Archer’s Goon

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Finally, I should like to indicate how much words have an import beyond their superficial appearances, and that one should beware of McGuffins. What it does contain, which to me has always been one of the key components of YA, is an otherwise unremarkable, imperfect teen protagonist who is shocked, surprised, and rather horrified to find out that he's not ordinary after all. Dillian admits that she did ask Maisie Potter to steal the words as she believes, just like the other siblings, that the two thousand words have for the past thirteen years prevented them from leaving the town.

Crossley finds a note claiming that ``someone in this class is a witch,'' only the beginning of events that have 6B and the rest of the school in turmoil. Archer’s Goon is one of my favorites, too, and it’s also one of the absolute weirdest of Diana Wynne Jones’s books to me. I think some of this is that DWJ embeds so much potential in it, not for a sequel, but for the future growth of her characters.Archer's Goon is a mysterious large man who shows up one day in Howard Sykes's kitchen, refusing to leave until Howard's father Quentin delivers the two thousand words he owes. Born just outside London in 1934, Diana Wynne Jones had a childhood that was “very vivid and often very distressing”—one that became the fertile ground where her tremendous imagination took root. Mountjoy has instructions from an unknown superior to post the words but does not know who the actual recipient is. The Goon has come to demand the two thousand words of nonsense that Howard’s father allegedly owes a mysterious figure named Archer. Though one dodgy moral question goes unanswered, the ending is splendidly silly; Jones has written better books, but her inventiveness is a reminder that there's life in fantasy if you know where to look.

Each one (there are seven in total) “farms” or runs a certain part of the town – for example, Archer runs the banks and power companies, Shine handles crime, etc.There are some grubby marks to the outer closed textblock page edges but pages themselves are clean.