Just when you thought this thread was dead..........
High Wizardry by Diane Duane
Several months have passed since the events told in Deep Wizardry (See above) and Nita has been busy getting on with her life.
Her sister Dairine discovered her sister was a wizard in the last book and is now consumed by jealousy. While her sister isnt looking she takes the wizards oath without really meaning it and sets of into the galaxy with a computerised copy of the wizards manual.
Nita and Kit, fearing for Dairines life, set off in pursuit of her. But they are one step behind, the evil Lone Power is already on Dairines tail, and it wants blood.
This book is well written, as are all the books in this series. Diane Duane really has a way with words and her characters are very likeable. The book is full of bizzare aliens, odd planets and way out wizardry. Once again morality makes a solid underline for the story and Dairine has to learn what being a wizard truly means and understand and mean the oath she took.
Diane scores again. 8 out of 10.
Excert:
They ambled down the hall a little way, to the Ahnighito meteorite on its low pedistal - thrity four rons of nickel-iron slag, pitted with great holes like an irregularly melted lump of Swiss cheese. Nita laid her hands and cheek against it; on a hot day in New York, this was the best thing in the city to touch, for its pleasant coolness never altered, no matter how long you were in contact with it. Kit reached out and touched it too.
"This has come a long way" he said.
"The asteroid belf" Nita said "Two hundred and fifty million miles or so..."
"No" Kit said "Father than that." His voice was quiet, and Nita realised that Kit was deep in the kind of wizardly 'understanding' with the meteorite that she had with trees and animals and other things that lived. "Long, long dark times" Kit said "nothing but space and the cold. And then slowly, the light growing . Faster abd faster - diving in towards the light, till it burns, and the gas and water and metal boil off one after another. And before everything is gone, out into the dark again, for a long, long time..."
"It was part of a comet" Nita said.
"Until the comet's orbit decayed. It came in too close to the sun on one pass, and shattered, and came down-" Kit took his hand away abrubtly "It doesnt care for that memory" he said.
"And now here it is..."
"Tamed" Kit said "Resting. But it remembers when it was wild, and roamed in the dark, and the sun was its only tether..."
Nita was still for a few seconds. That sense of earth being a small 'safe' house with a huge back garden, through which powers both benign and terrible moved, was what had made her first fall in love with astronomy. To have someone share the feeling with her so completly was amazing. She met Kit's eyes and couldnt think of a single thing to say; just nodded.
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