Howl’s Moving Castle Book Review: Is It Better Than the Movie?

We’re reading Diana Wynne Jones’s “Howl’s Moving Castle” — the 1986 novel behind Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli film — and digging into what the book does differently from the movie. Expect a full “what have you been reading” detour through Anne Rice, Stephen King, and the Dresden Files before we get to Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer. We also share some news about the future of the show. We Read Allegedly is part of the Geek Devotions Network, where we talk books, movies, and the geeky stuff we love — allegedly.

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This week on We Read Allegedly, our team discussed Diana Wynne Jones’s novel Howl’s Moving Castle — the book behind Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli film. Here’s where we landed on the book itself.

We liked that Howl was written as being from Wales, calling it hysterical, and said we would have loved to hear a version of the book with Howl given a thick Welsh accent. We appreciated that the book gave us background details the movie doesn’t — specifically Howl’s Welsh origins and insight into what goes on inside the characters’ heads.

We genuinely think the book is better consumed if you haven’t seen the movie first.

On the wizard’s young apprentice character, we liked that he was older in the book, saying it made more sense than “having a seven-year-old running around” with Howl.

When asked where we landed on the book versus the movie for Howl’s Moving Castle specifically, one of us said we like the movie better, missing the war subplot from the film and saying its addition filled the story out more. Miyazaki’s presentation of the characters also felt more rounded out than in the book — Sophie in the book was described as “a little bit more dry of a character” than preferred, without the same spunk as the Sophie in the movie. The other team member said “both” — for them, the book and movie live in two separate places, with the movie sitting alongside their other favorite anime rather than being compared directly to the book.

We did not like the book’s portrayal of Calcifer, saying “you just can’t beat Billy Crystal” (Calcifer’s voice actor in the film).

One of us admitted to not having a lot to say about the book overall, explaining that because we already knew how the story would go, our attention drifted in and out while listening to the audiobook at work. That said, we loved the narrator, describing her voice as feeling like a grandma telling us a bedtime story — this was a third listen for one of us, and a comfort listen turned to on stressful days, partly because it’s short and doesn’t feel like a commitment. The other team member said they probably had takeaways from the book but couldn’t recall them, noting it had been a while since reading it because the episode ended up recorded later than originally planned.

Our takeaway connected Howl getting his heart back at the end of the story to giving your heart to Christ — receiving a heart of flesh in place of a calloused one.