Has a couple of my least favorite tropes, but *shrugs* well executed for all that. ( )

Prev. publ. in Mixed magics ( )

Stealer of Souls was first published in 2000 in a short story collection called Mixed Magics. Part of Diana Wynne Jones' popular series about Chrestomanci, a sort of magical ombudsman, this fits into a complicated chronology but is also designed to be read as a standalone, as its republication for World Book Day 2002 proves.

A young Italian, Tonino Montana, makes a brief appearance at the end of ‘Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream’ (republished in Mixed Magics). We first met him in The Magicians of Caprona, and the last we heard of him he was coming to be a pupil at Chrestomanci Castle somewhere in southern England. We now hear what happened when he was first introduced to Chrestomanci’s extended family after the events in Caprona, just before Carol Oneir comes into the picture.

Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances Chrestomanci’s nephew Cat is put in charge of looking after Tonino, and it’s clear he’s unhappy about no longer being the youngest in the entourage. Cat’s despatched with Tonino to the aged Gabriel de Witt, previous holder of the Chrestomanci office. Gabriel is also a nine-lifed enchanter, but his lives are leaving him one by one, and he’s fearful of one Neville Spiderman. (I’m sure Jones conjured this name from Neville Spearman, publishers of books on reincarnation and spiritualism as well as flying saucers and the occult in general.) He is right to be fearful of Spiderman because when Tonino and Cat set off on their return journey they are kidnapped and locked in a cellar full of junk and cobwebs.

What has happened to Gabriel’s ‘lives’ or souls and what have they to do with Neville Spiderman? Will it involve reincarnation and the occult? We soon find out as horror and humour succeed one another. I liked the way those lost souls were depicted — very dreamlike in a way — and I was amused to find that Jones ended the story with the promise of a villa holiday in the South of France, which is just where ‘Carol Oneir’s Hundredth Dream’ ends and which itself ends the Mixed Magics collection.

http://wp.me/s2oNj1-magics ( )

Fun companion story to Charmed Life and Magicians of Caprona. I enjoyed the characterization and general wackiness. ( )