Reviewed by Candace Cunard for TeensReadToo.com

I read this book for the first time while waiting for the release of the fourth Harry Potter book, looking for something to fill the empty space. To my surprise, I found a book that I would argue is at least as good as Harry Potter--and perhaps better.

The second book in Diane Duane's YOUNG WIZARDS series starts with middle school friends, Nita and Kit, on vacation together with Nita's family at the beach. They think it's going to be just another summer, but they couldn't be more mistaken. Nita and Kit are both wizards, and the forces of evil don't take vacations. The job of wizards is to fight the Lone Power, the one who created death and continually attempts to trick people into accepting it. Wizards work with spells learned from their wizards' manuals, and the use of the Speech, a language that all things, animate or inanimate, understand.

When Nita and Kit are summoned to help a whale wizard who's been wounded by whalers, they find out that things have not been going well in the Sea, and that if the wizards don't do something about it soon, the problems may spread to land in the form of earthquakes and tidal waves. The solution is to perform the Song of the Twelve in order to bind the Lone Power and keep It from wreaking havoc on the east coast. And in the case of these two young wizards, they have to do all this while keeping their powers secret from their parents, who are beginning to wonder what they spend their days doing.

The main characters are compelling, but the supporting cast is just as strong, consisting of equal numbers of whales and humans. Duane's portrayal of life under the sea, and the ways that humans can unknowingly affect it, is insightful and true. The tension rises throughout the story, so that every scene is more intense than the next.

I must have read this book ten times, and every time I get to the ending, I'm so caught up in it that I can't put it down until I'm done. The language of the story itself is beautifully descriptive, not just of the underwater world, but also of the characters' emotions. A story about friendship, duty, and sacrifice whose truth and beauty still amaze me, more than six years down the road. ( )

OK for kids. Some disagreement with Duane's philosophy. ( )

Another excellent book, this time our two adventurers have a hard time concealing their involvement in "something big", our young adventuress has to deal with Mom's suspicion that something is going on between our two young Wizards. ( )

Read this as a kid. Terrified and fascinated by deep water ever since. Like Harry Potter with teeth. ( )

A great follow-up! Can stand alone well though. Super magical and realistic. Totally relatable characters. I loved it! ( )

***Beware spoilers***

In this book, the protagonists are called upon to assist the whale-wizards of the northwest Atlantic in a magical Song of the Twelve, and Nita gets in deeper than she planned.

The descriptions of the undersea world (and human impact upon it) are imaginative and compelling (if sometimes a little preachy). The link from the previous book ("So you want to be a Wizard") is a little clunky, but I guess that's geared to the reader age-group. However, the early part of the book does spend a lot of time on mechanical explanation, rather as though the author is anticipating every question that a bright ten-year-old might come up with while listening to the story ("yes, but how...?"). This can be rather laborious. I also found the dramatic tension between saving the planet and being home in time for bed a bit annoying.

That said, once we got to the central dilemma, I found the story gripping and was eager to see how the author would get her characters out of their predicament. I (or she) did get rather entangled in the moral issues: self-justification by a monster shark along the lines of "ending distress" is a bit circular when the distress is caused by the shark's presence in the first place, though the plot requires the shark to be a moral agent. (She could have avoided this by making the embittered and bereaved whale into her saviour, but it's not my book...!) Not quite as good as its predecessor, but eventually compelling. MB 14-iii-2008 ( )

In Deep Wizardry Nita and her wizarding partner Kit seem to disagree on everything. They need to negotiate their roles in the partnership and the partnerships role in the larger picture. Balance is key to this story as they work on ecological problems off the NY coast and the ramifications that our actions have on others.

The wizards learn to shapeshift and communicate with marine life and Nita struggles to define herself.

I enjoyed this one a lot more than the first book. Because it was about whales instead of Manhattan? Maybe. Because I listened to it more continuously instead of in tiny chunks? Maybe. Because I was already familiar with the characters and how their magic works? Maybe. There's still a few instances of the gun in the first act failing to go off satisfactorily in the third (for instance, a lot of time is spent on a Dire Warning that doesn't really go anywhere). Still, much more involving, and I didn't know how the heroes were going to get out of their predicament until it actually happened, but the ending didn't feel tacked-on or artificial. ( )

Beautiful addition to the series. In this outing, Nita and Kit help the whale wizards reenact the defeat of the lone power. In essence, the book is about a whale passion play. Deeply moving. ( )

Summary:
Nita and Kit become whales in order to participate in a ceremony to seal off the Lone Power. Nita also has to deal with her parents, who don't know she's a wizard, and want to know what she's getting up to.

Writing:
Now that I've got used to Duane's writing, I like it.

The Good:
The descriptions of the ecology were pretty good. So were the whales. I liked the character of the shark. I also liked how Nita had to deal with her parents, and that she finally had to tell them about being a wizard. Duane's handling of the standard heroic dilemma of, 'I might die in the line of duty', was skilled enough that I didn't care that it had been done before.

The Bad:
There was less info dumping here than in the first book. The shark's death was similar to Fred's sacrificial death in the first book, so that was a recycled plot device. I'll still read the third one, but I'll also be looking to see if Duane falls into a certain story formula. ( )

So far, this is my favorite of the series. Maybe I was just unusually emotionally vulnerable when I was reading it, but I found myself tearing up more than once while I was reading this -- it's very emotionally powerful and Duane doesn't pull her punches. ( )