One of her cousins bullies her – she’s also bullied by the boys in school on a daily basis. Her aunt hates her and makes her do all the house work.

His owner, Kathleen, is an Irish girl living with her relatives, because her father’s in prison (due to being involved with the IRA) and her mother’s overseas, for reasons unexplained. This encumbers him somewhat in his search for the Zoi, but he manages with the help of Sol (the Sun). But then he slowly regains awareness of who he is – or was – in a vague sort of way, because he’s still limited by the fact that he’s a dog. I told myself that Sirius – now named “Leo” by his owner – isn’t REALLY a dog, even when his thoughts read like what I thought a puppy’s would be like. And yet, somehow, because this is a book by Diana Wynne Jones, I ended up reading it. I think it was after reading Black Beauty that I had decided to never read an animal book ever again. In this way, Sirius is reborn as a puppy. As punishment, he is stripped of his titles/powers and sent to earth to live out the lifespan of one of Earth’s sentient creatures – if he manages to find the Zoi in that lifespan, he will regain his position. In this book, Sirius is Lord of the Dog Star, wrongly accused of murder, misusing a MacGuffin (called a Zoi), and misplacing that Zoi. And unsurprisingly, the same happened with Dogsbody. I’ve reread both The Time of the Ghost and A Tale of Time City somewhat recently, and decided that I liked them a lot more than I thought I did.

(And the Dalemark books.) This would be the pre-reread project ranking, mind. I think that Dogsbody, along with The Time of the Ghost and A Tale of Time City, would probably rank among my least favourite Diana Wynne Jones titles.

Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones