A Wizard Abroad

Fourth in the series. Nita and Kit are seperated as Nita goes on a mandatory vacation to Ireland. But yet again the duo are called upon to save the world.

Nita’s parents decide to send her off to her aunt in Ireland because they think she and Kit are getting too close. Unbeknownst to Nita, her aunt Annie is also and wizard and Nita finds herself in the middle of what is potentially her most dangerous mission to date!

A Wizard Abroad is the fourth book in the So You Want To Be A Wizard series by Diane Duane. Nita's parents are worried about her relationship with Kit so they send her to visit her Aunt Annie in Ireland for a few weeks. Nita is careful to let them know that she will still be a wizard on call even

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while on vacation. Ireland turns out to be a mess of magic. Spells done there linger for centuries so that the common magic Nita is used to doing can have serious consequences.

Nita meets many wizards and gets an expanded understanding of how the management structure works internationally. Nita becomes a connector of sorts between people of different ranks, the Powers, and sifferent types of non-human beings. During the peace and fighting, Nita's interest is distracted from Kit but not in the way her parents had hoped.

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I do like this story. It was bugging me - I kept getting flashes, specifically of the scene when she meets Ronan the second time. So I read the whole book. It's a nice balance between domestic details (her parents getting worried about her and Kit) and world-saving (fighting the Lone Power.

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Again.). The new development in this one is that Nita and Kit are not the sole wizards involved - in fact, they're more facilitators than the central point. Nita notices problems - but others had noticed them too; they did do the patch, which saved everyone a lot of trouble, but it was a side-issue at best; the Queen gave them the sword (and Kit could carry it), but she might (probably would) have given it to another if they hadn't been there. Bringing Dairine in on it was actually their big contribution - and finding Bridget, and helping Ronan (assuming her/their advice did in fact help him). Very useful, possibly the only ones who could have done what they did the way they did it - but they were never the focal point of events. Which is a nice change. It may be why this is one of my favorites of the Young Wizards books.

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NO SPOILERS (beyond what's on the back cover blurb)

Diane Duane seems to have had fun writing this book, showing us pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland through the eyes of a New Yorker. (For those who don't know, the author is from NY and lives in the Wicklows, and I suspect quite close to the book's setting).

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I certainly had fun reading it, as an Italian who came to Ireland before the economic boom, and now so well settled here that I'd forgotten the perennial "cup of tea" is not a universal feature of life :-)

If you liked the previous Young Wizard books, you'll like this one. I think maybe I liked the younger Nita & Kit a bit better, and I wouldn't say this is my favourite of the series -- but a pleasant read nonetheless, which I would recommend to adults as well as kids.

I did love the way it took Irish mythology seriously (and knowledgeably) while at the same time having fun with it.

A choice quote: "One of us met Cuchullain in warp spasm, which is enough to turn anyone's hair: that it happened in the middle of the big shopping center in Tallaght didn't help, either."

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Nita heads to Ireland (against her will) and finds herself embroiled in wizardry unlike anything she's gone up against. Interlinking Irish Legends into this world of wizardry makes for fascinating reading while we also start to watch the changes teenage life brings to Nita.

Discovery follows

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surprise discovery as Nita also learns a bit about her ancestry and its link to the world of wizards! A very entertaining read.

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The fourth book in the series has Nita traveling across the ocean to Ireland, per her parents' request. They are nervous about how much time she has been spending with Kit and this wizarding stuff, and aren't even sure themselves which is more frightening to them. They think that by making her take

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a break, they can lessen the intensity of her new world; not realizing, of course, that the magic will follow her wherever she goes. Which is precisely what happens.

Soon after Nita arrives, she discovers that she is accidentally sliding between worlds, or dimensions, and that the fabric of space and reality is being pulled apart. Oh, and her aunt, who her parents asked to watch her to take her away from magic, is a wizard. Ireland is rife with wizards, in fact; the whole country is saturated in magic, which is partly why the Lone Power chose that place to try to force the ghosts of the past into the present and rewrite history. Nita becomes involved in a confrontation that impacts more people than she has ever worked with before, including Kit, who pops over to lend a hand, and Ronan, an attractive teenage Irish wizard.

This is the longest book in Duane's series thus far, and, unfortunately, the one I have liked least. Not that it's bad, it just doesn't compare as well to the first three entries in the series. The conflict is epic, involving hundreds of wizards dishing out some real battle magic that hasn't been seen in the series yet. I enjoyed that aspect of the story, but it took so long to get to that point. The book would have benefited by some condensing. I had the feeling that Duane was so enamored with Ireland that she felt the need to wax poetic about it and lingered there longer than necessary. After all, the previous story hopped across galaxies and landed on several fascinating planets, and was a much smaller length than this novel. Even Nita's romance with Ronan didn't keep me from wishing that the story was a little shorter (or maybe I was just surprised, since I was convinced that Nita and Kit were a sure thing). After reading it, I thought it was a good story with a great climax, but too drawn out to sustain tension.

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One of my favorites of the series - the level of responsibility and importance works for me. Kit and Nita are not the point wizards this time, merely contributing members in a large and complex intervention. Some personal development, in interesting and occasionally annoying directions. Also I love

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the descriptions of Ireland, "real" and beyond. The only New Millennium bit I noticed was one that _didn't_ get changed - Spot makes a "disk-thinking" noise, which amuses Nita because "she could see that both disks were empty". Wow. I remember laptops with two floppy drives... So maybe the New Millennium changes are worth while, or maybe I noticed it because it was the only bit left. Again, the timeline made sense, but I don't remember it not making sense before, so I'd have to do a comparison to see what if anything got changed here.

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Nita is sent to Ireland in this installment of the Young Wizards series. Concerned by her relationship with Kit, Nita's parents send her to visit her aunt in Ireland, not aware that her is a wizard as well and Ireland is about to experience some uniquely wizardly occurrences. Fun to read and I was

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particularly pleased to see Nita show some interest in a wizard who was not Kit!

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Another decent entry in the series. The premise and characters remain fun, and Duane's writing is solid. Spoilers follow.

I did feel this was a little bit less compelling than the earlier ones; partly, the semi-victory in the previous book makes it a hard act to follow, because they kind of already

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won, so..? I may also have just seen too many fish-out-of-water stories where someone is sent away and discovers new adventures, from Enid Blyton onward. Duane is obviously knowledgeable about Ireland and very attached to it; at the same time, it's harder to pull off American-sent-to-Ireland than, say, Susan Cooper's innately British works. As a character asks (lampshading?), why was it necessary for Nina to be sent to Ireland? I didn't spot anything she did that a local necessarily couldn't; most of her contributions were being in the right place at the right time, and in a couple of places Nina and Kit seem painfully slow to come to conclusions anyway. It's not a huge weakness, but it left me feeling a bit dissatisfied.

I'm also starting to wonder whether the constant presentation in fantasy of Ireland as 'world's most magical mystical place where history is realler and people are in touch with it' is a bit problematic and exoticising. This is by no means the worst example, but it's the one that prompted me to think about it.

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What ages would I recommend it too? Twelve and up.

Length? Two days.

Characters? Memorable, several characters.

Setting? Ireland and fantasy, alternate dimensions.

Written approximately? 1993.

Does the story leave questions in the readers mind? Ready to read more.

Any issues the author (or a more recent

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publisher) should cover? No.

Short storyline: Nita is sent on a wizard's adventure in Ireland.

Notes for the reader: Very good novel. The glossary is hidden between the novel and a sneak peek of another novel. It would be nice to have a list of characters and who was related to who. However, as picking up book 4 and not having read the other in the series, it wasn't too confusing.

Low vision notes: Some pages are a little difficult to read as the font changes from clear to fuzzy, and is rather tiny.

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A Wizard Abroad is the fourth book in the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane, which starts with So You Want to Be a Wizard. It’s also my least favorite book in the reread so far.

In A Wizard Abroad, Nita’s parents decided to send her to Ireland to go stay with her aunt so that she can “take a

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break” from wizardry and working with her friend Kit. However, once Nita gets to Ireland she finds that the entire country is layered with old magic and that the distance between worlds and times is incredibly close. If the situation isn’t dealt with, bad things could happen.

“If we can’t stop this, then the barriers between present and past will break down everywhere, and the physical world will be progressively overrun by the nonphysical: All the myths and truths that become myth, all the dreams and nightmares, all the more central and more peripheral realities will superimpose themselves on this one… inextricably.”

I didn’t feel a sense of urgency or threat regarding the plot. There’s a couple of instances of dangerous things happening because of the closeness of the realities – Nita gets attacked by ancient wolves and a village square gets wrecked by drows – but overall it still feels very vague.

A Wizard Abroad was also very heavy on Irish mythology, which I don’t know a lot about. Possibly this is a large part of why I didn’t care for it as much as the other books in the series. The Irish mythology might also have played into the extremely slow pace. There was a lot of time spent on descriptions and not much on things happening. Some more things did start to go on at the very end, but it wasn’t enough. Unfortunately this has also been the longest book in the series thus far.

A Wizard Abroad also has an abortive attempt at teen romance, which I didn’t care for. It did drizzle out by the end, thankfully. I could say more on this point, but the bad boy “love interest” character doesn’t reappear for another few books.

I think what makes me dislike A Wizard Abroad is that it doesn’t really have the elements that make me love the Young Wizards series. It could be almost any YA urban fantasy set in Ireland. It doesn’t have the intermingling of science fiction and fantasy. It doesn’t have as much of the ethical choices that underline the other books. It does build on the mythology and world of wizardry, but the mythology approach was stale, especially compared to the dark New York of the first book or the ocean wizardry of the second. Additionally, it doesn’t have as much page time spent with familiar characters. For the first hundred pages or so, it’s all Nita, without Kit or anyone else.

Basically, compared to the previous three books, A Wizard Abroad is longer and not as good. If I’d read this one first, I don’t think I would have picked up the rest of the series. Luckily, that was not the case.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

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well.. okay. This one was better then book #3.

I don’t think I liked this one as much as the previous three novels. It was definitely still good, and we will probably move directly onto the next in the series tomorrow, but it felt slower paced and I was a little bit less certain what was happening all the time. (It was like the rules of magic

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got sloppier in this book, maybe?)

Also, there was some (very innocent) romance in this book, and while I’m sure it’s age appropriate, it still felt out of place to me.

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Another great addition to the series. This book has more about wizards and community, which I enjoyed, and I really liked the mythology aspects as well.