Cart and Cwidder
Cart and Cwidder relates the fortunes of Clennen and his family, itinerant musicians who travel the villages of Dalemark in their colorful cart. With warring earldoms and spies everywhere, there is little contact between the North and South of the country, and so the musicians often carry news – and sometimes, as now, a passenger. Who is this Kialan? Is there any connection between him and the sudden violence that overtakes them? The family's fate and Kialan's are bound together in terror and flight – and in music, for the songs of Dalemark mean more than they say.
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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 remarked she learned more by not imitating them. Instead, she carved out her own voice: lyrical but grounded, funny but never flippant, magical yet steeped in emotional truth.
Dalemark
The first three books can be read in any order, but the last in the sequence, Crown of Dalemark, has to be read last.
Dalemark consists of four books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
