So over the last week I read the kids The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones. It’s copyrighted 2007, so it’s one of Jones’ final books; it’s not too long; and it was OK. Which is disappointing, because Jones is usually outstanding. Oh, the kids enjoyed it, and Jane enjoyed, and I enjoyed reading it. But we’ve been reading a lot of Diana Wynne Jones over the last couple of years, and it was OK.

It concerns a young girl named Hayley whose parents are apparently deceased. She lives with her kind (if distracted) grandfather, and her strict, stern, and thoroughly unpleasant grandmother, and as the book begins she has so entirely alienated her grandmother that she’s been sent off to live with cousins.

And what did she do to alienate her grandmother? Well, it has to do with the young huntsman and his dogs that were just starting to run through her bedroom when her grandmother looked in. They evaporated immediately, of course, but the damage was done.

It’s an entertaining little book; there’s more to Haley and her grandparents and her cousins than meets the eye. But there are many other and better books by Jones to get started with, if you’re not familiar with her.