Dragaera

"Fantasy" Films [LoTR, H.P.]

Michael S. Schiffer mss2 at attbi.com
Fri Jun 28 10:45:04 PDT 2002

At 12:08 PM 6/28/2002 -0500, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> >...
>This is probably where I should recommend Diane Duane's Young Wizards
>books (starting with _So You Want To Be A Wizard_).  Contemporary
>fantasy in which the younger you are, the more powerful a wizard you
>are (if you're a wizard at all), but it takes time to learn expertise
>and finesse.  Very powerful books, especially _Deep Wizardry_.

I think _Deep Wizardry_ lost a lot of its power by
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copping out on the ending.  I understand the problems involved in killing 
off a young adolescent girl, let alone your series protagonist, in a YA 
story.  But I think it's cheating to get as much mileage as that story did 
over the necessity of such a sacrifice and the process of the protagonist 
reconciling to it, and then pull a rabbit out of a hat at the end to save 
her.  The shark's decision didn't IMHO fit his character, and it that it 
worked didn't seem to fit what we'd been previously told about the situation.

That said, they're good books, with a lot of nice subtle touches, and 
they're worth reading.

Mike