Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones

Not one of the families is likely to donate because they have status rather than money, or their fortunes have recently slumped, or their children are here with grudging permission or none. All six are talented, some in ways they do not yet understand, some encumbered by jinxes. His class turns out to be unusual in other respects too. Wizard Corkoran has selected children from wealthy families to fill his own first-year tutorial, hoping that a current appeal for donations will be fruitful. The senior wizards have all retired the middle-age and young know of no other way. The head, wizard Corkoran, is obsessed with becoming the first man to visit the moon and devotes much time to that, but there is little research or innovation generally. It suffers financially because tuition demand is down, which greatly concerns the faculty, and educationally from its long practical focus, which barely concerns the few who have noticed.

The University formerly produced large numbers of competent wizards who served as tour guides current staff aims to produce competent wizards who gradually repair the damage caused by tours. The Year is set in a fantasy world several years after the end of its domination by commercial tourism from our world. A review in Publishers Weekly called it a 'boisterous spoof of the campus novel' another in Booklist said that it continues 'Jones' spoof of traditional fantasy conventions'. Year is centred on six first-year students of magic, in relation to the administration and teachers, their families and studies, and each other. Year of the Griffin, later The Year of the Griffin in the UK, is a fantasy novel by the British author Diana Wynne Jones, published 2000 simultaneously in the UK and the US It is the sequel to The Dark Lord of Derkholm, set primarily at the University several years after that novel's radical conclusion.

Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones