Young Wizards

[bibliogramma]

Wizards at War, Diane Duane

I’ve been reading Duane’s Young Wizards series very faithfully since I first encountered them. In my opinion, these are definitely among the best modern YA novels around, and stand very well against the classics. I cannot recommend them highly enough to (or for) young people, and adults as well – although the current volume, simply by virtue of its length, may be a bit much for the younger of the book’s potential authors (although if a youngish person were to start on the earlier volumes now, she or he might well be comfortable with the greater length by the time they reach this point in the series).

In Wizards at War, the young wizards who are the main protagonists of the series – Nita, Kit, and Dairine – along with fellow wizards Roshaun, Sker'ret, Filif and Ronan, and supporting appearances from other previously encountered young wizards such as Darryl, are faced with their most serious task yet in their struggles against the Lone One, as the very structure of the universe is threatened, and in such a fashion that they will not have the knowledge and experience of the universe’s senior wizards to draw on.

Duane has given her young wizards difficult tasks, with hard choices and painful consequences for even the best of all possible outcomes, from the very beginning of the series, and this book is no exception. Courage, persistence, ingenuity and sacrifice are part of the very best of all quests, and a wizard on errantry, like any other knight errant, must rely on what is in her soul to direct the use of her sword.