So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane ★★★☆☆

Modest hopes give way to bigger expectations

Fiction – Juvenile – Urban Fantasy

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up

336 pages

Publication Date: 1983

Young Wizards #1

Nita wanted only a chance to escape the bullies pursuing her when she sought sanctuary in the children’s section of her local library, but she found so much more.  Clutching a copy of, So you Want to be a Wizard, she left the library and embarked on the adventure of a life time.  With Kit, another wizard in training, and Fred the white hole, Nita was sent on a quest to return a missing book and right a multiverse going wrong.

Encouraged by the title – which I adore - I started this book, the first of the multi-book series (last count I saw it was up to 10 – to be published this year), with modest hopes, but rapidly I realized my expectations were too low. 

So You Want to Be a Wizard, was very well written for a Juvenile age group, with a good balance between amazing descriptions and allowing for my imagination to work its wonders.  Duane has a great ability to put you right into the fast paced scenes, while creating a fascinating and imaginative story leaving me wondering where it was going next.  The scope was very ambitious, which I found to be both a strength and at times a weakness.  On an occasion I had a hard time following the action and found the mythology to be a bit complicated for the first book, especially considering it is meant for early grade schoolers.  

As for the characters Duane quickly and thoroughly introduced me to Nita with her love of books – she definitely put my feelings on book and library into something much more eloquent than I could ever express myself – her affinity for living things, and the trials and tribulations of her life from her family to school bullies.  Kit and Fred were a little more aloof, but not so much that I didn’t feel sympathetic toward them and care about them as part of the trio. 

Overall I enjoyed this book, not only because I am sure it has sparked generations of other fantasy stories ( I mean it is still going strong  30 years later, talk about longevity), but also just for the story’s own sake.

ISBN  0152047387 (ISBN13: 9780152047382)

Oh. My. Gods. by Tera Lynn Childs ★★☆☆☆

Out of Tune

Fiction – YA – Urban Fantasy/Mythology

Reading level: Ages 12 and up Grade 7 Up

272 pages

Publication Date: May 1st 2008 by Dutton Juvenile

Oh. My. Gods. #1

Literary awards: RITA® Award by Romance Writers of America for Best First Book (2009), TAYSHAS High School Reading List (2010)

 
Phoebe’s senior year of high school is ruined when her mother comes home from a vacation to Greece engaged and plans for her and Phoebe to move to a Greek Island where her mom's new guy is the head master of a very exclusive school.  Phoebe knows if she can only get through the next nine months with decent grades and a good track season she can go back to California for College with her best friends and continue on with her normal life.  However, this plan turns out to be epically more complicated than expected when Phoebe finds out that her new classmates – including her evil step-sister and step-father – are all descendants of Greek gods.  Competing against superheroes, dealing with a home life turned upside down, drowning under a sea of homework and finally having an inexplicable attraction to a jerk of fabled size, Phoebe is going to have to find a way to cope quickly or give up her dreams of a normal life.

I picked this book because it seemed fun and I really wanted to give it 3 stars just because the potential of premise, but sadly this is yet another book that just didn’t measure up.  I found the idea of an “average” girl going to a school for descendants of Greek gods only to find out she was one herself rather exciting, but Childs just couldn’t seem to make it work: this is no Percy Jackson story people.  Don’t get me wrong it was a fairly breezy read and the writing was fine, - unexceptionable, but passably average, nothing that would really detract from the story - but the characters were beyond disappointing, there seemed to be a lot of holes in the plot and motivations and Childs never convinced me why I should care about this story.

I found Phoebe to be a whiner and kind of mean without anything really likable about her.  The other characters didn’t feel authentic or real, just archetypes without any flesh and blood.  Their interactions didn’t’ seem to have any substance and felt very contrived.  Apparently I was just supposed to accept was going on, because the author said to, and while I understand that to a certain point Childs never won my loyalty enough for me to give out passes.  To be fair, for a few pages in there I thought I was wrong about the two stars, I saw the clouds began to part and I was really wanting that ray of sunshine or rainbow to burst out, but my briefest moment of hope was quickly dashed and back to the lackluster characters we went.  It was like a song where all of the words were right, but the singing was out of tune and the melody had no soul.  Trust me when I say there are better offerings somewhere else; don’t waste your time on this book.   

Hopefully Childs has something more to offer in another series – yes I haven’t given up on her, and yes I know I suffer from the never-give-up-and-hope-it-will-be-better-next-time-reading sickness, but her writing saved her just enough to try again.

ISBN 0525479422 (ISBN13: 9780525479420)