Year of the Griffin
2000 novel by Diana Wynne Jones
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 in 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 is centred on six first-year students of magic, in relation to the administration and teachers, their families and studies, and each other. 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".
Plot background
The Year is set in a fantasy world several years after the end of its domination by commercial tourism from the real world. 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. 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 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. The senior wizards have all retired; the middle-age and young know of no other way.
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. His class turns out to be unusual in other respects too.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8050916. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Year of the Griffin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.