HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE
The novel is about a young woman named Sophie Hatter, who is the eldest of three daughters living in the town of Market Chipping in the magical kingdom of Ingary, where many fairy-tale tropes are accepted ways of life. As the eldest she is resigned to the "fact" that she will have no chance of finding her fortune, accepting that she will have a dull life running the family hat shop—until she is turned into an old crone by the Witch of the Waste, a powerful witch whom she inadvertently offends by unknowingly working magic on hats. Sophie leaves the shop and finds work as a cleaning lady for the notorious Wizard Howl, famed in her town for eating the hearts of beautiful young women.
Sophie soon learns that Howl, a cavalier but ultimately good-natured person, spreads these malicious rumours about himself to ensure his privacy. The door to his castle is actually a portal that opens onto four different places: the moving castle Sophie first encounters in the hills above Market Chipping, the seaside city of Porthaven, the royal capital of Kingsbury, and Howl's boyhood home in Wales, where he was named Howell Jenkins.
Sophie strikes a bargain with Howl's resident fire demon, Calcifer: if Sophie can break the contract Howl and Calcifer have signed, then Calcifer will return Sophie to her original form. Part of the contract, however, stipulates that neither Howl nor Calcifer can disclose the terms of the contract to any third party. Sophie tries to guess the specifics of the contract, while Calcifer supplies frequent hints.
Howl's apprentice Michael Fisher runs most of the day-to-day affairs of Howl's business, while Howl chases his ever-changing paramours. Howl and Michael are courting Sophie's two younger sisters Lettie and Martha, respectively. (Martha, the youngest, was sent to study magic, while the middle sister, Lettie, was apprenticed at a local bakery. Disguising herself as Lettie, Martha arranged for the two of them to switch places, as Martha's mother (Sophie and Lettie's stepmother) did not take their wishes into account when arranging their apprenticeships.)
When Prince Justin goes missing while searching for Wizard Suliman (Benjamin Sullivan, also from Wales), the King orders Howl to find Suliman and Justin and kill the Witch of the Waste. Howl attempts to weasel out of it by having Sophie, who pretends to be his mother, petition against the appointment—but to no avail. Howl, however, has his own reasons to avoid seeking a confrontation with the Witch of the Waste; the Witch, a jaded former lover, has laid a curse on him.
Howl fights the Witch of the Waste, feigning reluctance to do so, and wins to find that he has been courting the Witch's fire demon, who has been disguised as Howl's nephew's English teacher. The Witch's fire demon had, over the years, taken control of the Witch and, once the Witch was defeated, tried to take Howl's heart instead. Howl is able to stop the demon, and Sophie (who turns out to be a witch who can talk things to life) uses her talent to break the contract between Howl and Calcifer without killing either of them. Once Calcifer is freed, he fulfills his promise and lifts Sophie's spell and Sophie returns to her proper age. With the witch's heart destroyed along with her fire demon the curse breaks on Wizard Suliman and Prince Justin, whom the Witch had fused together in an effort to create a 'perfect human' (Howl's head was meant to complete the being) to use as a puppet to rule Ingary.
Sophie and Howl admit they love each other, Howl having known she was under a spell for quite a while, and suggest they live happily ever after.
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