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Dangerous Games is one of the Wolves Chronicles novels Joan Aiken wrote in the long run after her early classic The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. The series has been quietly drifting into stranger territory with each entry, and Dangerous Games is the book where Dido Twite ends up in an alternate-history New Caledonia that is essentially a piece of Roman Britain that has survived into the alternate-19th century.
Aiken's great gift for this series is the easy mixing of styles. The historical pastiche is technical. The high adventure is sincere. The off-handed social observation is consistently sharp. Dido is one of the great heroines of late 20th-century children's fiction and continues to deserve her readership.
Four stars. The Wolves Chronicles are inconsistent and Dangerous Games is one of the strong ones. Best read with at least Black Hearts in Battersea or Nightbirds on Nantucket in your background.
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