★★★★☆ Passion Play

Deep Wizardry

Diane Duane

When I was five years old my mother read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to my four-year-old sister and me. On hearing the story I told my sister and my mother, "Aslan is Jesus". They thought I was just imagining it, but of course I was right C.S. Lewis fully intended The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a Christian allegory.

I mention this because I had a similar reaction while reading Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry. At the 67% mark, I made this note to myself, 'As Fook said in HHGTTG: “I think this is getting needlessly messianic.”' I will not be more specific, because I don't want to spoil. Also, it turns out that Duane is much less overbearing than Lewis -- it didn't, in the end, bother me.

Like the first Young Wizards novel, So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry turns out to be a much more serious work than it looks. If you look at the cover and read the publisher's blurbs you will expect both novels to be light-hearted middle-grade fantasies. They are more than that. They're very serious good-vs-evil plots with the highest of stakes. Kit and Nita have difficult choices to make, well beyond what pre-teens are usually faced with.

I enjoyed it, and will continue with book 3, High Wizardry.

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