The Homeward Bounders

Diana Wynne Jones

7.0 / 10
3 ratings

When They threw Jamie out to the Boundaries, he was at first too shocked and amazed to make much sense of it. He'd been told he could go Home if he found himself in the right world, but life seemed to be a succession of strange countries – some pleasant, most dangerous – where survival was all that mattered.

Little by little, though, Jamie realized that there was a curious logic in things – he wasn't the only Homeward Bounder, for one thing, though some, like Ahasuerus and the Flying Dutchman, had been trying to get Home for a very long time.

But Jamie decided to try and do more than that. Together with some other Homeward Bounders – Helen, who could do extraordinary things with her withered arm, Joris the demon hunter (and Konstam, his master) – and other friends, he plotted to oppose Them directly, in the fortress that seemed to be Their chief stronghold.

This is a remarkable, powerful story, full of unexpected events and ideas, which will absorb and fascinate all those who read it.

Published
1981
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Author

Diana Wynne Jones

Long before fantasy became mainstream, Diana Wynne Jones was quietly rewriting its rules—building magical worlds that felt both whimsical and wise, mischievous and deeply human. Her stories didn’t just sparkle with enchantment; they carried a quiet intelligence that dared young readers to think deeper, look sideways, and always expect the unexpected. Born in London in 1934, Jones grew up amid wartime evacuations and an often-chaotic household—experiences that would later inform the strange, shifting families and fractured realities in her fiction. She studied English at Oxford under tutors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, though she later…