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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
I was really excited to find out the author was still writing these books. I first read the series a few years ago and had assumed she wasn't going to write any more. Not often that I'm happy about being wrong. This was a good match for the rest of the series and I'm glad I found out about it.
As a fan of the Young Wizards series, I'm sad to say this is by far the weakest entry in the series so far. I debated between one and two stars but there were at least glimmers of a story in the book. It is true that the last entry was also fairly weak compared to earlier entries - early on things like the loss of a parent were touched upon and explored in a way that felt more real than anything this book gave us.
My issues were as follows:
1. The story itself was extremely weak. The endgame of Roshaun was at least hinted at a ton, but none of the stuff involving Penn was really explored beyond one aside about a passenger and an involved effort to make us hates his guts. I have to say at least the book succeeded in making us dislike a character whose only "redeeming" quality might have been losing his mother whom he loved. I do not actually consider that enough of a quality to connect to him when we never hear Penn himself address the issue and are only told it exists by another party. We literally never see him not acting like a complete asshole until the end when he goes oh I guess I was a jerk!! And everyone else goes Yep you def were. The end sequence of the plot felt really handwavey since it was all so disjointed and things were mostly told rather than shown a lot.
2. There was simply not enough focus on the parts of the story that DID work. Mehrnaz was an interesting character in some ways but we never explored those and she felt extremely one dimensional and like a plot point more than a person because of it. She was there, it felt like, to be Muslim and make Dairine think. More attention should have been given to how she dealt with her feelings about her family and coming into her own. It ended up being Dairine forcing her through and doing the family confrontations and help FOR Merhrnaz. At no point did it really feel like Mehrnaz had her own agency or was able to really solve her own problems, for all that we were told this was her issue with her family - them not giving her leeway to be her own person.
3. There was a ton of focus on "haha but sex though". Teenagers think about sex, that's true, but this felt shoehorned in and awkward. Equally shoehorned and awkward was all the technology stuff that I gather Ms. Duane feels she has to add to be updated - I read this entry after reading straight through the millennium updates of the older books, and the technological references that got put in all feel kind of weird for the most part and along the lines of "AND NOW, LET ME PROVE I AM A MODERN TEEN *wink wink*" rather than "and now let me use a thing that is normal".
4. The characters rarely TALKED to one another even after acknowledging they didn't. Kit and Nita usually at least talk through things by the end of the book but this time they never really hit up certain issues we were forced to read about for the entire length of the thing.
5. There was a weird amount of just shoving stuff in to shove it in, actually. I'm glad Ms. Duane is being more inclusive about what types of characters she has, but it would be nice if her gay and asexual characters hadn't existed, it seems, literally to tell us hey I'm gay and I'm asexual and to allow Nita to go wow!!! And awkwardly think about it. Lissa and Matt exist basically to fill a quota and that sucks because they both seemed like they could have been interesting had they had literally any place in the story; the story, however, was weak and couldn't handle giving them much attention since it barely had anything of interest for the main characters to do. Which, again, sucks.
6. On the whole it just felt...anti-climactic and highlighted a lot of the weird trends in the series. It really pushed Dairine and Roshaun's friendship as Best Friends when we never got to see a ton of the build for that before he disappeared. They went from sniping at one another to a truce to like. Wow this guy disappeared and I love him, more or less. It's weird and I think maybe the issue here is a common ya author failure to really do romance? I'm not sure.
7. There was actually a section where a Kim Possible bff romance song was inserted for a slow dance and I felt like I was reading a bad fanfic. Honestly, a lot of the tropes for that were there. It was just...such a bad turn in the series. I'm disappointed.
My issues were as follows:
1. The story itself was extremely weak. The endgame of Roshaun was at least hinted at a ton, but none of the stuff involving Penn was really explored beyond one aside about a passenger and an involved effort to make us hates his guts. I have to say at least the book succeeded in making us dislike a character whose only "redeeming" quality might have been losing his mother whom he loved. I do not actually consider that enough of a quality to connect to him when we never hear Penn himself address the issue and are only told it exists by another party. We literally never see him not acting like a complete asshole until the end when he goes oh I guess I was a jerk!! And everyone else goes Yep you def were. The end sequence of the plot felt really handwavey since it was all so disjointed and things were mostly told rather than shown a lot.
2. There was simply not enough focus on the parts of the story that DID work. Mehrnaz was an interesting character in some ways but we never explored those and she felt extremely one dimensional and like a plot point more than a person because of it. She was there, it felt like, to be Muslim and make Dairine think. More attention should have been given to how she dealt with her feelings about her family and coming into her own. It ended up being Dairine forcing her through and doing the family confrontations and help FOR Merhrnaz. At no point did it really feel like Mehrnaz had her own agency or was able to really solve her own problems, for all that we were told this was her issue with her family - them not giving her leeway to be her own person.
3. There was a ton of focus on "haha but sex though". Teenagers think about sex, that's true, but this felt shoehorned in and awkward. Equally shoehorned and awkward was all the technology stuff that I gather Ms. Duane feels she has to add to be updated - I read this entry after reading straight through the millennium updates of the older books, and the technological references that got put in all feel kind of weird for the most part and along the lines of "AND NOW, LET ME PROVE I AM A MODERN TEEN *wink wink*" rather than "and now let me use a thing that is normal".
4. The characters rarely TALKED to one another even after acknowledging they didn't. Kit and Nita usually at least talk through things by the end of the book but this time they never really hit up certain issues we were forced to read about for the entire length of the thing.
5. There was a weird amount of just shoving stuff in to shove it in, actually. I'm glad Ms. Duane is being more inclusive about what types of characters she has, but it would be nice if her gay and asexual characters hadn't existed, it seems, literally to tell us hey I'm gay and I'm asexual and to allow Nita to go wow!!! And awkwardly think about it. Lissa and Matt exist basically to fill a quota and that sucks because they both seemed like they could have been interesting had they had literally any place in the story; the story, however, was weak and couldn't handle giving them much attention since it barely had anything of interest for the main characters to do. Which, again, sucks.
6. On the whole it just felt...anti-climactic and highlighted a lot of the weird trends in the series. It really pushed Dairine and Roshaun's friendship as Best Friends when we never got to see a ton of the build for that before he disappeared. They went from sniping at one another to a truce to like. Wow this guy disappeared and I love him, more or less. It's weird and I think maybe the issue here is a common ya author failure to really do romance? I'm not sure.
7. There was actually a section where a Kim Possible bff romance song was inserted for a slow dance and I felt like I was reading a bad fanfic. Honestly, a lot of the tropes for that were there. It was just...such a bad turn in the series. I'm disappointed.
This tenth book in the Young Wizards series is also by far its longest, which gives the characters a little bit more time to breathe before the usual crisis hits. The main plot revolves around a wizarding competition, and author Diane Duane makes a lot of smart choices to forestall the inevitable Triwizard comparisons. For one thing, her characters Nita, Dairine, and Kit are cast as mentors for younger wizards instead of competitors themselves, further emphasizing how they've grown and developed over the course of the series. But also, the competition is more science fair than tournament, with the magic of the series revealed to be even more technical than we had seen before. There's some great representation here, and while some of it does feel a bit like Duane was just ticking off boxes, it's still nice to see that she's listening to her fans who have expressed a desire for more diversity in the Young Adult genre. And although Games Wizards Play resolves some lingering plot threads from earlier in the series, there's no indication that this is the end for these characters. 33 years since the first book came out, their story is still going strong.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Almost done reading these aloud to the 13y/o, and have read this one the fewest times (for obvious reasons). So happy to finally have explicit queer rep in the series (still p sure Nita isn't entirely het, but we'll see how that pans out), and cried while reading about that thing that happens towards the end.
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse
I tend to get tired of relationship talk. In that regard, this installment of the Young Wizards series was a bit of a drag. But don't let that stop you from reading it! There are some absolutely brilliant moments, as always. And I found the end worth the read. DD never fails to write a great story.
I love Young Wizards and have for well over 15 years (oh god maybe even 20??). When this book came out I was SO EXCITED. Duane had mentioned that this was a book where something she set up in book 2 was finally coming to fruition (and man did it).
So in that sense I loved it. Of course I did. Even years after I’ve aged out of this series I still love it.
The unfortunate thing — the thing I was mildly worried about with this book — was it felt like book 4. Fine in execution and with all the right parts but not quite as gut wrenching and emotional as other books. In terms of the series and the need for a break from the eternal dangers these guys face, it makes sense, but in terms of this book — it felt a little filler-y.
That said, I still love the series and the book. I laughed. I cried. All was well! I’m glad I read it. Finally.
So in that sense I loved it. Of course I did. Even years after I’ve aged out of this series I still love it.
The unfortunate thing — the thing I was mildly worried about with this book — was it felt like book 4. Fine in execution and with all the right parts but not quite as gut wrenching and emotional as other books. In terms of the series and the need for a break from the eternal dangers these guys face, it makes sense, but in terms of this book — it felt a little filler-y.
That said, I still love the series and the book. I laughed. I cried. All was well! I’m glad I read it. Finally.