Archer’s Goon

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It’s 1983, and the Sykes family find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy of squabbling siblings who plan to ‘farm’ the world; can Quentin Sykes, the father and a struggling author, stand up against the malevolent forces who besiege the family house and seek to use the power of the written word for nefarious purposes?

It effortlessly blends past, present, future, ordinary contemporary, fantasy, and sci-fi, of which I have NEVER seen the like.

One thing leads to another and they discover there’s a whole fleet of egocentric wizards who have been secretly ruling their town. Along the way she gained a fiercely loyal following; many of her admirers became successful authors themselves, including Newbery Award winners Robin McKinley and Neil Gaiman, and Newbery Honor Book author Megan Whalen Turner. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). Jones started writing during the mid-1960s "mostly to keep my sanity", when the youngest of her three children was about two years old and the family lived in a house owned by an Oxford college. The Goon himself, which is the key character the story revolves around (besides Howard) is very lovable and entertaining.

They all board the ship, which Howard–Venturus has programmed to allow them to come aboard but not disembark, for a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri, and the ship takes off. Also the characters are in a constant state of changing around in the eyes of the reader: who’s good, who’s bad, who has devious intents, WHO IS UP TO WHAT AND WHAT ON EARTH OR POSSIBLY OFF OF IT IS GOING ON? Awful isn’t the only thing that I found I liked better on this reread – I seem to have forgotten the list of things the book set out to prove, and did (except perhaps “pigs have wings, making them hard to catch” – or have I missed out on that part? I have always loved the story of archer's goon, but as others have mentioned, this is the abridged version which is a shame.I think the author did a great job balancing all the characters and their unique qualities/abilities and the character of Awful was a hoot. And I'll stick with that, since an actual description of the plot couldn't give you ANY idea of how good it is.

It turns out that the town in which the Sykes live is run by seven megalomaniac wizard siblings, and Archer is the eldest. I know Neil Gaiman likes Wynne Jones, and I wonder if these seven might have been at the back of his mind when, a few years later, he created seven Endless siblings of his own? What does Miriam Margolyes bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book? In this reread I may have found elements that I’m less comfortable with and had glossed over before, but I also appreciate Awful’s character a lot more.Howard Sykes is an average 13 year old boy who lives with his parents, younger sister and their au pair in the fictional town of Holisbury.