So You Want to Be a Wizard

[lunabee34]

So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was wonderful! It's YA, and on the younger side of YA, but such a fun read. It follows Nita and Kit who both find books about becoming wizards and choose to take the oath. They meet a white hole and senior level wizards and become responsible for the fate of the whole universe along the way.

The magic is really cool here--based on the Speech, on knowing something truly by saying it truly. It also features sentient trees and mechanical objects and some really cool magic involving time.

I don't want to spoil the ending, so I won't say what happens to make me cry, but I was surprised how moved I was by the ending. Full on sniffling. :)

Definitely recommend this one; I think it's the start of a series as well.



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Comments

[independence1776]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! SYWTBAW is my favorite book. It is the start of the Young Wizards series: the tenth book came out last year; the author's in the middle of writing the eleventh; and she's self-published two short story/novella books.

Also, the books do grow out of the younger side of YA; Nita and Kit are sixteen or seventeen years old in the newest book.

[lunabee34]

I love book series like that where the writing kind of grows with the protagonists as they age (like Harry Potter).

I also really like that DD is still publishing in this series. I have always really liked her Star Trek stuff. She's just a good writer.

I will have to see if I can scrounge up the rest of the series. :) I'm curious to see how Kit and Nita are regarded (and listed in the book!) now they've faced down the Prince of Darkness himself. LOL

[independence1776]

I was just about say what Conuly recommended: read the updated versions. They're available only on her ebook site, I think. While you can skip them because the print books hold up fairly well (aside from year-of-publication tech and minor timeline issues), A Wizard Alone is the book with the autistic character (he shows up every so often in the later books) and I regard it as necessary to read the updated one because of how drastically the changes improved the book.

The cat books are out of print, sadly, but they're not hard to track down.

DD is utterly fantastic, both as a writer and a human being.

[conuly]

The cat books are out of print, sadly, but they're not hard to track down.

In print, maybe, but I just bought two copies for my Kindle off of Amazon, like, a week ago.

But maybe they just went back into print - there's a reason I didn't have them yet on Kindle.

[independence1776]

I'd love it if they were back in print! But I can't find out one way or the other and looking at the prices on Amazon, I suspect not. I know DD said on her ebook site that she was trying to revert the ebook rights to herself, so maybe that's what finally happened.

[conuly]

That makes sense.

[lunabee34]

Oh cool! Thanks for the heads up.

:)

[conuly]

Oh, you haven't read it before? How wonderful to discover it for new! In addition to the main series, there's also two books focused on cats - Book of Night with Moon, and To Visit the Queen.

If you decide to read the rest of the series, be absolutely sure you get the updated versions. One of them features an autistic character. When autistic readers wrote to her and criticized his portrayal, she took their complaints seriously and made dramatic revisions to the book. This, like, never happens.

[lunabee34]

Yes! My dear friend kaleecat gave me a huge bag of books this summer, and this one was in there.

Oh, wow. That makes me respect DD even more. What a wonderful thing to be so receptive to feedback. Good for her.