Young Wizards

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Cover of So You Want to Be a Wizard, the first book in the series
Cover of So You Want to Be a Wizard, the first book in the series

Young Wizards is a series of novels by Diane Duane.

The Young Wizards series presently consists of eight books, with a ninth expected in autumn of 2008, focusing on the adventures of two young wizards named Nita and Kit. Each novel pits Nita and Kit against the "Lone Power", an entity ultimately bent on the destruction of the entire universe. The series began in 1983 with the book So You Want to Be a Wizard, which told the story of their first experiences with wizardry. In 1997, Duane began a spin-off, the Feline Wizards series, that takes place in the same universe, but with different protagonists.

This series incorporates elements of fantasy, science fiction, and religion. Although it deals with wizards capable of casting magic spells, the spells in question are held to a rigorous scientific basis. For example, in one spell, Nita and Kit are traveling to the moon and must calculate the amount of air they will need, as well as the amount of power necessary to escape the Earth's gravitational well. Additionally, Duane does not shy away from serious topics, dealing with such mature ideas as death, sacrifice, and redemption.

The series is frequently recommended as something to read after the Harry Potter series.[1]

Contents

[edit] Concepts

[edit] The Powers That Be

The series shows the influence of many religious and mythological tropes from around the world, and the traits of traditional angels and various gods or heroes of ancient mythology are united in semi-divine, demiurgic beings referred to as the Powers that Be. The Powers exist outside of mortal time, capable of manifesting themselves anywhere in the universe, at any point in time. They were created by a being known only as "the One" (the source of all energy, wizardry, and creative forces in all of the universes.) and are portrayed as Its active assistants in the business of creating and maintaining the universe.

During the process of Creation, one of the Powers that Be -- described as originally the greatest and most glorious of them, second only to the One -- went apart from the others and invented the "gift" of death (often referred to in the series under the blanket term of entropy), turning it loose in the universe and thus corrupting or subverting much work done by the other Powers. This rebellious (or at least extremely self-willed) being became known as the Lone Power, and as a result of Its destructive behavior was cast out of the creative order by the One. It has since manifested in many avatars or alternate forms throughout the universe: on Earth, for example, It appeared in ancient Ireland as the evil Balor. Its incarnations roam the multiverse, seeking new species to trick into accepting Its "gift". When a species becomes sentient, a process called "The Choice" begins, during which the Lone Power appears and offers the species the opportunity to support a lifestyle or course of action which may seem tempting but ultimately serves entropy (not coincidentaly, the Lone Power is often compared to, or even equated to, The Devil). However, the species also has the opportunity to reject the offered "gift" and choose to fight against entropic behavior -- but that does not means that the species has necessarily chosen to fight against pain, death, and evil. The Lone One did not create pain or evil, just death. The Lone Power is conniving and devious, so to make the right Choice is difficult. Rejecting the Choice outright can sometimes lead to suffering for the entire species. The seventh book in the series, Wizard's Holiday, deals with a unique Choice that one species made.

Humanity's Choice appears to have ties to the Biblical story of creation involving Adam and Eve eating the apple from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, with the Lone Power being "behind" the purported actions of the serpent.

When involved in a Choice, the Lone Power tends to work subtly, controlling minds or events to result in its "gift" being accepted. It sometimes appears physically when becoming involved in the Choice process, though almost always in some kind of disguise.

One of the central themes of the series, however, is the idea that the Lone Power truly wants to return to the light and be with its "family" again, and in some senses already has, after the third book "High Wizardry", where the Lone Power is reconciled with the other Powers -- but because the Powers exist outside of time, it doesn't mean that they'll never have to fight him again. Some incarnations of the Lone Power are portrayed as not outright evil, but rebellious and incredibly stubborn.

[edit] Wizardry

To combat the Lone Power, the One created wizards. Wizards manifest their power through The Speech, which allows them to describe the desired effects of the wizardry exactly. Non-wizards can learn the speech, but cannot effect change using it.

The Powers that Be choose individuals who have the potential to become wizards. The selection is often motivated by the need for a particular individual to solve a particular problem. Once a person has been offered the opportunity to become a wizard, if he or she decides to accept it, that person will be offered the "Wizard's Oath" -- a pledge to fight entropy wherever it may be found.

If the potential wizard takes the Oath, the event is immediately followed by an Ordeal -- a period during which the wizard may combat the Lone Power directly, or perform some other difficult task. Not all Ordeals are successful, and the result of being unprepared or careless during Ordeal is often death. (Failed Ordeals are said to account for a certain percentage of what the real world perceives as "missing children".)

Every wizard has access to the Wizard's Manual, a book written in the Speech that gives the reader as much information about the business of wizardry and spells as he or she requires or is capable of handling. The Manual can take many forms and is often tailored to the race and personality of the wizard in question. Water-dwelling wizards, such as dolphins and whales, use the Sea itself as their Manual, drawing answers for their questions out of the songs of the ocean, aka the "Heart of the Sea". Cat wizards have a similar method of accessing the Manual called "The Whispering". Human wizards tend to use books as the Manual, although some hear voices like the cats and whales, and Irish wizards memorize the information. Recent advances in technology have allowed some wizards to use digital versions of the Manual, such as laptops and, more recently, iPod variations (called WizPods).

[edit] Main characters

[edit] Nita

Juanita "Nita" Louise Callahan begins the series in junior high school as the typical "book-nerd" who is often bullied by stronger girls. As the series goes on, she deals with such issues as parents, romance, death, and school. She lives at home with her parents, and genius kid sister Dairine. Relating to wizardry, her specialty initially seems to be the art of dealing with the living world (sometimes referred to as organic wizardry), but later on shifts more toward precognition, wizardly theory, and planet kernels. She also is specialized in plants.

[edit] Kit

Christopher "Kit" R. Rodriguez also starts the series in junior high school, dealing with the issue of becoming a responsible adult. Despite being one year younger than Nita, Kit is usually the more mature member of the pair. Kit is in Nita's grade in school, having skipped a grade. He often gets teased because of his Spanish accent and his height in the first book, but after their Ordeal, matters improve. Kit also lives at home with his parents, his older sister Carmela, and his dog Ponch in Nita's neighborhood. The oldest child in his family, Helena, lives at college. Kit is skilled with mechanical objects and sometimes, through Ponch, he is skilled in 'scent'. Kit found his book in a used bookstore in NYC.

[edit] Dairine

Dairine "Dair" E. Callahan is a brainy child, wise beyond her years. She is known for being obsessed with all things Star Wars and wants to be a Jedi. Although she is three years younger than Nita, she cannot stand it if Nita knows anything that she does not. She figures out that Nita has odd powers, finds out about wizardry, and in High Wizardry becomes a wizard herself, enormously powerful and prematurely skilled, though, as with all wizards, her sheer power diminishes with time. Her Ordeal is a pivotal moment in the history of the universe, as she not only temporarily becomes the Manual, but helps to redeem the Lone Power. Dairine's skill comes through computers, and she is mentally connected to a race of silicon beings and their sentient planet. She calls her computer (which is also her Manual) Spot.

[edit] The Lone Power

The Lone Power is the chief antagonist of the series, and appears in various avatars and/or as Itself in each book. A renegade Power who attempts to increase entropy, wizards exist in order to fight his influence, with varying degrees of success. Addressed formally as "Fairest and Fallen", The Lone Power used to be one of the 'good' PTB, but his actions were regarded as 'evil' and he fell from grace.

Throughout the series, The Lone Power, as a result of his actions, deeds, and history, is often equated to the Devil, an evil entity in most monotheistic religions. For example, in the second book of the series, Nita is asked if she attained her wizardry through a Deal with the Devil, to which she responds "Kit and I are the last people that One wants anything to do with"

[edit] Other Wizards

[edit] Humans

[edit] Tom & Carl

Tom B. Swale and Carl J. Romeo are Senior Wizards who appear in each book. They live together in the same suburb as Nita, Kit and Dairine, and generally appear in order to advise or to correct them. Tom is a writer of spells and fiction, while Carl works unspecifiedly in television. His wizardly specialisation appears to be in time and its manipulation. Tom and Carl are tolerant and funny; Nita frequently refers to them as exemplars of adult wizardry.

[edit] Ronan

Ronan Nolan, Jr is a wizard who Nita meets during the events of A Wizard Abroad. He has the One's Champion inside of him and has the Spear Luin (Spear of Light), making him extremely magically powerful until the One's Champion leaves him in Wizards at War. He is one of the main characters in Wizards at War and is Nita's love interest in A Wizard Abroad. On his Ordeal he 'took the sea in', meaning that he briefly controlled an entire portion of the ocean, essentially becoming it.

[edit] Darryl

Darryl McAllister is introduced in A Wizard Alone and appears briefly in Wizards at War. In Alone, Kit is sent to help Darryl in his Ordeal. He soon learns that Darryl is autistic and that his Ordeal is being deliberately sabotaged by the Lone Power. Through Nita's discovery that Darryl is an Abdal - a figure of tremendous power and a conduit for goodness - they are able to help Darryl defeat the Lone Power and recover from his autism.

[edit] Non-Humans

[edit] S'reee

S'reee is the whale wizard who acts as the Senior for Earth's oceans. She has a special relationship with Nita, who saves her life in Deep Wizardry. In DW she asks Nita and Kit for help performing the Song of the Twelve, a complex wizardly ritual. She is thrust into responsibility very young after the death of her mentor, but in later books she seems to be more confident with her duties. S'reee helps Kit implement a 'cleanup' wizardry to clean the waters surrounding Manhattan at the beginning of The Wizard's Dilemma. She appeared briefly in Wizards at War.

[edit] Roshaun

Roshaun ke Nelaid am Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am det Nuiiliat (sometimes am det Wellakhit) is a haughty humanoid alien prince from the planet Wellakh first featured in Wizard's Holiday and remains a prominent character until his apparent death in Wizards at War. He is one of the exchange students from the exchange program and his skills focus on stars.

[edit] Sker'ret

Sker'ret is one of the exchange students in Wizard's Holiday. His species, the Rirhait, resemble giant metal centipedes and have physiologies that allow them to eat almost anything. Sker'ret is skilled with machinery and teleportation wizardry. He is one of the children of the Stationmaster of the Crossings on Rirhath B, and takes over the position for a time during the wizards' war.

[edit] Filif

Filifermanhathrhumneits'elhhessaifnth or "Filif" is one of the exchange students in Wizard's Holiday. The program resulted in enormous culture shock, because Filif is not just an alien wizard. He is an alien wizard shaped like a Christmas tree, so learning about vegetarianism was like being in a world full of cannibals.

But culture clashes aside, Filif is a very personable sort of tree: curious, friendly, and very easy-going. He takes almost everything in stride and is eager to learn about human culture. His favorite discoveries so far are baseball hats and bright colors, even if his fashion sense is, to put it politely, nonexistent. He calls them "decorations" and prefers bright orange swim trunks and Victoria's Secret lingerie. He is very magically powerful and excels at writing new spells, as well as designing illusions.

[edit] Other characters

[edit] Humans

[edit] Harry Callahan

Harold Edward Callahan, Nita and Dairine's father. After his wife's death, he grows closer to his daughters and also to the world of wizardry, serving as a comforter and encourager to wizards who are going through a hard time, notably to Filif and Tom in Wizard's Holiday. Harry is a florist and landscape gardener; Nita believes she gets her talents with living things (especially plants) from him. The way Nita and Dairine get their magic power is from his family.

[edit] Betty Callahan

Nita and Dairine's mother, and the focus of The Wizard's Dilemma. A former professional ballerina, Betty passed on both her red hair and her natural grace to Dairine. Prior to Dilemma, when Betty is diagnosed with a brain tumour, she was a nurse

[edit] Carmela Rodriguez

Kit's sister, who's older than him by a couple of years. She bought a laser dissociator off the Mizarthu shopping network, which she uses to help Nita and Sker'ret defend The Crossings. She is in the process of learning The Speech, despite the fact that she's not a wizard. Once Carmela learns The Speech, she spends most of her time watching TV from across the galaxy, and talking to her new alien friends. She seems to have a talent for languages, as she was learning Japanese before taking up he study of The Speech, and presumably knows Spanish as well. She helps Dairine deal with the exchange wizards in Wizard's Holiday. In Wizards at War Carmela also manages to free the entire group when they are captured at a crucial moment.

[edit] Mr. Millman

Robert Millman is the school therapist; he first appears in A Wizard Alone to help Nita and, later, Dairine, with their mother's death. Although he is not himself a wizard, he knows of wizards and so recognizes Nita for what she is. Later, in Wizards at War, he helps by arranging for them to get time off from school.

[edit] Non-humans

[edit] Ponch

Pancho (Kit's black Labrador/Border Collie mix) is an average dog. More worried about food (and squirrels) than anything else, Ponch accompanies Kit and Nita on some of their adventures. As the series progresses it is obvious that something is different about Ponch; at the beginning of the series, he is featured as a minor character, mostly a source of canine comic relief, but further on his character is developed into more of a supporting role and partner to Kit. He starts to find alternate universes (his favorite being a squirrel universe) and eventually becomes a canine Power, possibly the canine avatar of the One. After this, Kit mourns his loss, only to have a stray dog come up to him and reveal that Ponch is inside all dogs now. They go home together.

[edit] Peach

Machu Picchu is an irascible scarlet macaw owned by Tom and Carl. Extremely grumpy and given to showing off, she can also tell the future: her advice saves Nita and Kit in all of the first three books. In High Wizardry she accompanies Nita and Kit to find Dairine, and they discover that Peach is actually an avatar of the Winged Defender, or One's Champion, one of the Powers that Be. Nita recognises Peach in Ronan in A Wizard Abroad.

[edit] Fred

Khairelikoblepharehglukumeilichephreidosd'enagouni, nicknamed Fred by Kit, is a white hole who features in So You Want to Be a Wizard. He appears when Nita and Kit do a finding spell to try to retrieve Nita's space pen, and bears a message for Tom and Carl. Fred is the catalyst for Nita and Kit's Ordeal, starting them on a quest to find the Book of Night with Moon; he is comic in his appreciation of the delights of Earth and he becomes good friends with Nita and Kit. At the end of SYWTBAW, he sacrifices himself to help save Nita and Kit.

[edit] Ed

ed'Rastekeresket t'k Gh'shestaesteh, the Master Shark and the Pale Slayer, appears in Deep Wizardry to play the appropriate role in the Song of the Twelve. He is the master of his species, a great white shark; throughout the book he is both aloof and threatening. Although he frightens Nita, they strike up an unusual friendship. His role in the song is to devour Nita, as the Silent One; however, at the end of the book, Ed sacrifices himself rather than let Nita die.

[edit] Transcendent Pig

Inspired by Chinese mythology, this is a being of mysterious origins, first mentioned in So You Want to Be a Wizard and first seen in The Wizard's Dilemma. He has been called Chao, but it is unclear if that is a personal name or merely an epithet, as Chao is a Chinese word for pig. The Pig is designated as being between mortals and the Powers That Be, more than a mortal but less than a Power. However, according to The One's Champion, not even the Powers That Be know where the Pig came from. The purpose the Pig serves is that it knows the meaning of life for an unexplained reason, but it does not just let anyone know. This makes it wizardly custom to immediately ask the Pig the meaning of life upon seeing it.

[edit] Spot

Spot is Dairine's sentient Apple computer, originally an Apple IIc variant, but later appearing to be a Macintosh PowerBook, which also serves as her wizard's manual. He is shy around others, but (according to Dairine) is quite talkative in one-on-one conversations with her. He also has the power to upgrade himself, changing his platform and appearance as the series progresses to keep up with contemporary technology. After getting an upgrade from his siblings (Dairine's 'children'), he seems to develop a sense of the future.

[edit] Temporal setting

Time in the Young Wizard series does not progress in a straightforward manner, and in fact there is some disagreement among fans as to the chronology of events in the series. For example, in So You Want to Be a Wizard, Carmela is fifteen, Nita is thirteen, Kit twelve, and Dairine eleven. By Wizard's Holiday, they should have all aged two years, since two summer vacations (Deep Wizardry and A Wizard Abroad) have passed. However, Nita progresses only one grade from High Wizardy to The Wizard's Dilemma, which means that either Deep Wizardry and A Wizard Abroad take place in the same summer, or Nita and the other characters got held back in school. In addition, the latest book, Wizards at War, puts Nita's age at fourteen. The books, however, are always set in the year of publication. Few dates are ever given, but Deep Wizardry explicitly says that the events occur in 1985 while High Wizardry, set two months later, gives the eleven-year-old Dairine a 1978 birthdate. The discrepancy in time is particularly noticeable when it comes to computers; in High Wizardry Nita's family obtains a brand new "Apple IIIc+," apparently modelled on the Apple IIc+ of 1988, while less than a year or two later in Wizard's Holiday Dairine's computer Spot is apparently imitating an Apple Titanium PowerBook. Even more obviously, in the 2005 podcast version of the 1986 short story "Uptown Local," Duane changes a line so that one minor character is using an iPod, and in Wizards at War a fellow wizard shows off his specialized manual known as a WizPod. In the same book, Nita thinks about the Manhattan skyline when someone refers to recent troubles, signifying that it takes place after 9/11. Also in "Wizards at War", the Lone Power refers to "a tower or two crumbling" in his gloating speech. The sliding scale is similar to those used in the James Bond films and Marvel comics.

[edit] Books

[edit] Young Wizards

  1. (1983) So You Want to be a Wizard. Delacorte. ISBN 0-15-204738-7. 
  2. (1985) Deep Wizardry. Delacorte. ISBN 0-15-216257-7. 
  3. (1990) High Wizardry. Corgi. ISBN 0-15-216244-5. 
  4. (1993) A Wizard Abroad. Corgi. ISBN 0-15-216238-0. 
  5. (2001) The Wizard's Dilemma. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-202551-0. 
  6. (2002) A Wizard Alone. ISBN 0-15-204562-7. 
  7. (2003) Wizard's Holiday. ISBN 0-15-204771-9. 
  8. (2005) Wizards at War. ISBN 0-15-204772-7. 
  9. (Autumn 2008) A Wizard of Mars. 

A short story within the same universe, "Uptown Local", has also been published as part of Jane Yolen's Dragons and Dreams anthology; it is also included in the 20th anniversary edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard. Another short story, "Source Material", is in the works for an anthology to be published in 2007.

[edit] Feline wizards

Two other books are not strictly in the Young Wizards series, but take place in the same setting:

[edit] Adult wizards

Short stories about adult wizards in the same setting.

  • Short Circuit (projected) [1]
  • Theobroma (awaiting publication: November 2007) [2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Harry Potter. BCPL Kids Pages. Baltimore County Public Library. Retrieved on 2007-10-18. Harry Potter alternatives. Neutral Bay Public School. Retrieved on 2007-10-18.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
v • d • e
Young Wizards by Diane Duane
Novels
Short Stories
"Uptown Local"  • "Theobroma"
Feline Wizards
The Book of Night With Moon · On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service (UK)/ To Visit the Queen (US) · The Big Meow
Languages