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4.0 out of 5 stars
Young Wizards Alone, Jun 26 2004
In the previous book in the series, "A Wizard's Dilemma," the focus was on Nita (Juanita) Callahan, while Kit (Christopher) Rodriguez became more of a supporting character to Nita's activities. In this, the sixth book in the series, Diane Duane has Kit take the leading role with Nita initially more in the background.In the previous book Nita worked very hard to save her mother's life. Nita managed to prolong her mother's life as she fought cancer, but ultimately she succumbed. The opening of this book finds Nita morose and grieving, and Kit is temporarily without his partner. As it turns out magic has been rubbing off on Kit's dog Ponch, who has developed some interesting magical abilities of his own. Kit works to discover the extent of Ponch's powers and the meaning of Ponch's powers. While Kit is trying to figure out Ponch's powers he finds himself in the mind of Darryl, an autistic boy. Darryl's mind is a continually changing and often surrealistic landscape of themes and imagery, often confusing, always fascinating to Kit. Kit discovers that Darryl is in an intense and long-running battle with the Lone Power, a battle in which the Lone Power is extremely vicious and vindictive, for reasons that Kit will eventually need to discover. While Kit and Ponch are learning about Ponch's abilities and Darryl, Nita has strange and sometimes bizarre dreams. It takes some time for Nita and Kit to discover that Kit, Nita and Ponch are all interacting with Darryl. The trio eventually discovers that Darryl has the Lone Power under control, but Darryl need not keep battling the Lone Power and Kit and Nita can show Darryl how to end the battles. This book looks at autism from a very interesting and unique viewpoint, and describes the world as an autistic person might perceive it. Diane makes a very good attempt to describe a poorly understood condition, and the results make very good reading. While many of the books in this series stand alone, this book would suffer from the lack of background. At the very least I recommend reading the first book in the series, "So You Want to Be a Wizard," preferably the second book in the series, "Deep Wizardry," and the fifth book in the series, "A Wizard's Dilemma." However, I also recommended in my review of the latter book reading "A Wizard Abroad" prior to reading that book. The only book in this series that adds little background information is the third book, "High Wizardry."
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by Diane Duane
by Diane Duane
by Diane Duane
