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Young wizards!
Mar. 21st, 2013 10:51 amYoung Wizards is a young adult series by Diane Duane. I received an Amazon gift card for Christmas, so I've been getting the ebook versions of the series and steaming through them.
I've enjoyed Diane Duane's work before. She also has written several Star Trek novels, such as Spock's World and The Romulan Way, both of which I enjoyed. So, when somebody said that she'd written YA novels and those were good, I made a note in the back of my brain to check that out sometime. (There is a giant corkboard in the back of my brain, I'm sure, covered with pins and stickies. Things don't get lost so muchas temporarily covered up and revealed later.)
The books are excellent. The characters are believable youths, taking on big responsibilities and facing the consequences of their actions. Diane Duane does not pull punches, but also doesn't wallow in misery. Overall, it is an affirming series with many ethical and moral lessons, yet it avoids being preachy.
The ebooks are frustrating, though, in that it seems they were scanned or imported and nobody went back to properly copy-edit them after. There are misplaced punctuation marks, typos, and missing line breaks. Given the high quality of the writing, hitting those problems ranged from a brief flinch (missing period) to the equivalent of hitting a pothole at 45 mph (typo that requires a couple minutes detective work to resolve the meaning of the sentence). The books are good enough that this only slowed me down. It couldn't stop me from buying up the whole series so far (nine books) and I'm contemplating getting the two books starring cats as well that are in the same setting.
So, Young Wizards by Diane Duane. Good stuff, just be careful with the ebook editions.
I've enjoyed Diane Duane's work before. She also has written several Star Trek novels, such as Spock's World and The Romulan Way, both of which I enjoyed. So, when somebody said that she'd written YA novels and those were good, I made a note in the back of my brain to check that out sometime. (There is a giant corkboard in the back of my brain, I'm sure, covered with pins and stickies. Things don't get lost so muchas temporarily covered up and revealed later.)
The books are excellent. The characters are believable youths, taking on big responsibilities and facing the consequences of their actions. Diane Duane does not pull punches, but also doesn't wallow in misery. Overall, it is an affirming series with many ethical and moral lessons, yet it avoids being preachy.
The ebooks are frustrating, though, in that it seems they were scanned or imported and nobody went back to properly copy-edit them after. There are misplaced punctuation marks, typos, and missing line breaks. Given the high quality of the writing, hitting those problems ranged from a brief flinch (missing period) to the equivalent of hitting a pothole at 45 mph (typo that requires a couple minutes detective work to resolve the meaning of the sentence). The books are good enough that this only slowed me down. It couldn't stop me from buying up the whole series so far (nine books) and I'm contemplating getting the two books starring cats as well that are in the same setting.
So, Young Wizards by Diane Duane. Good stuff, just be careful with the ebook editions.
