Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood was marketed as Young Adult book. The packaging implied Fantasy to me, perhaps even horror. What we end up getting is pretty weird, and fairly SFnal. (Sort of like William Sleator's Interstellar Pig is SFnal.) But, it's also dealing with the Matter of Britain -- King Arthur.

Ann is a teenaged (or perhaps barely preteen) girl in a town in England, near a place called Hexwood Farms. She also hears voices in her head -- the voices of four people: the Boy, the King, the Prisoner, and the Slave. While convalescing from an unexplained severe illness she witnesses strange goings on at Hexwood Farms: people entering but never leaving, etc., and once well she tries to sneak a look. Then things get weird ... She raises a strange man from the dead, and somehow the two mix blood and create a boy together. Over an ambiguous amount of time Ann keeps returning to the wood, meeting the boy, called Hume, and the man, called Mordion, at different times in their "lives", separated by years, and randomly arranged chronologically. It quickly becomes clear that Hume and Mordion have a relationship recalling that of Arthur and Merlin in _The Sword in the Stone_. (Especially when Hume pulls a sword from a stone!)

At the same time pretty much we learn that there has been a snafu at a station of the Galactic Empire charged with running the obscure but important primitive planet Earth. It seems a stupid clerk has activated a machine called the Bannus which has power to manipulate reality. It is necessary for one of the five "Reigners" who rule the Galaxy to travel to Earth to fix it. However, each "Reigner" seems to meet with unexpected trouble on Earth, and the other Reigners keep following. In the process we learn that the Reigners are vile despots, that there is a resistance movement of sorts, and that they employ a Servant who is somehow related to a previous (good) Reigner as their enforcer.

That all these events and characters are connected is clear. As the story continues, the relationships become fairly clear, and events move towards a climax involving the Mordion and Hume, Ann and her alter ego, Ann's four "voices", the five Reigners, and lots more characters, some real, some not, many taking on multiple roles under the influence of the Bannus.

It's a reasonably enjoyable book to read but in the end I found it a little frustrating. Perhaps I was simply too dense to get it, but I found the playing with reality and time to some extent simply self-indulgent, and the reality manipulation a bit too arbitrary. I'm glad I read it, but I don't rank it as DWJ at her best.
Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood was marketed as Young Adult book. The packaging implied Fantasy to me, perhaps even horror. What we end up getting is pretty weird, and fairly SFnal. (Sort of like William Sleator's Interstellar Pig is SFnal. ) But, it's also dealing with the Matter of Britain -- King Arthur. Ann is a teenaged (or perhaps barely preteen) girl in a town in England, near a place called Hexwood Farms. She also hears voices in her head -- the voices of four people: the Boy, the King, the Prisoner, and the Slave. While convalescing from an unexplained severe illness she witnesses strange goings on at Hexwood Farms: people entering but never leaving, etc. , and once well she tries to sneak a look. Then things get weird... She raises a strange man from the dead, and somehow the two mix blood and create a boy together. Over an ambiguous amount of time Ann keeps returning to the wood, meeting the boy, called Hume, and the man, called Mordion, at different times in their "lives", separated by years, and randomly arranged chronologically. It quickly becomes clear that Hume and Mordion have a relationship recalling that of Arthur and Merlin in _The Sword in the Stone_. (Especially when Hume pulls a sword from a stone! )

At the same time pretty much we learn that there has been a snafu at a station of the Galactic Empire charged with running the obscure but important primitive planet Earth. It seems a stupid clerk has activated a machine called the Bannus which has power to manipulate reality. It is necessary for one of the five "Reigners" who rule the Galaxy to travel to Earth to fix it. However, each "Reigner" seems to meet with unexpected trouble on Earth, and the other Reigners keep following. In the process we learn that the Reigners are vile despots, that there is a resistance movement of sorts, and that they employ a Servant who is somehow related to a previous (good) Reigner as their enforcer. That all these events and characters are connected is clear. As the story continues, the relationships become fairly clear, and events move towards a climax involving the Mordion and Hume, Ann and her alter ego, Ann's four "voices", the five Reigners, and lots more characters, some real, some not, many taking on multiple roles under the influence of the Bannus. It's a reasonably enjoyable book to read but in the end I found it a little frustrating. Perhaps I was simply too dense to get it, but I found the playing with reality and time to some extent simply self-indulgent, and the reality manipulation a bit too arbitrary. I'm glad I read it, but I don't rank it as DWJ at her best.