Diane Duane's Young Wizard series

I'm in the process of listening to the series, which is a different experience to reading them. So elements are jumping out that hadn't before.

I have loved the first book and been impressed by several others, for a long time, but I doubt I've read them all.
I'll be using the thread to make notes for myself, but welcome all to pitch in with your thoughts as well.

I got this series for my son when he was in middle school. He loved them. I tried to read the first but didn't get very far. I thought it was very cool that there was a Hispanic in the mix of characters, the only magical one that I'm aware of.

I've worked at the public library and at a Borders Books, and they were the series I tried to nudge adolescents to after finishing the Harry Potter books. I think this series is deeper and has more to admire than HP. But I have no idea whether the series caught with those young people.

One of the features of the first book that gives it such strength is its creation myth. Wizards' responsibilities are to remind the universe of its true nature, so as to keep it running properly. Huh! The power of words.

You might try listening to the first book. The narrator got the voices of the characters just right - straight out my head. And the force of the language comes through too. Duane's phrasing is elegant and powerful. Much more so in the first book than the second, Deep Wizardry.

>2 mamzel: Later in the series there is at least one black character and a pair of Asian twins, too. That I recall. I haven't read the later books as many times as the earlier books, so I don't remember who all else there is (well, human; I remember more of the nonhumans).

DD has also edited the books and released new editions with updated technology, a tweaked timeline, and various edits and fixes, if you read ebooks. They're available through her website, I believe.

Oh, yes. I'm a big fan of this series.

I loved this series. I also thought that it was much better than Harry Potter.

Wow, I didn't know that about the new editions. I may have to look that up, even though I don't normally read ebooks. It may be time for a re-read.

I loved this series as a kid and read my way through the first eight volumes (the only ones that had been written at the time). I too found it much more subtle than the Harry Potter books--there is a sense of meaning that goes deeper than just doing cool magic stuff because you can. Not to say I don't like the Harry Potter books, because I love those as well. This one just offered something different that I feel is a little more mature in some ways.

At the same time that she is writing the novels, she is writing several other works as well - The Wizardry Handbook, The Book of Night with Moon, the Song of the Twelve - all with such beauty incorporated in them.

Here's the Wikipedia page for the series:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards

I looked because I've never heard anyone comment about the religious themes of the books. This article does touch on a few, but I find theological touchstones throughout the books, and I interpret them as Christian. I may be mistaken, and just read them thataway, when they might be meant to be more general. To me, they are as pointedly Christian as the Narnia series.

9> Yes, I noticed those too. But I always thought that they were more general than just Christian. The Powers that Be have many names and all that.

I listened to High Wizardry last week, and there was a lengthy author interview on the last disk. Diane Duane says her spirituality is quite private, but acknowledges the probability of a god or gods in this universe, though not necessarily omniscient or omnipotent gods. But then she talks about a scientific theory of the universe that has a human inventing a time machine and returning to the first moment and engineering the Big Bang. I think she's talking about the latest data that the universe is programmed in favor of life. Not sure why she substitutes a human mind for a god mind there.

In this edition of her wizard stories, she breaks rules by allowing Dairene the ability to read Nita's manual and take the Oath before having read or understood much. Dairene is too young to be a responsible wizard. And the presence of the manual as an Apple computer allows her to let it do the calculations and spells without study and effort. I think this is why it's my least favorite of the series.

I'm glad to have re-read it, as I do now understand why she structured it this way. And the storyline is firmer in my head.

Dairene seems to be wandering randomly and choosing activities that are not to the point, but the denoument manages to pull it together and make sense.

HW is one of my favorites, but that may be because it's the first one I read. I didn't know at the time that it was part of a series, much less the third book.

Nita didn't know much about wizardry when she took the oath - she still half thought it was a joke at that point. Dairine had had the fundamentals explained to her at the end of Deep Wizardry, when she and their parents found out about Nita and Kit being wizards. She's certainly young, but she didn't have less information to go on than Nita did. If anything, she had more.

I've never thought Dairine's wandering was random or beside the point, either. It makes perfect sense to me that an space and SF buff who suddenly has the ability to see other planets up close would take a look. And then she discovers that not only can she travel outside the solar system but there is definitely other intelligent live out there? Of course she'll want to see where they came from.

Began listening to A Wizard Abroad, and noted that Duane says that the silent communication between Nita and Kit is not easy, something that seems counter to the previous books, but I guess is needed here to emphasize their seperation.

I caught the dewey number for her wizard's manual, and thought I'd look it up. I found THIS REFERENCE and a whole lot more.

The Online Encyclopedia of the Young Wizards Universe

I remember A Wizard Abroad less fondly than others in the series, but I'm having a better time of it this go-round. It helps that I've been exposed to Celtic lore reading Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series.

Tír na nÓg and The Morrigan and the sword Fragarach all have a history now in my head, so they ring pretty bells when Duane mentions them.

She, like Annie Callahan, has come to live in Ireland from the US. This appears to be her love letter to her adopted country.

The homey touches are jumping out at me. The wizards who "borrow" the Ardagh Chalice from the museum carry it in a pink striped pillowcase. Fragarach is laid on the kitchen table amid all the tea litter and newspapers. Aunt Annie builds a protective ward spell in the back room and has to work around the edge of the carpet, so you can't open the door.