Review by Jessie Powell 

Sophie, the eldest of three daughters, lives in the smallish town of Market Chipping with her step-mother and her two sisters.  After the girls' father dies, Fanny, the step-mother, is unable to raise three daughters on a hatmakers salary.  She finds good apprenticeships for Sophie's two younger sisters and keeps Sophie to help in the hat shop.  The sisters, Lettie and Martha, promptly switch places, since Lettie would rather be a witch, and Martha would rather be a baker.  Discontented with her life, Sophie is nonetheless a marvellous hatmaker, whose hats seem to bestow upon their wearers exactly the things Sophie wishes when she's making them.  

In the meantime, a castle has taken up residence on the outskirts of town. It moves willy-nilly from one place to another and is said to be inhabited by a wizard who "was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them.  Or some people said he ate their hearts.".  Young girls are advised to never go out alone lest they be captured and treated to all manner of horrors.          

Then, Sophie enrages the witch of the west with her incredible skill at making hats.  The witch descends upon Sophie and casts a curse which turns Sophie into an old woman.  Worse, Sophie is cursed to be physically unable to tell anybody she's under a curse.   The horror of the curse breaks Sophie from her appalling state of mousy discontent.  She can't bear to think of her family seeing her in this state, and so runs away.  

Old and feeble, she struggles even in the simple act of walking away from town.  By the time evening descends, she has only covered a short distance, and she knows she won't be able to travel as far away as another village. In this state, she comes upon the moving castle.  Age gives her the courage she lacked as a hatmakers' apprentice, and she not only forces her way into the castle, but also invites herself to stay for the night.  The wizard himself isn't home, but his apprentice, Michael, is quite unable to deal with this irascible old woman.  Sophie falls asleep in front of the fire, thinking how the flames quite resemble a face. 

When she wakens, she tosses a log on the fire, and realises that the flames more than resemble a face, they ARE a face.  The fire in this castle is actually controlled by a fire demon named Calcifer.  Like Sophie, Calcifer is cursed, and they make a pact, each to discover the nature of the other's curse and break it.  This, of course, requires Sophie to find a pretext for staying at the castle. 

She declares herself housekeeper and by the time the wizard Howl arrives, he finds her furiously cleaning cobwebs out of dusty corners and scrubbing the dust into oblivion.  He doesn't invite her to stay, but then, he doesn't exactly throw her out, either, leaving her free to find out exactly how Calcifer is bound to the castle.  

Sophie's entanglements with Calcifer, Howl, and Michael, and her quest to break her curse form the backbone of this howlingly funny book.  Howl's moving castle is worth reading again and again.  (And again and again.)

"It was not a dream!" said Abdullah. "It was real!"
Far to the south of the Land of Ingary, a young carpet merchant called Abdullah lived in the city of Zanzib. He is a day-dreamer and in his dreams, he is really the long-lost son of a great prince. His dream is a complete castle in the air... or is it? Abdullah's day-dreams suddenly start to come true when he meets the exquisite Flower-in-the-Night, daughter of the ferocious Sultan of Zanzib.

Fate has destined them for each other but a bad-tempered genie, a hideous djinn, and various villanous bandits fling Abdullah on to a roller coaster of adventures.
A high spirited Arabian Nights fantasy, the dazzling sequel to Howl's Moving Castle.

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