Diane Duane's Box of Wizardry [Box set] [Paperback]

Diane Duane (Author)

Book Description

Series: Young Wizards Series | Publication Date: October 1, 2002

Magic comes in many shapes and sizes . . . such as this box of the first three titles in Diane Duane's bespelling, bestselling, compulsively readable Young Wizards series. Now So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, and High Wizardry are available in one handsome package, perfect for gift giving. Put this boxed set into the hands of young readers and make magic!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fantasy buffs will appreciate Diane Duane's Box of Wizardry, which gathers the first three titles in her Young Wizards series into one boxed set of paperback editions. So You Want to Be a Wizard (1983) introduces 13-year old Nita, who enters the world of wizardry after stumbling across the titular library book. Deep Wizardry (1985) finds Nita vacationing on the beach with her friend Kit and assisting a whale wizard in a battle against evil. In High Wizardry (1990), the pair must track down Nita's younger sister when the wizard program on the family computer transports her to another dimension. PW called author Duane "tops in the high adventure business."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An outstanding, original work."--The Horn Book (So You Want to Be a Wizard)
"A powerful tale of sacrifice and redemption."--School Library Journal (starred review for Deep Wizardry)
"Duane is tops in the high adventure business. . . . Will delight readers."--Publishers Weekly (High Wizardry)

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 1152 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt (October 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0152045821
• ISBN-13: 978-0152045821
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.3 x 3.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,573,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Diane Duane was born in New York City -- a descendant of New York's first mayor -- and worked there as a psychiatric nurse before leaving the profession for the only one she loved better, the business of writing. Since the publication of her first novel in 1981, she's written fifty more, not to mention numerous short stories, comics, computer games and screenplays for TV and film, and has picked up the occasional award here and there. (She has also worked with Star Trek in more media than anyone else alive.)

Right now she's probably best known for her "Young Wizards" series of young adult fantasy novels, featuring the New York-based wizards Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan -- in business for twenty-five years now, their most recent adventure being described in the ninth YW novel, "A Wizard of Mars" (just released in paperback).

DD shares a two hundred-year-old cottage in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland with her husband, the Belfast-born novelist and screenwriter Peter Morwood, a laid-back white cat named Goodman, and various overworked computers... an odd but congenial environment for the staging of epic battles between good and evil and the leisurely pursuit of total galactic domination. (And a lot of ethnic cooking: her own favorite foods come from the cuisines of central Europe and the Mediterranean.) In her spare time she gardens (weeding, mostly), studies German and Italian, listens to shortwave and satellite radio, and dabbles in astronomy, computer graphics, iaido, amateur cartography, and desktop publishing ... while also trying to figure out how to make more spare time.

Her favorite color is blue, her favorite food is a weird kind of Swiss scrambled-potato dish called maluns, she was born in a Year of the Dragon, and her sign is "Runway 24 Left, Hold For Clearance."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where there's will there's a wizard, August 21, 2004

By 

Kristiana Kincaid (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Diane Duane's Box of Wizardry (Paperback)

Diane Duane's series "So You Want to be a Wizard" takes a little of everything you'd want in a book for young adults.

The hero and heroine of the books are likeable kids who feel like every kid does; they have problems at school, worries at home, irritating younger siblings, and they generally spend lots of time trying both to fit in and to be themselves. Despite having become wizards, however, their problems don't go away like magic: 'Nita and Kit find themselves in both physically demanding and morally challenging situations where their choices mean something to the fate of the world.

Challenging concepts like "entropy" are explained and form a critical base to the choices that must be made by Kit, Nita, and later Nita's sister Dairine. And even if they're not wizards, the reader is left with a feeling that their choices matter.

Highly recommended for both advanced younger readers and for young adults; even recommended for those who are children-at-heart, looking for some unusual stories that keep the imagination working.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Young Wizards Set of Three, June 27, 2004

By 

Lonnie E. Holder "The Review's the Thing" (Columbus, Indiana, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Diane Duane's Box of Wizardry (Paperback)

Diane Duane has added to this series over the years, and as of this writing she has written seven books in this series, with an eight in the works. The scope of the books rivals Harry Potter, a much later series, in many aspects, but the mythologies and the rules are completely different.

The first three books are "So You Want to Be a Wizard," where we meet Kit (Christopher) Rodriguez and Nita (Juanita) Callahan for the first time. We learn that they were picked on by bullies and generally felt as though they were outsiders. Both discover a book that was meant for them that invited them to become wizards. Both accept and thus starts a multi-book fight against the Lone Power, who is similar to Satan.

In the second book, "Deep Wizardry," the story continues with Kit and Nita performing a ritual that dates back millenia to keep the sea floor stable in the presence of forces that could create havoc on the ocean floor.

In the third book, "High Wizardy," Nita's younger sister Dairine is discovered to be an extremely powerful wizard. It is also this book that introduces computers to the series. An introduction important to the plot of this book. This book has the most science fiction elements of any book in this series.

The quality of this series has generally been quite good. The later books include "A Wizard Abroad," "A Wizard's Dilemma," "A Wizard Alone," and "A Wizard's Holiday." If you enjoy fantasy and science fiction, and you enjoyed the Harry Potter books, I believe you will find Diane Duane's series interesting.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars While waiting for the next Harry Potter..., December 6, 2002

By 

Chrijeff (Scranton, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Diane Duane's Box of Wizardry (Paperback)

...this would be a perfect series to explore. Like Rowling, Duane (who doesn't write nearly enough, in my opinion--Diane, are you listening?) tells the story of youthful magic-users growing into their powers, learning as they go, and facing an ongoing threat from an insidious enemy. Her main characters, both mavericks among their kind, are well-drawn and sympathetic, and the books (and their sequels) can also be read as Christian allegory. Though usually packaged for "young adults" (which in pubspeak means kids 11 up), they are, like Harry Potter, well-written and exciting enough to appeal to grown-up readers too. Now at last the first three books in the series are again available in a popularly-priced paperback edition. Excellent modern fantasy and not to be missed.