The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones

A new book by a favorite author is always a happy thing, and The Game, by Diana Wynne Jones, made my weekend much happier. It is a fast paced tale of orphaned Hayley, raised by a strict grandmother and much more friendly grandfather, who gets unceremoniously dumped into an enormous house in Ireland, full of strange cousins and aunts (no uncles).

DWJ can be a twisty writer, and she made me a tad nervous a few pages into the book with a throw-away reference to something us readers had no clue about, but it was soon explained.  All is not as it seems in Hayley's family, and "the game" her cousins play turns out to be rollicking, sometimes alarming, excursions through the (primarily Greek) mythosphere.

There's a lot of action, Haley's a likable character, and it's a good read. But there isn't a whole lot of numinosity (the sort of thing that makes you hold your breath with the wonder and enchantment of it all and the hairs on the back of your neck rise). It's only 192 pages; I wish DWJ had made it longer and deeper. Oh well.