★★★★☆ More "epic" than "fun"

So You Want to Be a Wizard

Diane Duane

When I started Diane Duane's So You Want to Be a Wizard I had an idea of what it was going to be like. That idea was a lighthearted and amusing fantasy, like Patricia C. Wrede or Sarah Jean Horwitz. I was wrong. That is not at all what So You Want to Be a Wizard is. For all that the main characters are a twelve-year-old boy and a thirteen-year-old girl, this is more of an epic than a fun little story.

We start with Juanita (Nita) Callahan being bullied by a gang of her classmates. When I say "bullied", I don't mean that they say mean things about her, although they do that, too. Nita is beaten by Joanne and her gang. Taking refuge in the library, Nita finds a book in the children's room, So You Want to be a Wizard, that purports to tell a reader how to become a wizard.

Nita is of course skeptical, but on the "What have I got to lose?" principle takes the book out and begins to read it. Nita finds something similar to what I did: this is no fluffy little children's career guide -- it's a serious wizardry textbook. The process of becoming a wizard begins with an oath. I was immediately struck with the contrast between the lofty Wizards' Oath and Nita's much less lofty purposes: revenge on Joanne and retrieval of a NASA pen that Joanne stole from her. The book warns that the wannabe wizard who takes the Wizards' Oath can expect to undergo a sort of test in the near future.

Nita takes the Oath, anyway. Almost immediately she and another young wizard, Kit, find themselves embroiled in an epic battle to save New York, and indeed, the whole world, from an adversary. The adversary bears a striking resemblance to Lucifer. Well, you already know that So You Want to Be a Wizard is the first book in the Young Wizards series of ten novels, not to mention the usual collection of stories and novellas that form around any long series. So you can already guess that Nita and Kit are going to survive this battle.

The action takes place on Long Island and Manhattan. Nita and Kit (and of course, Duane herself) know the city well. I enjoyed the strong sense of place.

I have already hinted at a mismatch between Nita's initial purposes and the purposes of the Oath she swears. In fact, she and Kit both grow. I think as a thirteen-year-old kid I would have liked this a lot. I have nothing against fun, of course, but this would have felt like a bigger, more serious book to me, and I would have been ready for it.

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