Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones.
Hardcover - 218 pages (19 October, 2000) Victor Gollancz Science Fiction; ISBN: 0575070463
Library Binding - 256 pages (October 2000)
Greenwillow; ISBN: 0060291583
Review by John Berlyne
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I must admit that I'm not too well up on the young adult fantasy market but it can be fun to dip into this genre from time to time. Certainly one cannot deny that deserved success of the Harry Potter franchise and there are some parallels to be drawn between J.K.Rowling's books and the new novel by Diana Wynne Jones, entitled Year of the Griffin.

This is a sequel to The Dark Lord of Derkholm (which incidentally beat Rowling to claim the Mythopoeic award) and concerns trainee wizards, six of them to be precise. This mixed bag of protagonists characters includes a feisty and rebellious dwarf, a pirate chiefs daughter, a unwilling heir to the throne of Luteria, the son of the Emir of Ampersand, the sister of the Emperor of the South and the Griffin of the title. Such a rich combination naturally provokes some entertaining situations as these six enter the Wizard's University - an establishment run rather shoddily by the Wizard Corkoran, a man more interested in becoming the first to reach the moon than he is in teaching his pupils.

Year of the Griffin is clearly aimed at an older audience than the Harry Potter books. Indeed it touches upon (but in no way belabors) some rather adult subjects - feminism gets a look in, as does social injustice, the pitfalls of obsession, etc. and this is certainly a fun read. It is hard not to compare the two though given the similarities and though Year of the Griffin is fun, with all the rich and wonderful characters Wynne Jones gives us in this work, I still found myself wishing for a little more "Potteresque" humour throughout.