meganbmoore | The Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones (Reply)

Set eight years after Dark Lord of Derkholm, The Year of the Griffin focuses on Derk’s youngest griffin daughter, Elda, as she goes to the wizard university to learn magic. With Mara’s permission, but not Derk’s. As soon as the tours ended, Querida went on vacation and turned the university over to Corkoran, a charismatic wizard, but also a slacker who spends his time obsessing over being the first man to walk on the moon.

Unfortunately, the university has even bigger problems than Corkoran. For one thing, the last forty years were spent turning out as many functional wizards as possible to be tour guides, but only training them to be that, nothing else. The new teachers, having been trained that way themselves, don’t know how to teach their students to be anything else, and so only the rudimentary basics are taught. The other problem is that, without the tours, the university has no funding. So Corkoran devises a plan to invite students from rich families to study at the university. Except that, when those students arrive, they come with absolutely no money, but with a lot of eagerness to learn. They also each come with a host of problems, including curses, angry parents, and a multitude of assassins.

The book is largely focused on the hijinks of Elda and her new friends as they deal with each other’s problems and the university’s incompetent staff, and start learning the magic and theories that used to be taught on their own.

I don’t think it was as good as Dark Lord of Derkholm, but this was extremely fun, despite a slightly rushed ending. I think, though, that I’m starting to burn out on fantasies set in a school, no matter how interesting and/or fun the school is.