Product Description

The childhood of Chrestomanci. Everything in this book happens at least twenty-five years before the story told in Charmed Life! Discovering that he has nine lives and is destined to be the next 'Chrestomanci' is not part of Christopher's plans for the future: he'd much rather play cricket and wander around his secret dream worlds. But he soon finds that destiny is difficult to avoid, and that having more than the usual number of lives is pretty inconvenient -- especially when you lose them as easily as he does! Then an evil smuggler, known only as The Wraith, threatens the ways of the worlds and forces Christopher to take action!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160336 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Think of a world, almost like our own but a little more genteel and old-fashioned, where magic and witchcraft is as common as mathematics--but just as dangerous in the wrong hands. In The Lives of Christopher Chant--the fourth book in her Worlds of Chrestomanci series--Diana Wynne Jones succeeds in creating a vision of England close to our expectations of what should be, but subtly different enough to excite our interest and draw us into a strange new world of incredible reality and possibilities.

Christopher Chant is a dreamer, a boy who returns home each night with strange gifts from his nocturnal travels and leaves sand in his bed as proof. He's happy to play cricket and wander the world in secret--so having nine lives and being the next "Chrestomanci" is not part of his plans for the future. It's only when an evil smuggler known as The Wraith threatens his existence that the young Christopher truly takes hold of his destiny. He must try to halt his loss of lives and defeat evil before times runs out.

Set at least 20 years before the events as told in the first Chrestmanci novel, Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant is a detailed fantasy and wild adventure with dollops of humour that will challenge and intrigue every fan of this sequence of otherworldly novels.

Chrestomanci patrols the pages of three more full-length novels--Charmed Life, The Magicians of Caprona, Witch Week and in a collection of short stories, Mixed Magics. He is undoubtedly Diana Wynne Jones' finest creation and should not be missed. --John McLay

Review
"!Her hallmarks include laugh-aloud humour, plenty of magic and imaginative array of alternate worlds. Yet, at the same time, a great seriousness is present in all of her novels, a sense of urgency that links Jones's most outrageous plots to her readers' hopes and fears!" Publishers Weekly

About the Author
Diana Wynne Jones spent her childhood in Essex and has been writing fantasy novels for children since 1973. With her unique combination of magic, humour and imagination, she has been enthralling children and adults with her work ever since. She won the Guardian Award in 1977 with Charmed Life, was runner-up for the Children's Book Award in 1981, and was twice runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. She is married with three sons, and lives in Bristol with her husband.

Customer Reviews

Fabulous book, couldn't put it down.
This is an excellent book. I borrowed it from the library and began reading it one evening and read right through the night. I just couldn't put it down. I'd recommend it to any lover of fantasy books, young or old. I'm 19 and I still think it's among the best books I've ever read!

A good read, though not her best
Like the rest of the Chrestomanci series, this book is interesting and inventive in its exploration of what forms magic can take. The way in which Chrestomanci's having nine lives allows him to travel from world to world is more properly explored than in the other books, as are other curious factors taht pop up in the 'later' stories. This is more or less what you would expect from a prequel, but the fact that it is described as 'volume 1' is somewhat confusing, and I do not recommend reading it before Charmed life, as it will spoil many of the surprises for you.

Other than that, it was essentially a good and enjoyable read with colourful characters - not top notch for Dianna Wynne Jones, but wothwhile over all.

Brilliant, loved it
No offence to charmed life but this is secretly my favourite of the Chrestomanci books. It has the best hero-Christopher Chant makes me laugh even when he's being rude and obnoxious and its obvious he's really a very nice person and a bit of a softy(besides Cat is wet and weedy and annoying).I also loved it for the extra insight it gives you into world 12a and how Chrestomanci got to be like he is in Charmed life and why Millie is Called Millie which is brilliant and very cool
It has a very clever plot all about other worlds and multiple lives and evil gangs of smugglers with a magical twist which is written with all the flair and wit I have come to expect from a Diana Wynne Jones book (eg the mallory towers spoof)and has some very neat peices of charachteristation (eg Tackroy and Millie-the-godess)which make it that little bit special and more enjoyable the climax is well measured and skillfull and keeps you constantly turning pages desperate to get to the next bit. This book is brilliant-read it.