Wizards of Mars review

I finished Wizards of Mars by Diane Duane a couple of days ago and decided to do the review before I forgot half of the plot (as in some unnamed reviews that I had done). It should be mentioned that this is the ninth book of Diane Duane’s Young Wizard series, which began with So You Want to Be a Wizard. I had read the first one way back when I was a young boy of 12 (about 2003). I had just started reading the Harry Potter series maybe a year or two before so I was hooked on fantasy books at the time (well fine… I am STILL hooked on fantasy books). Anywho, it is imperative that you read the entire series in order to understand the book. It was a few years since I read the previous book, Wizards at War, and I was utterly confused for the first two chapters until things started coming back to me. I was really considering re-reading the entire series, but if I did that, I wouldn’t even get this book read this summer.

                In this book, Kit finally sees if there is/was life on Mars. As we all know, Kit Rodriguez was a Mars fanatic for the last few books, so it just figures that Duane would do this eventually. There was just enough teenage drama to make me slightly nauseous and wish I had left the series alone. I also found myself embarrassed for the characters as Nita told aliens that they were “hooking up”… as if the aliens should know what the flip that means. But I digress, once one gets past the fact that this book was intended for young adults (or even the 12 year old from 8 years ago), it was a very good book. I found myself wanting to read the rest of the book in one night (about 300 pages… but I didn’t want to stay up too late so I left it be). I hope that Duane’s next book in the series aims its focus to the older readers that grew up reading her books. I would love her immensely if she did. :)

Update: I found out that the tenth book in the series is called Games Wizards Play. It's about a game to determine which young wizard on earth will get a internship-ish thing with the planetary wizard. I read the description and I get the feeling that it's going to have the same flaws as the previous one. I guess we'll see (hopefully not in another 5 years like the wait for the last one was).