Blame it on the weatherman

 Taking a break from reading old Nicholas Fisk books, I decided to branch out into Peter Dickinson, and read The Weathermonger...

I hadn't read this one since I was a teenager, but thanks to that wonderful resource, Open Library, I learned something entirely new - the American edition is strikingly different to the British one! Not just in the usual changes of spelling and understandable adjustments like changing the colloquial "Nigromancer" for "Necromancer", but the whole Merlin plot at the climax of the book was completely rewritten, removing the whole morphine addiction idea and replacing it with, well, something a bit incoherent, really.

There's an interview with Peter Dickinson here, in which he says that the rewrite was an improvement, but then he was talking to Americans there. Having read them both, I think the British original is a lot better - the American version isn't really clear about to what extent Mr Furbelow is still contributing to Merlin's condition, or exactly how Geoffrey and Sally resolve it. Be like Merlin - stick with England and ignore the rest of the world!