Horror Book Reviews
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Title: So You Want to Be a Wizard (digest): The First Book in the Young Wizards Series |
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Review of So You Want to Be a Wizard (digest): The First Book in the Young Wizards Series
- Something stopped Nita's hand as it ran along the bookshelf. She looked and found that one of the books had a loose thread at the top of its spine. It was one of those So You Want to Be a . . . books, a series on careers. So You Want to Be a Pilot, and a Scientist . . . a Writer. But his one said, So You Want to Be a Wizard.
I don't belive this, Nina thought. She shut the book and stood there holding it in her hand, confused, amazed, suspicious--and delighted. If it was a joke, it was a great one. If it wasn't . . . ?
Product Description
- Ages 10 & up. In the spirit of Madeleine L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time, this is a fascinating and powerfully involving story about two lonely kids who are inadvertently caught up in the never-ending battle between good and evil. The problems of everyday adolescent life and the mysteries of magic are perfectly blended, along with plenty of humor and suspense. In a starred review, School Library Journal wrote, "well-structured and believable... this fantasy should have wide appeal." Horn Book wrote, "a splendid, unusual fantasy... an outstanding, original work."
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Comments for So You Want to Be a Wizard (digest): The First Book in the Young Wizards Series
- Posted on 2008-06-01
A magic real enough to belive
Nita and later Kit become wizards after stumbling across wizarding manuals, and swear oaths of loyalty to uphold the sacred task of being a wizard. Now all they have to do is prove their worthiness on an ordeal. Along their way the meet wonderful characters like Tom& Carl who are senior wizards, Fred the white hole of energy, and the lone power.
These books offer a wonderful yet serious take on magic. It's not a "here's a wand, wave it" magic, but one that actually makes sense in it's world. There are risks to using it, prices to be paid, but a reward for doing the right unlike any other. That anchors the plot more then books of the similar like ever have. The use of cosmic forces and the book's wizards, also gave it a wonderful spin.
The plot slides toward predictability sometimes, but it's originality with concepts and scenes redeemed it then.
Diane Duane has created a lovely book to start off a series that explore the cost of using magic, and the wonderful journey that magic will take you on.
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-01-29
Contrived, but intended for kids
If you're target is reads at a middle school leave they'll love it, other wise it will drag on and on. Something not so pleasant for such a short book. The little dance around religion was nice, but they kept undoing their own work. You can't be just misunderstood and utterly evil at the same time. Otherwise a fair read that escapes the Harry Potter genre.
Score: 3
- Posted on 2007-10-09
Wizards in Manhattan
So You Want to Be a Wizard is a book about a girl named Nita, who finds a book, coincidentally called "So You Want to Be a Wizard", which is a manual for becoming a wizard. A bully steals her favorite pen, and shortly thereafter she meets Kit, another wizard in training. They band together to try to get the pen back with a spell from their books, but the spell goes wrong, and they go to a dark, miserable version of the world. When they make it out, they find that they brought back a friend from another universe, a white hole in the form of a floating spark, who they call "Fred". Together, the three go on an adventure together, using magic along the way.
One part of the book reminds me of the old story about the lion and the thorn. A man comes across a lion in the desert. He gets scared, thinking the lion will eat him, but instead the lion groans and lifts up his paw, showing a thorn. The man pulls it out, and later the lion helps him out of trouble to repay the favor. In this book, when Nita, Kit, and Fred are in the evil version of Manhattan where machines are alive, they find a Lotus with a piece of metal stuck in it. Kit pulls it out, and later the Lotus saves them from feral taxi cabs.
The book is well written, but several times it goes on and on about things which aren't very interesting or important to the story. Other than that though, I liked the book. The story was very creative, and unique (aside from the cliché, evil, lord of doom type character found in many fantasy stories). The creatures they encountered were original. All of the characters were quite believable, even the ones like Fred, who aren't even people. It is a very fast paced story (aside from the occasional long, droning descriptions) with lots of action. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy.
Score: 4 - Posted on 2007-08-29
Read this when you've grown out of Harry Potter
This is a magical book, in a magical universe with magical characters and real tears. This is a classic, the sort that I always have a copy of, the sort that I give to my kids.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2007-04-24
Weighty Description
Nita is a thirteen-year-old who just wants the local bully to leave her alone. She is tired of being chased and of being beaten up, and she is especially tired of having to explain to her family why she doesn't fight back. When she stumbles acros a book called "So You Want to be a Wizard" in her public library, Nita is intrigued. She doesn't quite believe in wizardry, but she checks out the book and decides to give it a try. She will do anything to keep the bully from hurting her again, even cast a spell.
Surprisingly enough, the book seems real. Soon after she discovers it, Nita meets Kit, a boy about her age with some of the same problems. He's had a book on wizardry for awhile and she teams up with him to cast a spell to get their tormenters to leave them alone. But in the midst of the spell, something happens and a new creature appears in Kit and Nita's world.
Now Kit and Nita are trapped in a situation that seems to be way over their heads. They must stick together and work with each other to set things right again. Will they, two novice wizards, be able to fight against a dark power?
I liked Kit and Nita and the way they used their intelligence to get themselves out of bad situations. I also liked Nita's family, and I liked the way the world of magic was developed in this story. However, some parts of this book were pretty draggy; there was a lot of description I wasn't very interested in reading and that weighed the book down.
Score: 3
