Review: So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane

So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Nita's life is a bit rough. A classmate, Joanne, has made it her life's mission to beat the snot out of Nita, almost a daily basis. On one particular day, Nita ran into the library to hide from Joanne and her goonies - the library where she practically grew up reading all of the books inside of that building. She was walking down memory lane when she came across a book that she didn't read when she was a child: "So You Want to Be A Wizard".

After this peaked her interest, she checked it out and took it home to read through it, thinking it was a joke. But when she met another classmate, Kit, who was also practicing magic and doing spells outside the school, she realizes that it may just be real life!

Both kids are learning about the spells they can cast and are practicing some, when they bring back another being from a different dimension. They call him Fred and find out that the balance of magic is in peril because the two books of magic are located together, which will end in catastrophic events if they are not where they are supposed to be.

Nita and Kit must figure out a way to get the Book of Night with Moon back to it's place, and they must defeat many obstacles in their way to succeed in their mission.

Okay, I have read my fair share of magical YA books and this was just didn't live up to the others that I have loved and read... I don't know if it's because this was written in the 1980's and is "older" than the other YA magic books I've read, but I just could not get into it, sadly.

Nita and Kit baffle me because they practically found a book about magic, read the book, and then they were suddenly wizards and could do spells?! There is no adult to help them contain the magic and figure out how the spells work? Just a book taught them? I mean, that's cool in a way because you definitely do learn a lot from reading, but I feel like learning about magic and spells requires a bit more effort than reading a book and things happening right the very first time.

And if that is the case, I think that the kids should be a little bit older before messing around with the universe without adult supervision. I mean, Harry Potter went to SCHOOL to learn about magic. Just saying.

Besides the kids, I also thought that the way they communicated was odd. They were able to talk to each other THREE DIFFERENT WAYS. It was a bit confusing for me to keep track of what font meant what dialogue, and I'm pretty good and keeping track of different things.

The talking machines, animals, white holes (Fred), and the world that Diane Duane created was just a bit much for me. I wish I could say that I loved this book, but I'm just glad that I got to the end to see how it ended up. Which I didn't really like the way that it ended, but I made it there to be able to talk about it at my bookclub!

I would say that I could try again later, but I don't think I could go through another novel like this one, sadly. Maybe one day I will, but not anytime soon!

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