Year of the Griffin is set eight years after Dark Lord of Derkholm, and the Wizard's University is short of money. Wizard Corkoran, the university chairman, proposes to appeal to the students' parents for donations, and he chooses to teach those he believes will be the richest himself. However, his six students are interesting in ways he doesn't expect, and while some are rich, all of them have someone they wish to hide their whereabouts from; letters home demanding money are the last thing they need. Bonding over poor teaching, worse food, and the prospect of a descending force (whether it be familial, senatorial or assassins) to remove them from the university, Corkoran's students team up to protect each other and take their education into their own hands.

Less confusing than Dark Lord of Derkholm (although possibly part of that is because I was already familiar with this world), Year of the Griffin a fantastic, fantastical, and humorous story about friends, teamwork and challenging the status quo. On a lesser level, it's about incompetent bureaucracy, the dangers of dwelling too much on impossible dreams (and how teamwork can make said dreams possible), the challenges and qualities demanded of rulers, and family.
Most of Derk's family (from Dark Lord) make an appearance - most notably his youngest Griffin daughter, Elda, is one of Corkoran's students. She's a delightful, blithe character: "[Corkoran's] sweet! [...] I want to pick him up and carry him about! [...] he does so remind me of my old teddy bear that Flo plays with now. But I’ll be good." And it is fun to find out what happens to the rest of her family.

My only complaint with this is that there is one too many incidence of love-at-first-sight. Otherwise I enjoyed it very muchly. Particularly because I'm a university student and could really relate to that. ( )

A sequel to Dark Lord of Derkholm taking place eight years later. More fun as Derk's daughter Elda (a griffin) goes to Wizard University, make's friends, and wrecks havoc. The University will never be the same - which turns out to be a good thing. Definitely a fun read.

I liked Dark Lord of Derkholm, and I really tried to like this book, too. But the characters all fell flat and behaved in bizarre ways. Consider a scene in which one character's (admittedly unlikeable) parent is turned into a mouse and then thrown into a bottomless pit, which is then sealed. Nobody bats an eye, which is odd, considering the characters actually discuss the idea of psychopaths at one point. There is actually quite a bit of such "non violent" killing in this book. ( )

While not quite as wonderful as the first book, Dark Lord of Derkholm, it is still a worthy book by Dianna Wynne Jones. ( )