The Wizard's Dilemma by Diane Duane

Okay, you might have noticed that I lean heavily towards fantasy...I admit it. Although I really DO read other things, too. In any case, I just finished The Wizard's Dilemma, the fifth book in Duane's Young Wizards series. I was about to say that I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure if that's quite the correct word.

I read it because I care about the two young heroes, Nita and Kit, who stumbled across wizardry at about the same time and quickly became partners in the first book, So You Want to Be a Wizard. I say, "stumbled," but that's not exactly the right word either. And as the wizards in this series know, we all need to be careful about how we use our words, seeing as they have the power to define our worlds. Anyway, it felt like stumbling when Nita came across her wizard's manual in the library that day that started it all. Even if the Powers That Be knew what they were doing by placing it in her path.

After initial skepticism, Nita decides that this wizardly career guide might be for real, so she takes the Oath, promising to use her power to serve Life as best she can. She teams up with Kit and the two rookie wizards face their first Ordeal, a contest against the Lone Power with stakes of nothing less than the Book that fully and exquisitely defines the universe.

The subsequent books in the series continue to pit Kit and Nita against the many faces of the Lone Power in the many places and times it attempts to exert its control through fear and death and anger. They explore the depths of the ocean and the extent of their willingness to sacrifice themselves for Life in Deep Wizardry. In High Wizardry, Nita's younger sister Dairine finds her own call to wizardry through a computer software version of the wizard's manual. A huge Star Wars fan, Dairine's Ordeal takes her to the reaches of outer space. Worried that Nita is spending to much time on wizardry, her parents send her to visit her aunt in Ireland in A Wizard Abroad. But the struggle between the forces of Life and those of Death are carried on everywhere, and Nita learns that Ireland's magic lies especially deep.

In all of these books, themes of life and death, truth and deception, evil and redemption underlie the work of wizards. There is a sense of greater purpose that gives the characters and their choices weight, explicit without being preachy. Spells and the use of magic are more complex and scientific-sounding than the "swish and flick" taught at Hogwarts, and wizards always pay a price in the necessary expenditure of energy. Nita and Kit discover the ubiquitous nature of life as they begin to hear the voices of trees and even "nonliving" objects like rocks and cars. The diversity of sentient life in the universe is further portrayed in characters such as a white hole with the hiccups, whales who are the wizards of the seas, a conscious silicon planet, random beings traveling through an extraterrestrial Grand Central Station, and more.

I started this post with The Wizard's Dilemma, and I'm finally ready to get back to that. Did I enjoy it? Well...there is a certain darkness to this series, as you might imagine with an antagonist like the Lone Power. This installment is especially difficult for a couple of reasons. One is that the Life at stake is Nita's mother's and the Death that is trying to exert itself is cancer. Secondly, the relationship between Nita and Kit is more strained. Earlier in the series there was more camaraderie and even some awkward confusion about the nature of their friendship, but now, an argument and bad timing put distance between them. All of that keeps it from being light summer reading. But I care enough about Nita and Kit to keep following them through these dark times. And always, there are moments of sweet celebration amidst the poignant struggle to serve Life.