To Visit the Queen

Feline Wizards #2

by Diane Duane

"A purr at the right time can do wonders," says Rhiow, the furry, black heroine of To Visit the Queen. Diane Duane's mettlesome cats can work wonders with more than their purring: they're wizards, capable of casting spells, walking on air, traveling through space and time, and speaking to humans--if they choose to. In this sequel to the bestselling The Book of Night with Moon, Rhiow and her team are called in to troubleshoot a malfunctioning magical portal in the London underground. Gradually, they unravel a conspiracy that threatens to twist their reality into a nightmarish alternate history--one in which Victorian England gets a boost from future science and uses nuclear technology to terrorize the world. This perfidious design rests upon the assassination of Queen Victoria, and it's up to Rhiow, Arhu, Urruah, and the London cats to save the queen.

Duane has earned an enormous following with her stories of the unending battle between the evil Lone Power and the forces of life, here championed by Rhiow and the other wizard cats. Although her stories are usually lively reads, in To Visit the Queen, Duane takes a long time to build up to the action and burdens the narrative with large lumps of magic terminology that's more than reminiscent of computer programs or mathematical theorems. But there's a lot of fun to be had from the wheels-within-wheels universes going awry, in spotting tidbits of history, and in following the chain of events as the traitor in the pride reveals its claws. --Blaise Selby

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Cats, Urban Fantasy, Young Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Magic

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Diane Duane has been a writer of science fiction, fantasy, TV and film for more than forty years.

Besides the 1980's creation of the Young Wizards fantasy series for which she's best known, the "Middle Kingdoms" epic fantasy series, and numerous stand-alone fantasy or science fiction novels, her career has included extensive work in the Star Trek TM universe, and many scripts for live-action and animated TV series on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as work in comics and computer games. She has spent a fair amount of time on the New York Times Bestseller List, and has picked up various awards and award nominations here and there.

She lives in County Wicklow, in Ireland, with her husband of more than thirty years, the screenwriter and novelist Peter Morwood.

Her favorite color is blue, her favorite food is a weird kind of Swiss scrambled-potato dish called maluns, she was born in a Year of the Dragon, and her sign is "Runway 24 Left, Hold For Clearance."

(From her official website)

Reviews

[Emily]

So Diane Duane's first book about wizard cats has everything that you could want from a book about wizard cats (read: cats with magic powers, magic that manifests itself as visible to cats, weird physics, cats that talk, etc.), and I'm pretty sure I read it about 20x when I was twelve. If I ever read this book I have somehow blacked it out, although I'm not sure how I could ever black out a book about wizard cats time-traveling to team up with Queen Victoria (????) because that's pretty much a dream come true.

Anyway, must acquire ASAP

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember liking "The Book of Night with Moon" very much, though I don't remember the story as clearly as some of the "Young Wizards" stories. So I was happy to see there were more books about Rhiaow and her crew. Strengths:

It's a clever story. Duane is clearly deeply fond of cats and observes them well, and I had no trouble telling who was who in the cast, despite all the aurelian words and strange names. There was, I think, some fine historical research, and the ending became gripping. The historical figures were cool--as I said, good research. There was also a moment of pure heartbreak when we discovered exactly why the two teenage kittens had their backs up about each other. I kind of loved the little guy, Arhu; he reminds me of my sister's kitten, though he doesn't look like him. ;). I liked the little human guy, too! Needless to say, Duane does teenagers well.

Weaknesses:

I did want to see more of Ian and Rhiaow's relationship as they try to come to terms with Susan's death. I also thought there was a lot of technobabble, and I struggled to visualize some of the scenes as a result.

So, overall, I thought it a good story, but slightly uneven. If you're a fan of Duane's wizards, you'll want to read it, and you'll probably enjoy it.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crackling second adventure starring Duane's feline wizards; further cat-achter development is done. Duane, as in 1st outing, focuses on a squirm-and-tear-inducing scene of animal cruelty (beware!); this outing (spoilers) she steers fans through it into a healing moment (thank goddess). Lots of sliding through time gates, brief parallel world visits all powered by eye-crossing physics written in hyper detail. This did slow down and confuse the action - but not as much as the 1st book since we've now been there/seen this before. The whiz-bang ending was a fast (yet satisfying) wrap-up. Some threads left hanging, presumedly for the third installment. ** It exists, many a fan quest for a readable document. Perhaps sales didn't merit traditional publishers producing this third book - in the original publishing year - but the times have changed and Duane has herself proclaimed that Book 3 is due in "modern" formats... soon... date to be determined... lashing my tail, impatiently... Overall, I loved these books and spending time with those cats who only choose to "scamper" to deceive the clueless humans they are assigned to protect. "We" are very pleased by this adventure. Carry on!

[Lissa Notreallywolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a novel about magical cats, but also about work relationships amongst the wizardly cats. I enjoy Duane's fiction, probably targeted at YA and casual readers. Unfortunately I read the book while I was separated from my own cat and it tended to make me catsick, a variant of homesick (without producing hairballs..)The book is a sequel, title of which will follow if it is not already on my list. The part I like best is the main cat's affection and responsibility for her human, Jeff, who is also grieving the loss of Sue, his lover. These are companion books to her YA novels about juvenile wizards, which are often quite funny.

[Nicole (bookwyrm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read the first two in this series already, but I don't remember them so I want to re-read.

2020 Update: I really enjoyed this second book in the series. I loved getting to spend more time with the main cats from the first book, and we got to meet new cats for this one who were fun to get to know as well. I had forgotten the sad turn of events at the end, but none of the plot points should have been surprising if I was looking for them. (I wasn't looking. I was just enjoying the read and letting it go where it would.)

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the first one - the ending feels rushed as heck, and I never got into the London characters the way I did with the saurians. Still: cats! Doing magic! Never a bad thing.

[Olivia Ambrose · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book about time-traveling cats that are also wizards! This should be an immediate hit, right? Eh. I'm going to admit, I had a hard time following this book. I couldn't get into the story, had a hard time figuring out what was going on, and kept getting the cats confused. Most have the cats have names that aren't pronounceable in English and aren't differentiated enough (to me at least) to remember which one was which. And when you're not sure which character is which - it tends to decrease my enjoyment of the book. It just seem rather scattered and lacking focus. Admittedly, I haven't read the first book in this series, but I'm not likely to seek out other books in this series either if this is indicative of the rest. (Though I do love the Young Wizards series a great deal). Not Diane Duane's strongest work in my opinion.

[Sophie Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again, I have mixed feelings. The time travel premise and the historical elements are very cool and interesting. Unfortunately... The plot itself is a mess, the pacing is very slow and that messes with the sense of stakes throughout the book, the male characters remain constant jerks (except for Huff, who is thoroughly punished for his softness), every female character except for Rhiow gets a "stupid woman who needs the other characters to tell them that they're stupid for being so emotional and who needs to prioritize other people's emotions" treatment (and the one who doesn't becomes a villain out of nowhere, creating a final battle which also comes out of nowhere). I'm still going to read the next book and finish my Diane Duane ebook collection, but I'm remembering why I didn't like this trilogy as a kid.

[CJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still overly technical regarding the gates for my taste, but I found the story more engaging and emotional than the first.
Michael's and Rhiow's grief underlies the whole story, as they both try to move on with their lives without Susan. For Michael, it's deciding whether or not to give up the cat, whether or not to move. For Rhiow, it's helping London associates with some errant time travelers.
More of Arhu's utterly tragic backstory, both grief added and allayed. And also more of his relationship with Ith, the saurian wizard, who has grown by leaps and bounds into his powers.
Also an examination of the dangers of jealousy, with tragic results.
(And also humor, mostly with Arhu and Siffha'h playing kitten for Queen Victoria.)

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sequel to The Book of Night With Moon. Three of the gating team from the previous book are asked to go to London to help with malfunctioning gates at the Tower of London. People are accidentally gating through to the times other than their own, and need to be returned. Plus in an alternate London, Queen Victoria may be assassinated, which would change the London of today. So the cats end up doing some time travel to try to stop that plus getting everybody back to their correct times. The dinosaur from The Book of Night With Moon comes to help, and the ravens at the Tower provide some insight, too. Very interesting book.

[Lyn Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cats of Grand Central are abroad in space and time, dealing with the Lone One along with their own feelings about grief, intergenerational trauma, and relationships. With all of the world building having been emplaced in the first cats book, this one flowed more smoothly. I liked meeting new characters. The London team seemed like fully realized characters with a totally different dynamic, whole People, yet not over-explicated so the New York team (and the reader) still have to make an effort to get to know them (that’s a good thing). Reading about wizard cats is good for what ails you.

[Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bad: This novel read at times more like an SF than a fantasy novel, in that it takes a very techno-babble approach to magic. I have little to no patience with techno-babble, which is why I read primarily fantasy rather than SF, so that made parts of the novel slow going for me. Also, why did male supporting characters outnumber female supporting characters by such a wide margin?

The good: Cats. Smart, beautiful, magical cats. I love them all. I love seeing things through their eyes. I will seek out Book 3.

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in this series was about facing down entropy in the form of despair and grief, and this one is more about facing down entropy in the form of jealousy and loss. (I mean, and time-traveling magic cats, their dinosaur friends, and egyptology). It wasn't as much exactly my jam as the first one, but I think I've still identified Duane's Wizards series as ones to read when the universe is too much.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good follow-up to the first Cat Wizardry book. Again, a much more adult book than the Young Wizards series with talk of sex and more violence than you'd expect in the main series.

This book handles loss and love and jealousy in a variety of relationships. I don't feel that the book had a real strong thesis and the ending seemed to lack the punch I've come to expect from Duane, but we really enjoyed reading this together.

[Maximum · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I can see why some people love this series, but personally I had trouble fully investing myself in this book. I loved the story once it started getting going and I ate up everything that built up from the last book or involving Arhu. But I really don't feel super invested in the other characters or main conflict. Once the plot took off, I found myself enjoying, but it took a while to get there for me. Really love Arhu though!

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to get into this as I was coming at it off the back of 9 young young wizards books. Also I read book one some 20 years ago. However once the narrative got going it fairly flowed.this is the tenth consecutive book I've read by Diane and I'm enjoying it and the universe she's created.
Recommended

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! It's a perfect sequel to the first one, and I really love how it all comes together in the end. It's perfectly bittersweet and Duane does an amazing job drawing you in and giving you what you were looking for in this sequel. I love it!

[Annette McIntyre · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting story. You get to learn a bit about English archaeological history as well. I was saddened by the ending though.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dang, DD does not pull her punches

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

IMO not as good as the first book, but very good regardless!

[Johanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cats time travel to London to save Queen Victoria with the aid of a young Arthur Conan Doyle. Excellent basis for a plot but let down by pacing. Characterisation was good. Setting was very much an American trying to write about London rather than a London with any kind of real-feel. I do not need to know the streets you walk down to believe that you are in London but I do need to see some Londoners!

[Evan Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun, historical romp through London of the late ‘90’s and Victorian London. Both this book and it’s predecessor are period pieces in a sense, but still quite good.

[Evalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly fantastic sequel - everything that was charming in the first book was expertly carried other and still present in the sequel. I really enjoyed it!

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cat wizards part 2!

[John Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first of Diane Duane's "Wizardry" books that I bought. I picked it up in the shop because I liked the title. NB My copy was called "On Her Majesty's Wizardly Service" rather than "To visit the Queen". I think that's a UK/US difference.

When I read the back cover blurb, it included this sentence: "Aided by the Tower ravens, the Keeper of the Mummied Cats at the British Museum, a dinosaur, ..." Yes, sold! I then discovered that it was actually the second in the series, so I put this on hold while I bought/read The Book of Night with Moon, and came back to it afterwards.

This story involves time travel, which is a favourite theme of mine. It did therefore remind me of a couple of other stories. The alterations took place in a particular section of history (a few years long), and The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World had a similar idea. That's not a problem, and I'm not suggesting that the author copied the idea, but if you liked this book then you might like that one too.

The catalyst for everything changing was when a student travelled back in time and dropped a science textbook; this allowed the Victorian scientists to get a head start on advanced technology. What's odd is that this plot point was pretty much ignored for the rest of the book, then tidied up at the end. By contrast, look at Back to the Future II: that had a similar concept, where a particular book had changed history, so the heroes' main goal was to intercept the book and put history back on course. Again, that's not necessarily a problem here (different stories can have different theories of how time travel works), but it is an interesting comparison.

Speaking of the textbook, I do have one nitpick about this story: the description of Tower Gateway DLR station doesn't match our world! (I lived round the corner when I bought this book, so it was rather jarring to read a description that was almost exactly correct.) The text says: "The train swung south the few blocks to Tower Gateway. There Patel got out with his burden, walked along the platform and took the escalator up through the tubelike corridor that led to the overpass which avoided the mainline BR tracks: then down the other side again, and out across the open concrete plaza". There's no escalator that leads up from the platform! It should simply say "walked along the platform, took the escalator down, then walked out across the open concrete plaza". Ah well, maybe a future (ebook?) edition can correct that.

One of the characters in the book is eventually identified as a young Arthur Conan Doyle. He's best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, but he also wrote The Lost World which is about dinosaurs. I read that when I was at school and enjoyed it, so it deserves to be better known. This book implies that Conan Doyle was inspired to write his story because he'd actually met dinosaurs who lived in a hidden land. I don't know whether there's a trope for this, but I have mixed feelings about it. I'm sure that Diane Duane actually intended this as a tribute to an author who inspired her. However, whenever I see something like this it seems to diminish what the original writer accomplished: "Actually, they didn't have much imagination at all, they just copied all their ideas from my story!" (For another example, look at the Star Trek episode where Mark Twain appeared.)

This all sounds a bit negative, but I really did enjoy the book and I've read it several times, so I certainly recommend it.

[Jessica Patzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a lot more fun with To Visit the Queen than I did with The Book of Night with Moon. I’m not sure exactly why this is, but *much shrugging.* I found To Visit the Queen to be delightful. A good mix of time travel and alternate universes, I think.

There is a lot of details concerning the gates and the time travel aspects of the plot. Like, a lot. I didn’t find it particularly mind-numbing, though I may have read it and immediately forgotten most of it. I like the detail, though, makes things more grounded, I think. Gives the reader something to look up later, if they wish, or just kind of go with.

To Visit the Queen also scratched a bit at my Anglophile brain. Very Doctor Who vibes, if I’m honest. (Probably also why I can hand-wave the techno-babble) Rhiow and the team spend just enough time running around London, or bits of it anyway, to amuse me. And, of course, things being centered around Queen Victoria was also a draw.

I also appreciated the fallout surrounding Rhiow’s human. It’s nice to have some follow-through as opposed to just “Rhiow’s human’s dead now and her partner doesn’t want the cat, so Rhiow’s a free agent now” kind of a thing. Duane’s good at the grief follow-through. It’s a big theme of the Young Wizards series more-so than this one, but I like that it’s there nonetheless.

I did remember about Arhu and Siffha’ah’s relationship from my reread, so I did spend a bunch of time wondering when that was going to come to a head as I didn’t remember the exact details. Same with Auhlae’s whole thing. I also remembered Artie, after he showed up. I won’t say more about that stuff, though, as it does spoil things.

Overall, To Visit the Queen was quite good. Definitely not prefect, but perfectly enjoyable.

[Mortalform · Rating 4 out of 5]

How many books exist that are written from a feline perspective? And of those few, how many are well done?


It saddens me that this series is getting harder to find in libraries. What child's mind wouldn't light with delight, what adult wouldn't marvel at the often overlooked quality of many young adult authors?

"Think of it as a hyperquadratic equation. Depending on the conditions and context, the same equation gives you different answers at different times. But all the answers are correct. Mythology, philosophy, and science are just three different modalities used to access the same data, and they can coexist just fine if you let them. In fact, they'll do it just fine whether you let them or not:, they have other business than sitting around waiting to see whether _you_ approve." -Urruah, p 136

A tolerant young mind, wry, dry, somewhat disrespectful of form but respectful of talent and wisdom and wit, a fearless seeker of strange new experiences like the inside of a cat's mind, or a half a pint of Guinness poured into an ashtray: that was Odin. p187

He had Seen it before; he had Seen all this before. The difference , he said, is that I never had to look. Looking is what makes the difference, in vision. Looking makes it so. p 192

There is a word in old Egyption: ba-neter , the world soul, the 'god-soul of the world'. p 265

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rhiow and her fellow feline wizards who maintain the main gates in New York, are called to London to deal with a crisis there. The gates can be used to get to a different place or a different time or both. Rhiow and the two groups of wizards have to solve the problem before the Lone One or in the Feline pantheon, Sa Rrahh, succeeds in his/her latest plan to win the ongoing battle between good and evil, life and entropy.

It seems as though Duane, who I enjoy and respect as a writer, simply cannot leave the theme of death and grieving out of her Wizard series. After the story ends, the felines have an almost completely unnecessary battle with Sa Rrahh and two felines get killed in the battle. It really felt almost tacked on to the main story. The story could have ended just fine without that last confrontation.

I enjoyed this story, almost as much as the prior one since I love historical fiction. I hear there are two sequels, sort of, and will likely look those up and see if I can read them.

[Bentgaidin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To Visit the Queen" isn't quite as striking a book as the first Feline Wizards novel is; to offset that, I reread it in one sitting this afternoon while a cat slept possessively across my neck. It's a time-travel story, about preventing the destruction of the world via anachronistic technology, and so a large part of the 'plot' is figuring out what and when was changed. The pleasure of the book, though, is in the lives of the cats as they do this, seeing teams of adults learning to work together without treading on each other's tails, and solving a problem that couldn't be resolved through the application of high-energy wizardry. There's also the usual delightful scenes from a Wizardry book, this time including oracular ravens, kittens offering grief counseling, and some time-travel cameo appearances. It ends a bit abruptly, but there's a third book to look forward to now, too!

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had never read the 'So, You want to be a Wizard' series, I would have been totally lost. As it was, I was lost quite often anyway. You have to learn a new Cat language to follow along with the book, and although the unspoken language is italicized, it's still tough to get through. The history written throughout the book is an interesting take on real life. I got bogged down about 3/4th the way through the book and thought I'd never see my way through it. I finally persevered, and finished the book, but it wrapped up so abruptly, I felt cheated.
It's a good book if you have nothing to do but read, but if you're brain cannot function going 3 ways at once, I would not recommend this book.