Support Your Local Wizard [Hardcover]

Diane Duane (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Guild American Books (1983)
• ASIN: B001QW1S1G
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,510,220 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

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hardback Collection of the First Three Young Wizard Books, July 2, 2004

By 

Lonnie E. Holder "The Review's the Thing" (Columbus, Indiana, United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Support Your Local Wizard (So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, High Wizardry) (Hardcover)

This hardback book collects the first three young wizard books and is an alternative to "Diane Duane's Box of Wizardry," which is the same collection, only in paperback. This hardback book can often be found for a very reasonable price and may be a lower cost alternative to the "Box of Wizardry," so I recommend that you at least check it out.

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 eighth 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.

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the hunt, June 4, 2003

By 

Gladys White "The Naked Artisan" (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Support Your Local Wizard (So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, High Wizardry) (Hardcover)

This book is a collection of the first three books from Diane Duane's Young Wizards series. I stumbled upon it by accident, but I wouldn't give it up for the world. This collection and the books that follow are wonderful adventures through the eyes of budding young adults and well worth the read by kids and adults alike. It captures both the adventure of magic and wizardry while exploring the passages of growing up and being a pre-teen. Whether this collection or the invidual books, you'll want to read them again and again!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hardback Collection of the First Three Young Wizard Books, September 19, 2006

By 

Lonnie E. Holder "The Review's the Thing" (Columbus, Indiana, United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This hardback book collects the first three young wizards books and is an alternative to "Diane Duane's Box of Wizardry," which is the same collection, only in paperback. This hardback book can often be found for a very reasonable price and may be a lower cost alternative to the "Box of Wizardry," so I recommend that you at least check it out.

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 eighth 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. Each discovers a book that was meant for them that invited each to become wizards. Both accept and thus starts a multi-book fight against the Lone Power.

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.