“Wizard’s Holiday” by Diane Duane

This is another installment in the Young Wizards series, following these posts on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth books. This one splits the narration between Nita and her sister Dairine while they both have their own holiday over spring break.

Nita comes home from break to learn that Dairine signed them both up for an exchange program without telling their dad. Dairine is now grounded, but Nita and Kit are allowed to head off to another planet for two weeks. They head to the other side of the galaxy to stay with another wizard, Quelt, and her family. Life there is incredibly peaceful and lovely, but Nita keeps feeling there’s something wrong. With the help of Ponch, they learn that the wizards on this planet set it up so that the species would remain exactly as they are, without evolving. To fix this, Nita and Kit go to meet the delegate of the Lone Power that was given a home there, and she takes them to the heart of the planet. Meanwhile, Ponch gets Quelt who has realized what she has to do. Quelt releases the spell, and their species goes onto the next thing (which apparently doesn’t involve physical form, they all disappear).

Meanwhile, Dairine is at home with three new wizards. There’s Sker’ret who’s like a giant centipede, Filif who’s a tree, and Roshaun a humanoid who’s a prince on his planet and let’s everyone know it. They do a bunch of tourist-y things along with Kit’s sister Carmela. Roshaun then sees an image of the Earth’s Sun and realizes that it’s about to explode so they all have to band together to go fix it. They’re successful, and return with Dairine appreciating Roshaun a little more.

I really like how this book continues to expand the world of the series. Now we get to meet wizards from other planets, and other species, and it really emphasizes how non-Earth centric this series is. I particularly love the antics of the group visiting Earth, it’s very entertaining. Not to mention thinking of the logistics of hiding all of them!

Nita’s path has always been more interesting and also harder to understand for me. Interesting because it’s all about embracing risk when moving onto something new, and for that you do need some of the Lone Power, or the Power that represents death. It speaks to this interesting balance the series has where you need some death and some danger, but overall it’s what the wizards fight against. But this is also more confusing, especially when I was younger, because I have no idea what an existence without bodies looks like, I simply can’t wrap my head around it. What does that mean? Did they all just die? And I think I got it more this time, but it’s still so weird to me.

The combination of the two storylines though makes this a really entertaining and insightful book. I think it frequently gets overlooked in the series, but it’s a solid installation. Onwards to the next one!