This is the third installment of the Young Wizards series! (I wrote about the first and second books previously.) Interestingly, this is the first one where we are not getting Nita’s point of view the entire time.
The book starts out with Nita and Kit going to a space museum to get out of the house while Nita’s family gets a new computer up and running. Dairine is caught messing with it and gets sent along with them. While at the museum, Nita and Kit realize that Dairine is both a wizard and that she has absconded to Mars. This leads them to break the news to their parents, and head off after Dairine on her Ordeal. Dairine meanwhile is off sightseeing the solar system, gets chased by some aliens, and then ends up on an unfamiliar planet that functions like a giant computer chip. She starts teaching the chip (called the motherboard) and ends up creating a race of little computer guys. The computer guys start arguing about the problem of entropy and they want to stop time in the universe while they reprogram it. Turns out that this is the Lone Power (the Power that invented entropy and death) tempting them, but Dairine dissuades them by sharing her memories and becoming part computer as well. Nita, Kit, and the talking parrot Peach catch up to her. Peach gets killed for talking smack to the Lone Power, and Dairine ends up defeating the Lone Power by holding him to the planet and recreating the first lights after the Big Bang. It’s then revealed that Peach is actually another Power, who takes the Lone Power home to recover. The rest of the kiddo all head home alright.
This is a really inventive book for a number of reasons. Dairine’s manual is a laptop, and it is hinted that this is a beta version of a new manual aimed at more experienced wizards to help cast spells faster and such. But it’s a sign of a larger theme of the book which is the potential of technology with magic. Dairine uses her laptop to cast spells, and creates a lifeform that isn’t biological, it’s entirely technology. So far we have seen Nita deal with life forms and Kit with inanimate objects, but no computers or artificial intelligence yet.
We also get an interesting insight into the Powers with this book, from seeing the Lone One be defeated right from the beginning and the transformation of Peach. I remember being fascinated by the Peach plot twist because Peach has been a really endearing character from the beginning, so to have her change into an all-powerful being sure is something. I wonder if Duane planned that from the start or just came up with it for this book.
We also finally get to see more of space, and of more life forms. There’s a really big transit station that Dairine goes through, and Nita and Kit eventually follow. It is like something out of Star Wars, the beings are incredibly diverse and rarely do you see a hominid. I really love how this universe is so non-Earth and non-human centric, it’s great to see.
Speaking of Star Wars, I am amused that the pop culture references when it comes to Dairine have clearly been updated in the more recent edition. (In Deep Wizardry Dairine is reading Percy Jackson, for instance.) But the Star Wars and Darth Vader references have not changed at all! Reading this has also made me think that maybe the relationship edits are more me misremembering than changing the books that much, Nita and Kit have another conversation about their relationship and I definitely remember that in the original. Other than that, I don’t think this book changed too much.
And finally on a superficial note I always liked this book as I super identify with Nita here. As the oldest sibling as well, it is hard to have your “thing” and then see a sibling start to do it as well. And potentially do it better. So I loved all of the little exchanges where Nita calls Dairine a brat and things like that, it’s very accurate to my sibling dynamics.
I’m blazing through these, but I’m having such a good time!
Onwards to the next in the series!
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