Secondary Character Title: Neither Archer nor the Goon are the lead character. The Goon plays a large role but the protaganist and viewpoint character is Howard. Archer’s Goon is the complex plot of a town secretly administered by a mafia of seven wizard siblings – Archer, Shine, Dillian, Hathaway, Torquil, Erskine and Venturus – who extract a tax from every aspect of the town’s life and commerce. Meeting Erskine. This was one of the twists that surprised me. It gives a whole new layer to most of the previous interactions, as well as to the Goon's character. It turns out that seven individuals, siblings all, are vying for total control of the world, having already farmed out among themselves various bits of city administration. It’s up to 13-year-old Howard, his younger sister Anthea (known as “Awful”), the mum Catriona and student Fifi (who must be a nod to the Fiona to whom the novel is dedicated) to discover how to resolve matters. And it’s urgent: the siblings have laid siege to No 10 Upper Park Road with music torture and continuous road excavations in an attempt to convince Quentin to yield up his 2000 words.

Or is the situation more complex than at first appears, and will the Sykes’ household of parents, son, daughter and student lodger each find they have a role to play, where their decisions and actions have unexpected consequences and their relationships be revealed as contrary to appearances? drugi, treći i četvrti nivo su, međutim, fantastika u stilu Dajane Vin Džouns, što će reći atipična i komplikovana za praćenje i urnebesno duhovita i istovremeno rovari po nekim solidno ozbiljnim problemima identiteta i porodične dinamike i i i. Hints as to the identities of the seven magical siblings come from the mention of sun, moon and star, and the link of Archer with Alpha Centauri, all suggesting astrological and zodiacal significances. Thirteen-year-old Howard Sykes lives in an English town with his parents, Quentin, an author and professor, and Catriona, a music teacher; his sister Anthea, always called "Awful" because of her constant screaming; and Fifi, the family's au pair. Their life is interrupted one afternoon when an unnamed huge person, "somebody's Goon" as Fifi describes him, comes into their home and announces that he has come to collect the two thousand words that Quentin owes somebody called Archer. EAN: 9780688025823], [SC: 25.63], [PU: New York: Greenwillow Books, 1984. dj], WIZARDS, CHILDREN'S FANTASY, TIME PARADOXES, ALTERNATE WORLDS, HARDCOVER FIRST EDITION - AND ILLUSTRATED NO… More...Archer's Goon is a 1984 fantasy novel by Diana Wynne Jones both for the young adult and adult markets. It was nominated for the 1985 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and is listed as an ALA Notable Children's Book, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book.

Time travel is a constant theme in the author’s novels (most obviously in titles like The Time of the Ghost and A Tale of Time City) and so it proves here. The Goon takes Howard to see Mountjoy, who reveals that the town is secretly run by seven wizard siblings: Archer, Shine, Dillian, Hathaway, Torquil, Erskine, and Venturus. Each one "farms" some aspects of the town's life and industry (for a list, see below). Mountjoy has instructions from an unknown superior to post the words but does not know who the actual recipient is. Fifi reveals to Howard that she did not deliver the two thousand words as she was busy and gave them to one of Quentin's students at the college, Maisie Potter, to deliver. Howard, Awful and Fifi go to Maisie Potter's house to find out what she did with them.She tries to fob them off with excuses as to why the words were not delivered but they finally get the truth out of her: that she gave them to one of the wizard siblings, Dillian. The trio force her to take them to see Dillian. Episode 2: Howard comes face to face with two of the strange family who are really running the town. The reveal of what’s actually going on in the town and with the missing words makes this a story that is well worth reading a second (or third!) time, so you can spot all the hints and piece together the clues – they’re subtle enough to miss on a first reading, but they are definitely there.DVD - contains all 6 episodes Digitally Remastered directly from the original studio mastertapes, this has to be seen to be believed! I didn't like Fifi. I don't know.... we just didn't seem like the kind of people who would get along. Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Dillian is easily able to use her magic to charm Howard and Fifi, but Awful is simply too... awful. EAN: 9780688025823], [SC: 25.34], [PU: New York: Greenwillow Books, 1984. dj], WIZARDS, CHILDREN'S FANTASY, TIME PARADOXES, ALTERNATE WORLDS, HARDCOVER FIRST EDITION - AND ILLUSTRATED NO… More...

I love the way Jones writes. She can put two words together and create magic: "unshaven growl"! "watching sarcastically"! When she's not creating awesome new word combinations, her writing is crisp and clear and so easy to drink down. And this might be a kids' book (my library put it under Juvenile), but I didn't feel like she was dumbing anything down. Despite having a broad cast of characters – the Sykes family, the siblings who run the town, the Goon and Fifi, plus Shine’s lieutenant Ginger Hind – every single one is fully fleshed out with their own motivations, schemes, beliefs and opinions on what’s going on. Weird Tales reviewer John Gregory Betancourt praised the novel as "a witty little urban fantasy [and] a delight to read." [3]

See also

Family. It's all about family: dysfunctional, chaotic, funny, surprisingly loving and surprisingly heartless. Jones’ descriptions throughout the book are simple but effective, easily conjuring up an image of the action; from the way Catriona locates each family member by their noises, to the reflection of each sibling’s character in their surroundings, even to the splart-thump of the soggy hole in Howard’s boot. Riddle for the Ages: What exactly are the seven siblings and where are they from? Quentin describes them as “wizards” and Awful calls Dillian an “evil enchantress” but they never refer to themselves in such terms or use the word “magic” to describe their powers. There’s a vague implication that they might be aliens, but that’s all we’re ever going to get. I don't have a favorite Diana Wynne Jones book; I have a cluster of five favorites and six more second-tier favorites. Of those top five, three were published consecutively, and Archer's Goon is the first of those. DWJ's sixteenth published book, Archer's Goon represents, with Howl's Moving Castle, the peak of the humorous writing that characterizes much of her 1980s period. The core is a strong, beautifully plotted story, but it's overlaid with so many funny bits that it isn't until you get to the end that you realize how complex it is. Some of the fantastical elements remain unexplained by the end of the book, such as the origins of the mysterious siblings, but the story doesn’t feel incomplete without them; rather, I suspect that it would drag if Jones had included those details as well.

There's this concept that I for some reason really love, where people stand for, or even are, ideas or abstractions in some sense. It's a similar idea to anthropomorphism. The Greek gods are a pretty good example of this; some of them are considered actual things, like Helios who is the sun, and and some just have qualities similar to the things and are generally in charge of the things, like Apollo the sun god. In this book, this is realized through the idea of "farming". The wizard siblings "farm" various town functions, like education and infrastructure and future related things, or music and entertainment and shopping and fun related things. What they farm seems related to their personalities and powers in some ways, and you could easily imagine Torquil, for example, as the "god of arts and entertainment". My love for abstraction and structure is quite strong, and trumps realism any day, and this idea is an important reason why I love this book so much. (Some of the other books I like for a similar reason are The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton, The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis, and Enchanted by Alethea Kontis. And I'm sure there are more I've forgotten.) One day, the Sykes family are disturbed to find the intimidating Goon (Morgan Jones) in their kitchen, demanding two thousand words of gibberish that Quentin apparently owes to Archer.

Secondary Verifications

Torquil is probably my second favourite character after the Goon. It's the surprising depth that does it, especially after meeting the other siblings. Although Shine is so distinctive that she holds a high place in my list of favourite characters as well. Sam početak romana, prvih recimo pet-šest strana (jer sve dalje od toga zalazi u teritoriju spojlera) deluje kao Harold Pinter za decu. Trinaestogodišnji junak dolazi kući iz škole i u kuhinji zatiče osobu koja se predstavlja kao "Arčerov siledžija". Osoba izgleda kao Vini Džouns, samo je trideset santimetara viši i srazmerno širi. I došao je zato što junakov otac njegovom gazdi (za koga nikad nije čuo a kamoli poslovao s njim) duguje dve hiljade. I sedeće u kuhinji dok ne dobije te dve hiljade (hint: nisu funte u pitanju). And in the end, you're left with so many questions--not the bad kind that leave things unfinished and bug you forever and indicate bad storytelling, but wonderful areas to imagine about. Like... Who ARE these people? Aliens? How did they get here? What are their parents like? (Must be amazing (in maybe an awful way) with children like those...) What will the people on the spaceship do? Will they survive and try to take over a different planet? Will Erskine try to farm the world? Will Awful try to farm the world with him? (I'm suspecting since Venturus is good with future stuff, maybe he can see the future to a certain extent and his intuition about Erskine was correct. Although maybe with Venturus's influence it will turn out differently.) Overall, Archer’s Goon is a witty, fantastical tale about family and identity, the difficult choice between doing what’s right and what’s easy, and how to stop a group of magical megalomaniacs from taking over the world.