Hexwood
Ann Stavely lives across from Hexwood Farm, a small English wood that no one seems to visit and no one leaves quite the same. When she wanders in she finds a knight, a boy, and events that keep looping, replaying, and rearranging themselves. The novel widens outward to reveal that the wood is running an ancient Reigners program, a piece of technology bound up with Arthurian myth and with the interstellar tyrants who rule Earth. Diana Wynne Jones structures the book as a puzzle that only fully snaps together in the final pages, and the reread is often better than the first read. It is science fantasy at its most inventive.
Also by Diana Wynne Jones
What you might want to know about Hexwood
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A quiet English wood is running a strange time bending program that pulls a teenage girl, a mysterious swordsman, and interstellar overlords into an unfolding puzzle.
Yes. Gaiman has often praised Diana Wynne Jones as one of the great fantasy writers and pointed to Hexwood in particular as an astonishing piece of construction that repays multiple readings.
Deliberately, yes. The nonlinear structure is part of the point, and most readers say the book clicks into focus by the end and rewards a second pass.
Hexwood was written by Diana Wynne Jones, published in 1993 by Greenwillow Books.
Hexwood is 400 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Hexwood takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Hexwood is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
