“Deep Wizardry” by Diane Duane

This is the second book in the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane. For my current readthrough, I wrote about the first book earlier. This book is one that I have always liked (on a certain level) because it functions really well as a sequel. It also always makes me so nervous and just feel raw afterwards because it is truly emotionally devastating.

In Deep Wizardry Nita and Kit are two teenage wizards that are on vacation at the beach together. All is calm and well until they run into a dolphin who introduces them to a whale wizard, S’ree. S’ree is a young whale and not ready for the responsibility of running a huge piece of wizardry, the Song of the Twelve. Nita and Kit agree to help out, with Nita even volunteering to take part as the Silent Lord. Turns out that the Silent Lord is a sacrifice, where the whale playing that part commits suicide in order to transform death into a gift. Nita wrestles with both this and how to tell her parents that she is a wizard since the secret is tearing her at the seams a little. By the end though, another sacrifice takes her place, her parents get used to her wizardry, and they are all able to return home emotionally wrung out if physically safe.

One plot point that I want to address specifically: I do remember having a disagreement with a friend over whether or not the shark that died in replace of Nita actually died or not. Because at the end of the book, Nita and Kit see him swimming through the water. Rereading it now, I think that’s the Heart of the Sea, or Timeheart as the human wizards call it, where everything that’s loved goes after death. There’s like a light, and Nita and Kit swim into it, and there they see the shark. Which is cool in that it does give them hope for future adventures, but it also has the same format as the first book. There’s the adventure, and they get a brief glimpse into the future, the adventure plays out, and they see the friends that they lost beyond the veil. Given that this is only the second book, it isn’t overly formulaic yet.

This book is so well-written that it is emotionally devastating watching Nita deal with the possibility of her death. You feel as though you are there with her and thinking about your own life, your own death, and what it would mean to give yours up. I read it so many times as I was growing up, so I know that it ends alright, but I was still on the verge of tears reading about her being angry, yet deciding to keep her word. I can’t remember what my experience was like the first time I read it, but I think that if I was to read something like this now the anxiety would likely destroy me, I don’t think I’d handle it well.

Emotional scars aside, this is an excellent follow up to the original So You Want to be a Wizard. There are many comments about how the events of the first book led to this adventure, including a blank check wizardry being the inciting factor for Nita’s required sacrifice. The result is that the book feel intimately connected, but you do not have to be familiar with the details if you did not pick up the first book. It also expands the world of wizardry from humans to other animals. In this case, whales. This is a really nice touch and makes it less human-centric. Which makes so much sense, if this is an ability that spans the universe, there have to be other species that are wizards as well.

Since this is the newer edition, I have to at least touch on the changes that I noticed. Most of this book was exactly the same, as far as I could tell, but there were a few differences. There was one exchange between Nita and her sister about Kit where Nita admits to liking him. Which I don’t think was in the original, although it is very possible that I didn’t pick up on it. There were also less phonetics used to convey the whale speech patterns. Nita’s name still gets changed to hNii’t, but I remembered in the original Kit was K!t. That didn’t happen here, although it might be a typographical error rather than an intentional one. Similar to the first book, seems like the changes emphasize Nita and Kit as potential romantic partners more so than anything else.

Going through this series again has been so much fun, I’m really looking forward to the next installments. Because it only gets better and more interesting from here!