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Title: A Wizard Alone: The Sixth Book in the Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane ISBN: 0-15-204911-8 Publisher: Magic Carpet Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Young Wizards Alone
Comment: In the previous book in the series, "A Wizard's Dilemma," the focus was on Nita (Juanita) Callahan, while Kit (Christopher) Rodriguez became more of a supporting character to Nita's activities. In this, the sixth book in the series, Diane Duane has Kit take the leading role with Nita initially more in the background.
In the previous book Nita worked very hard to save her mother's life. Nita managed to prolong her mother's life as she fought cancer, but ultimately she succumbed. The opening of this book finds Nita morose and grieving, and Kit is temporarily without his partner. As it turns out magic has been rubbing off on Kit's dog Ponch, who has developed some interesting magical abilities of his own. Kit works to discover the extent of Ponch's powers and the meaning of Ponch's powers.
While Kit is trying to figure out Ponch's powers he finds himself in the mind of Darryl, an autistic boy. Darryl's mind is a continually changing and often surrealistic landscape of themes and imagery, often confusing, always fascinating to Kit. Kit discovers that Darryl is in an intense and long-running battle with the Lone Power, a battle in which the Lone Power is extremely vicious and vindictive, for reasons that Kit will eventually need to discover.
While Kit and Ponch are learning about Ponch's abilities and Darryl, Nita has strange and sometimes bizarre dreams. It takes some time for Nita and Kit to discover that Kit, Nita and Ponch are all interacting with Darryl. The trio eventually discovers that Darryl has the Lone Power under control, but Darryl need not keep battling the Lone Power and Kit and Nita can show Darryl how to end the battles.
This book looks at autism from a very interesting and unique viewpoint, and describes the world as an autistic person might perceive it. Diane makes a very good attempt to describe a poorly understood condition, and the results make very good reading.
While many of the books in this series stand alone, this book would suffer from the lack of background. At the very least I recommend reading the first book in the series, "So You Want to Be a Wizard," preferably the second book in the series, "Deep Wizardry," and the fifth book in the series, "A Wizard's Dilemma." However, I also recommended in my review of the latter book reading "A Wizard Abroad" prior to reading that book. The only book in this series that adds little background information is the third book, "High Wizardry."
Rating: 4
Summary: Emotional and insightful. Highly recommended!
Comment: I read this book as an unabridged audiobook not realizing I was entering headfirst into a long running series. Despite my complete lack of knowledge about the previous five books events my enjoyment of the book wasn't lessoned by bouts of confusion which says a lot for the talent of the author. Yeah, there were a few gaps here and there but nothing I couldn't get past or figure out by continuing to read along.
Kit Rodriquez is a young wizard (as I'm sure everyone but me already knows), who along with his talking dog Ponch, are attempting to figure out why it is taking so long for a potential wizard to complete his Ordeal (something that must be done, apparently, before he can become a full blown wizard). As they investigate and eventually enter the boys' mind, Kit learns that Darryl is autistic and witnesses shocking moments of violence upon the young defenseless boy that are perpetrated by The Lone Power. Both Kit and Ponch, especially, are shocked and determined to reach the boy, even if it means entering the strange and dangerous worlds inside Darryl's mind.
Kit's best friend and usual partner in wizardry, Nita, has her own set of troubles. The death of her beloved mother has sent her family members and herself into a deep depression. Dad and Nita's sister are having a difficult time getting out of bed and it's up to Nita to keep them moving through life even if she has to resort to magic to do it. It's so easy and tempting to drown in sadness, as Nita acknowledges, but she's taken it upon herself to keep her remaining family intact. As if that weren't more than enough to bear, she's also been plagued by some very odd dreams involving clowns. Eventually her dreams get her involved with Kit's current dilemma with The Lone Power and Darryl.
This book was great from beginning to end. The plot was interesting and it was a tremendously emotional read. Nita's grief and efforts to keep plodding through life with the glimmer that maybe someday things wouldn't hurt quite so much were written with realism. Even Ponch, the dog, has some surprisingly emotional revelations and reactions to the things he's seeing. Kit's a plucky young character who is easy to like but it's strong and insightful Nita's story that will stick with me for some time to come. There's also enough humor mixed in to prevent the story from becoming overly gloomy. I particularly enjoyed Ponch's take on things and Kit's interactions with a prickly DVD player and its antagonistic remote control.
I'm definitely going to locate the other books in the series to catch up on what I've missed.
Rating: 4
Summary: just started the series
Comment: This is actually the first book in this series that I've read, but, overall, I found that this didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book. The main characters of the book are Kit and Nita, two young wizards. In this book, Kit is assigned to find a young wizard in training named Darryl and figure out why Darryl's Ordeal is taking so long. Kit would like it if Nita were there to help him, but she's still dealing with the death of her mother. However, Nita can't devote all her time to grieving, because a possible alien has been entering her dreams. Whoever or whatever it is, it seems to need her help. She has to help it fast, though, because Kit will need her help if he is to survive his own attempts to help Darryl.
The book was, for me, occaisionally slow, but I still enjoyed it. The characters were all very interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading the previous books in the series, so that I can find out more about them. I also enjoyed the humor in this book, especially the parts with the remote control and television. People who are interested in autism or have autistic family members may also like this particular book, since an autistic character plays a very important role. I thought that the way Duane presented the mental landscape of an autistic character was fascinating. I can't wait to read the rest of this series.
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Title: The Wizard's Holiday: The Seventh Book in the Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane ISBN: 0152047719 Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: A Wizard Abroad: The Fourth Book in the Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane ISBN: 0152162380 Publisher: Magic Carpet Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: High Wizardry: The Third Book in the Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane ISBN: 0152162445 Publisher: Magic Carpet Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Deep Wizardry: The Second Book in the Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane ISBN: 0152162577 Publisher: Magic Carpet Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: So You Want to Be a Wizard: The First Book in the Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane ISBN: 015216250X Publisher: Magic Carpet Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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