House of Many Ways

The house of many ways book, is a sequel of Howl's Moving Castle. However, you don't really need to know anything about that book, except that Howl is a wizard and his wife's name is Sophie. Now for the plot.

Charmain is sent to look after her great great uncle's by marriage house. When she gets there, she realizes that everything has to be operated by magic, and she knows none. While she is there, a bunch of magic creatures get mad at her, she floods the house with soap bubbles, and creates a larger pile of dishes because she broke the magic faucet. Then someone called Peter, an apprentice to her great great uncle, comes and with her, explores the house more and messes it up more. Then Charmain's application to be a royal librarian is approved. When she goes to the royal mansion, she meets Sophie and Wizard Howl disguised as a kid. He says that the king needs help to find where his gold has all gone. But cannot say it to her directly because of spies and conspiracies. Then after lots of exploring, Peter and Charmain realize that the cause of everything was of a Lubbock that Charmain met earlier. It had bribed some magical creatures to create trouble between the rest of their kind and Charmain Peter. Then double crossed them by laying its eggs in them, which when the hatched, would eat them from the inside. The eggs are removed once they confessed. Also, it is revealed that Charmain's uncle is sick from the Lubbock eggs, which are also removed. Then finally, Howl and Sophie reveal that the reason why the gold is missing is because a child of the same Lubbock, is now going to be heir. He was hiding it so no one would notice that he was paying his disguised Lubbock henchmen to kill off other heirs. Then after an intense series of scenes, they manage to kill all the Lubbocks and find the gold.

What I liked, is that magic didn't come in as often in the Harry Potter way, where you have to understand every little bit in order to make sense of the plot. Here, you just needed to know what the magic was supposed to do, and what it did do. What I didn't like was that is was all very complicated. I had to stop occasionally while reading the book so the information could sink in.