A novel by
Diana Wynne Jones. A powerful magical artifact from the center of the galaxy, buried on Earth, becomes active and distorts reality in its neighborhood.
Tropes include:
- Affably Evil: Reigner One looks and behaves like a kindly grandfather, offering soothing words and candy to the children under his care. He also orders the torture and termination of these children if they don't behave to his liking.
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: Pretty much every character.
- Amnesia Loop: It's not until Vierran uncovers her own recorded message to herself that it's made explicitly clear that the Bannus isn't just changing events, it's replaying them.
- Anachronic Order:
- The Artifact: With the sole exception of Reigner One, none of the other Reigners actually are Reigners. Their species was carefully exterminated or exiled centuries ago, and the current group are just ordinary Human Aliens who empower themselves with a lot of very expensive technology. Even Reigner One is only a half-blood Reigner, and the others are extremely disturbed when he casually reveals that their Servant, Mordion, is in fact full-blooded.
- The Baroness: Reigner Three.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Practically everyone is distantly related to Martellian Pender, the previous First Reigner. Ironically enough, the only two major characters who probably aren't — Reigners Three and Four — are sister and brother.
- Chekhov's Gun: As Vierran departs the House of Balance for Earth, her father smuggles her a gift: a bracelet that hides a gun loaded with poison darts, as well as a message tape. The gun itself never gets fired, but the tape later provides a major revelation for Vierran.
- The Chessmaster: Yam/the Bannus
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Once the Bannus's plot kicks into action, the Reigners are too busy trying to wipe each other out to wonder what's really going on.
- Decoy Protagonist: Ann, the plucky young Earth girl who serves as the primary focus for the first half of the book, is not real. She disappears around the mid-point, replaced by her true self, Vierran. The Bannus had made Vierran act as she had when she was a teenager, for reasons that remain mysterious.
- Dumb Blonde: Vierran's cousin Siri, though beautiful and blonde, is normally very intelligent, but in the world of the Bannus she becomes the deeply stupid Lady Sylvia, and Vierran calls her the trope by name. She wonders if deep down Siri wanted a break from being so competent all the time, and the Bannus gave her a reprieve from having to use her brain for a while.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Reigners. Reigner One is the only one to be named in the book (Orm Pender). May overlap with Nominal Importance as he's both the most powerful and the last to be killed.
- Evil Old Folks: Reigner One.
- Exact Words: Frequently used by the Bannus. For example, the creative way it circumvents the obligation laid on Vierran to "make a child" with Mordion.
- Extremely Short Timespan: All told, the events of the book take place over about a fortnight. Inside the Bannus, however, many years pass.
- Fate Worse than Death: What happens to the mothers of the Reigners' Servants.
- Gambit Roulette: Yam. He says it himself, pretty much:
Yam: I wish you to know that every one of my six-hundred and ninety-seven plans of action was designed to end in your death.
- Genre-Busting: Aside from how the various characters seem to start out on opposite genre strands (one end is an intergalactic sci-fi; the other end is the sort of Cozy Suburban Novel where a plucky girl solves a mystery, a la Nancy Drew), this is a novel that ends up seamlessly combining an intergalactic empire, a genetic engineering program, very advanced technology, King Arthur, magic, a five-brained reality-warping cyborg, a Lord of the Rings simulation gone horribly right, and people being turned into dragons by a bit more of that reality simulation gone horribly right. Also, in maybe the most genre-busting moment, the Bannus finds itself trapped at the very last minute by a mythical representation of the English Woods, and it turns out that the mixed-up chronology of the novel is due in parts to the Woods' interference. Diana Wynne Jones herself is on record as having trouble with writing the novel at first, since she was convinced it had to be two separate novels that needed to be untangled, but then she realized how everything fit and we got Hexwood as the result.
- Have We Met Yet?:
- Ann is increasingly frustrated throughout the first half of the book when she seems to enter the wood at a different year each visit; Hume bounces around from being an infant to a teenager and back again, from her perspective, and he occasionally mentions things to her that she has yet to experience. More confusingly, she herself sometimes remembers things that haven't happened to her yet, such as the first time she meets Hume after his "creation". After a second, she finds that she already knows who he is and what his name is, despite never having been told.
- When Yam is discovered by Ann and Hume at Hexwood Farm, Hume already knows who he is, since Yam was the first person he met after he was "born", and Yam had already been sworn to protect Hume by Mordion in both of their personal futures, which doesn't happen until after Hume and Ann rescue Yam and bring him back to Mordion.
- Mage Species: What the Reigners used to be, until Orm Pender took control and had all the other Reigners killed, exiled or enslaved. They possessed innate psychic powers, long lifespans and the ability to control magic.
- Mind Screw: Thanks to not one but two Reality Warper fields in play at the same time, things get very confusing very quickly. Events happen out of chronological order (both for the reader and the characters), the same events happen multiple times in slightly different ways, various characters turn out to not be who they appear or believed themselves to be, and each reveal makes everything more convoluted.
- Minor Injury Overreaction: King Ambitas's "wound that won't heal", which forces him to remain bedridden, turns out to be nothing more than a nasty bruise he received just before crossing over from reality into the field of the Bannus. Mordion has to fight not to burst out laughing when he is called upon to "administer" to the wound.
- Older Than They Look: Hume, who spends most of the book bouncing around between the ages of five and sixteen, is actually Martellian Pender, the original Reigner One, known throughout Earth history and mythology under various guises, most notably Merlin. When he recovers his memories at the end of the book, he ages up a bit to compensate.
- Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Reigners when first introduced.
- One-Winged Angel: Mordion and Reigner One are transformed into giant dragons for the final battle. Reigners Two and Three are on their way to transforming, but only manage to grow scales and snouts before Mordion terminates them.
- People Farms: The Reigners specifically "breed" their Servants, ordering "chosen" girls to "breed" with their Servant, and then "farming" the offspring until they find out which ones they have to cull. Yes, it is freaky as all get out.
- Plot-Induced Illness: Ann is introduced as being very unwell from a long-lasting virus that keeps her bedridden. This "illness" was placed on her by the Bannus to preserve her false identity as a school-aged child that couldn't go to school outside of the field. By the time the school year is over, she miraculously recovers, and is able to travel into the wood to take part in the story properly.
- Psychic Link: Ann hears the voices of four other people from different worlds and times. She tries to convince herself that they're imaginary, but deep down she knows they're real. This ability is innate to many "full-blooded" Reigners, and in the end she and the four others become the new Reigner council.
- Reality Warper:
- The Bannus. It was designed to be a sophisticated decision-making machine; a scenario would be presented to it, and the Bannus would alter local spacetime to act out the scenario and all possible outcomes until the desired result was found. It also has the power to select new Reigners, preventing any one group from staying in control for too long. Because of its unreliability, it was shut down and hidden on Earth.
- A secondary reality warp field is the Woods in which most of the action takes place. It interferes with and provides assistance to the Bannus in equal measure, and makes things much more complicated than they might have been otherwise.
- Riddle for the Ages: Exactly which aspects of the plot were caused by the Bannus, or the Wood, or both together. The only sure distinction is that the Bannus's field is slightly larger than the Wood, which is why Ann, her family and the other residents of Wood Street operate in a different false reality than the Arthurian world of the Wood, but even that leaves several questions unanswered.
- Shout-Out: Reigner One's real name, Orm Pender, references Orm, the first dragon, and the island of Pendor, in the Earthsea trilogy, which also makes it a Meaningful Name.
- Smug Snake: Reigner Four.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Most of Earth has been kept in the dark about its relations with other planets because the world is simply not ready to deal with it.
- Tomato in the Mirror: "Ann Stavely"/Vierran Guaranty
- Training from Hell: Reigner One takes great pleasure in the training he put Mordion through as a child, which ultimately killed his five adoptive siblings. Though the other Reigners believe he is unfailingly loyal to them, Reigner One knows it took a lot of work to make him that way.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Harrison Scudamore, who only wanted to use the Bannus to play out a realistic fantasy war game, accidentally creates a struggle for control over most of the known universe.
- Wham Line: Vierran, in a hotel outside the Bannus field with Reigners One and Three, listens to a secret tape her father smuggled to her. After his message is over, another voice plays:
Vierran: Vierran. This is Vierran speaking. Vierran to myself. This is at least the second time I've sat in the inn bedroom despairing, and I'm beginning to not quite believe in it. If it happens again, this is to let me know there's something odd going on.
- When She Smiles: Mordion is a male example. Early on, Ann notes that he is clearly well aware of the effect his smile has on others, and uses it to get what he wants.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: Flint, from Earth, is valuable elsewhere in the universe.
- Younger Than They Look: "Ann" in the first half of the book is roughly 13 years old, and acts like it. When she recovers her true identity as Vierran, a 21-year-old woman, she is mortified as she remembers the childish way she behaved when, to Mordion and Hume, she still looked like an adult.
