Year of the Griffin

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**Title** **Year of the Griffin**
Cover from the American edition
Author	Diana Wynne Jones
Country	Great Britain
Language	English
Series	The Derkholm Series
Genre(s)	Children's Fantasy novel
Publisher	Greenwillow Books
Released	2000
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	272 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 978-0060291587 (first edition, hardback)
Preceded by	Dark Lord of Derkholm

Year of the Griffin is a 2000 novel by British children's author Diana Wynne Jones. It is the sequel to The Dark Lord of Derkholm and is more centered around Wizard Derk's daughter, the griffin Elda, and her time at the University of Magic.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The book is set eight years after Mr. Chesney's offworld tours have stopped, and the University is in dire straits; they have financial problems, and are being mismanaged by the magician Corkoran. He deems it important to churn out as many basic magicians as he can, to remedy the damage Mr. Chesney's tours have caused. In doing so, the University leaves out a lot of theory, and believes that magic can only be done in one set way. Elda and her new companions, however, have many bright new ideas that could help the furtherment of magic, but they are suppressed by Corcoran's mis-guided management.

Elda's classmates each have their own family problems with being at the University, and soon enough the University is besieged by assassins, griffins, armies and kings.

[edit] Themes

Too many college students will find that this story hits close to home. A sad but true fact is that some universities and high schools do constantly ask donations from students' families without considering their financial or social situations.

Also Derk from Dark Lord of Derkholm reveals when he comes to visit Lydda that the reason why the University is in such bad shape is because of Mr. Chesney's tours. What happened was that the university had to reduce their curricculum into the useless form it takes on and that its current teachers were raised on that curriculum.

The students' constant fights with the teachers can relate to the US's response to college students protesting Vietnam and to similar protests occurring in Europe with college students during the late twentieth century. Also during the 1980s the universities in Iran were closed down to root out unwanted students.

Mrs. Jones also shows humorously how even the slightest actions have consequences. For example, when creating spells to protect Felim from assassins, Lydda and her friends create a pentacle of bookcases around him and Ruskin keeps dropping orange peel around the runes. What results is that an assassin falls into a pit of orange juice instead of a pit of water and whenever Felim is in danger "a cocoon of books" surrounds him.