other fantastical beings) lived side-by-side with the people. That's exactly the case in Dark Lord of Derkholm, and as such, a man named Mr. Chesney created the Pilgrim Parties in order to allow Earthlings to come and visit the world. But his specifications regarding what the Pilgrims are to see are very specific, including taking part in numerous battles, sacking and destroying cities, and killing all those "expendables" (i.e. Pilgrims whose family members want offed). As such, the Pilgrim Parties have completely devastated the world. Enter Derk, the most unassuming wizard ever, who would rather spend time creating fantastic new beasts (think winged horses and griffins) and tending to his plants than having anything to do with the Pilgrim Parties. But he's got no choice, as he's been selected to be this year's Dark Lord. And that's when everything that could go wrong does go wrong.This is the second book I've read by Diana Wynne Jones, and while I didn't like it as much as I did Howl's Moving Castle, there were definitely some parts that made me laugh, made me sad, and made me frustrated with what was happening to Derk's world. It was amusing to watch Derk struggle with all the components of being Dark Lord, especially when so much was clearly not going to plan. I enjoyed reading about Derk's family - he has two human children and five griffin children - and the roles they played in trying to help their father. Mara made me angry [SPOILER] although obviously she had a reason for being absent, and it wasn't her fault at all [/SPOILER], as did all the people who swore they'd help Derk who either did a half-assed job of it, or just didn't do anything to help at all.The book is told via different viewpoints, but stuck mostly with Derk or Blade, Derk's human son, who is put in charge of the final Pilgrim Party even though he's far from a qualified wizard. I enjoyed reading about Blade's adventures, and the trouble he got into, and the ways he tried to fix everything but just made things worse. I was particularly interested in his total lack of a sense of direction, which suited him okay for translocation (think Apparation, if you're a Harry Potter fan) but definitely didn't work at all for getting a Pilgrim Party across the country to their various checkpoints. In fact, I would have liked to learn more about that, because it seemed like it was distinct to Blade alone, and I would have loved to learn why he could move himself (or anyone else he's translocating) without getting lost but couldn't manage to walk people in the right direction.There is a second book to this series, but I don't think I'm going to read it. I enjoyed reading about Derk and Blade, and the griffins, and the ways they were trying to get rid of Mr. Chesney. The twists and turns in the story line were engaging and interesting, and kept me going through a very long book (over 500 pages, and while I enjoyed the story I felt the length, if that makes sense), and I felt invested in the story and the characters. But I'm okay with being done with this world, and don't think I'll re-read this book again. It was good for a one-shot read, if you will, but isn't something I feel the need to revisit, unlike my feelings regarding Howl's Moving Castle, which I adored.
    • 5/5
      My all-time-fave Diana Wynne Jones book, and since they are all good, that's really saying something. A great send-up of the tourism business, with humorous interludes mixed in with genuine horror.
    • 5/5
      Mr. Chesney has enslaved the world of Wizrd Dirk for over 40 years. It is time to end it. The White and Black Oracle says only Wizrd Dirk and his family are the ones to save them. And so everybody relied on Wizard Dirk to fail miserably so that their world would be released. On the other hand, Wizrd Dirk has other ideas. One of them is hitching a tent in his balcony and camping with his flying pigs while humans are trapped in their world plagued by dozens of dragons.So funny, so entertaining and so loving it!
    • 3/5
      It took a while to get into this one, but it grew on me. Good fantasy read that pulls a lot of cliches.
    • 4/5
      A hilarious fantasy where, just next door to our world, there exhists a magical realm, and you can go there for the low low price of... That's right, Mr. Chesney has turned this magical Kingdom into a tourist destination and as he charges us regular folks for the chance to be in a Pilgrim Party he is exploiting this special place. When Derk is chosen as the Dark Lord for the years Pilgrim Parties he is not excited. He has to turn his beautiful cottage into an evil castle, his happy cows into mennacing orks. The tourist season falls apart as everything seems to go wrong, until Mr. Chesney has to come and fix it himself.
    • 3/5
      I really like Diana Wynne Jones, and I thought this story was very original and creative; however, I struggled a little getting through it. It never really engaged me like her other books.