Witch Week - Diana Wynne-Jones

Rating : 3.5/5
Number of Pages : 334
Number in Series : #3 Chrestomanci Series
Reason for Reading : I enjoyed Fire and Hemlock by the same author when Nymeth recommended her to me and saw this in the local library so thought I would give it a try

Chrestomanci is an enchanter in charge of controlling witchcraft in the many parallel universes out there. Each one has arisen when there were two different potential outcomes for example in one world Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo. One particular world forbids witchcraft and when a note appears on the desk of teacher Mr Crossley accusing someone in class 2Y of being a witch panic and accusations soon set in.

In this particular school it could easily be true as many of the pupils are witch-orphans whose parents were burnt as witches on bone-fires. As events in the story unfold we discover there is a witch in the class, in fact there are more than one. Misfits Charles, Nan, Brian, Estelle and Nirupam are forced to form an unlikley allience to put their world right allowing witchcraft to be practised freely with the emergency help of Chrestomanci.

This is the third book in the series and I enjoyed it enough to look for the rest. The idea of all worlds being inherantly magical was fun and the main characters were interesting, especially Nirupam who didn't have as much of a role as some of the others. It was funny that "magic" is used as a swear word in their world as well as some other little references that made their world different from ours. A fun read.