I. Love. This. Book.

I put it on my reading list years ago (my list is miles long) after it was vaguely mentioned at the end of a Blimey Cow video. I knew it had a movie adaptation, I knew it involved something or someone named Howl who had a moving castle, whatever a moving castle was, and that was all I knew.

Fast-forward to now and I love this book.

We meet Sophie, our red-haired, 18-year-old hero and the oldest of three—being the eldest of three, in this wacky fantasy world, somehow guarantees you will always have bad luck—as she is facing a future of working in a hat shop. Sophie, at times, resigns herself to her fate; at other time she comes a hair's length away from leaving and finding something better, but she doesn't, because she is convinced she was born a failure. She is not a meek, long-suffering character meant to evoke pity, though. Not by a long shot. She is feisty, impulsive, and quick-tempered, and when she mouths off to a disgruntled customer who just so happens to be the Witch of the Waste in disguise, Sophie finds herself under a spell.....a spell that makes her ninety years old.

In the chain of events that follows, Sophie, desperate to break the spell, finds herself at the home of the infamous wizard, Howl—said to kidnap young girls and eat their hearts. Howl's home is an enormous moving castle (it floats above the ground like a hovercraft) but as it turns out, only a few rooms are real and the rest is an illusion meant to evoke power and fear. The doors can teleport you to whatever region you wish depending on how you turn the doorknob—one such region being the Nothingness, which, despite its name, only consists of an inch of fog, beyond which is an ordinary town.

Abiding in Howl's castle is Calcifer, a gruff and grumpy fire demon (my favorite); Michael, a clumsy and kind 15-year-old apprentice; and, acquired later, the Dog-Man, a man struck with an unfortunate spell that causes him to regularly change into various breeds of dogs. Calcifer, we find out, was actually a shooting star, and when the wizard Howl saved his life, they entered a contract that Calcifer must remain in Howl's fireplace and serve him. If Sophie breaks his contract, Calcifer bargains, he will break her spell—yet then does not tell her how to break the contract, only promising to drop hints it she listens closely.

Then there is Howl himself—a diva who throws tantrums and spends two hours getting ready in the bathroom, a charmer, a sneak, a user-of-others, vain, confident, stubborn, dishonest, adorer of little girls rather than eater of them...and scared. And kind. In the author's note in the back, Diana Wynne Jones noted the great quantity of female readers who write to her wanting to marry Howl. I don't want to marry Howl. Until the very end, when I found him tolerable, he drove me
absolutely nuts. He's hilarious, but in a grating way. I loved Sophie much more. I rarely see myself in a fictional character, but I saw a lot of myself in Sophie...a stubborn, feisty go-getter who messes up almost everything she touches.

As their wacky, wild run-ins with the Witch of the Waste, kings, and scarecrows take our motley crew from one region to the next, we get to see all corners of their weird world of Ingary: Market Chipping, Port Haven, Kingsbury, and Wales—yes, the actual Wales of our world. Jones does not waste time explaining anything, but rather chooses to throw the reader into the plot and force us to swim along. And it works. It's crazy, sometimes creepy, sometimes confusing, and it works.

With few exceptions, I don't like typical medieval fantasy. I don't like farmhands, thatched roofs, and wise old mentors. I love fantasy, but I want it to be wacky or weird, which is hard to find, and this book is both. Flawed characters, genuine humor, absurdity, the perfect balance of weird and abnormal, and a rollicking finish.

I could go on forever about its greatness. But don't let me convince you. Find Howl's Moving Castle and READ IT. See for yourself.