Interim Errantry: Three Tales of The Young Wizards

Young Wizards #9.3, 9.5, 9.7

by Diane Duane

What happens between book 9 of the Young Wizards series, "A Wizard of Mars," and the forthcoming book 10, "Games Wizards Play"?Diane Duane answers the question in this volume, collecting together the three canonical works that constitute a "transitional trilogy" between books 9 and 10 -- a 150,000-word extravaganza of untold tales to help keep you going until the tenth book comes out in February 2016. "Interim Errantry" novella Not On My Patch, the tale of an unusual Halloween in the Young Wizards' neighborhood, featuring overage Trick Or Treating, suburban zombies, and the Attack of the Killer Pumpkins.The novelette How Lovely Are Thy Branches, a holiday-themed Young Wizards story in which an alien wizard who looks a lot like a Christmas tree gets the gift he wants most -- decorations -- and a memorable party and sleepover party are disrupted by a superblizzard and an incursion of alien ghosts.And finally, the new original Young Wizards novel Lifeboats, the tale of a distant world threatened by unavoidable doom, an intervention that takes thousands of Earth's wizards, young and old, into harm's way, and a Valentine's Day that absolutely doesn't go as planned...

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy, Short Stories, Magic

542 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 17, 2015

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

[Robert Greenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1983, Diane Duane wrote a lovely YA adventure called So You Want to be a Wizard. Here we are, 30 years later and she is still carefully chronicling the escapades of Nita Callahan and Kit Rodriguez. Since then all manner of young magicians books have sprouted up (Books of Magic, Harry Potter, The Magicians) but this stands out because it nicely mixes science and fantasy. Like Potter, the characters age and mature and we're at a point now where their romantic feelings for one another is evident and is both confusing and distracting to them.

Diane weaves in hard science and what you might call hard magic, so there are prices to be paid for the energy expended and the stakes are well spelled out. This collection of three shorter works fits between book nine and this week's book ten. The tales are filled with characterization, pop culture, and loads of aliens wielding magic to protect the unvierse form entropy in the form of the Lone One.

Diane presumes if you're reading this you have read at least one of the others in the series and she is skimpy at filling context. Given the length of time between books, a little more backstory reminder would be welcome.

Still, the entire series is enjoyable and well recommended.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dearly wish I had been acquainted with Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series when I was younger. Alas, it unaccountably escaped my notice. Since I discovered it in college, I’ve been making up for lost time in savoring this series. Interim Errantry is a worthy edition to the Young Wizards series. It’s also great value for money, as you get a short story, a novella, and a full scale novel all in the same book. In each of these three tales, Duane demonstrates her unmatched skills at characterization, juxtapositioning, and storytelling. The end results are nothing short of – if you’ll pardon the use of the word – magical.

The Young Wizards stories are ineffably complex, but can essentially be boiled down to three categories of prose: exposition, awesome character driven moments, and epic displays of action power. This book is unique in possessing little, if any, of the third category. The stories within are about the day-to-day lives, more or less, of the main characters. As such, the first two categories go from comprising one third to one half each of the story. This, to me, is both a good thing and a bad thing. The exposition, especially in the space-centric, has become increasingly confusing to me. I’m not a scientifically minded person at the best of times, and the quantum-physics driven exposition Duane bombards us with goes completely over my head.

Nevertheless, the second half – character driven moments – more than makes up for the first. This is especially prominent in the novella “How Lovely are Thy Branches,” where we get to see the main characters have a normal (for them, at least) holiday celebration. Movie marathons, Christmas tree decorations (with one of the main characters being the Christmas tree in question), and defiant candle lighting ensue. We get glimpses of important ideas like the importance of defying the darkness with small actions, the corrosive effects of bullying, and the idea of wizardry as neurodiversity. As an autistic person myself, that last one just brought delight to my heart.

Duane is excellent at juxtapositioning important, meaningful scenes with hilarious, lighthearted ones. For example, a profound, meaningful tale of the evolution of a species is immediately followed by a bunch of human wizards initiating their alien friends into the sacred ritual of taking selfies. Scenes with the main characters bemoaning the stubbornness of the aliens who don’t want to be evacuated from their doomed planet are interspaced (see what I did there?) with scenes of alien wizards being introduced to the glories of Star Wars. This juxtapositioning elevates both types of scenes. We appreciate the difficulties the characters have to face as well as acknowledging the fact that light can be found in dark times.

Lifeboats, admittedly, won’t reach the number one spot on my list of Young Wizards novels, but that’s only because Duane is so utterly skilled that even this magnificent set of tales looks somewhat weaker compared to her greater words. This novel is well worth your time and your money. It will give you a more intricate understanding of the characters, enchant you with its levity, and then hit you in the heart with its sheer emotional torque.

[Linda ~ they got the mustard out! ~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three novellas? More like two short stories and a novel, because the third story is way too long to be a novella.

Not on My Patch and How Lovely Are Thy Branches are cute little holiday-centered shorts, the first for Halloween and the second for Christmas. Not a whole lot to say about them, but they were fun and it was nice to see the kids hanging out and being friends without their lives in mortal peril.

Life Boats is entirely from Kit's POV, which is unusual and a nice change up from the shared POVs. Our friendly Earth wizards are off to help a planet evacuate before the planet's moon can fall apart and crash into it. So you know, no big deal. ;) Except that some of the planet's population don't seem able to or willing to leave, and no one can figure out why. This was not as terrifying a story as I thought it would be, given the world-ending premise, and it's wrapped up in a true YW way. There's a lot more hanging out, meeting and making new friends, and quite a bit of ... er, grown up talk as Kit and Nita are still figuring out their new relationship. I do like what this set of stories did for showing their friendship and how much their affections for each other have grown, and went some way to convincing me this is a good pairing and not just forced because of course the girl protag and the boy protag ALWAYS have to end up a couple.

I don't think I've mentioned it much, if at all, in other reviews for this series, because I was so wrapped up in the emotional hangover, but these NME editions are not the best edited. There are a lot of simple mistakes in the text throughout the series, and while the last couple of books have been much better, this one almost seems to be making up for those. Extra words, missing words, misplaced words - if the writing wasn't so strong, I'd be more annoyed by this, but I felt I needed to mention it at last.

[Lis Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of three shorter Young Wizards stories.

Not On My Patch is a Halloween novella. It's a fun holiday for the wizards, because it's one of the few occasions on which they can be relatively open with their magic--and this year, it's Tom and Carl's turn to host the "haunted house" that rotates among the local senior wizards. At the start of the story, Nita is reluctant to cut into the pumpkin that is supposed to be the Callahan family's jack o'lantern, but she finally does what any wizard would do: asks it. Jackie has an entirely different perspective on life and death than animal life, and is happy to be a jack o'lantern. Nita's wizard friends are a little amused when they realize she's named it, slightly concerned when she refers to Jackie as "he," and of course it's inevitable that Jackie will become a key factor in resisting a sneak attack by the Lone Power, who tries to make Halloween really scary again. This was a lot of fun.

How Lovely Are Thy Branches is a novelette featuring the young wizards' old friend Filif, the tree-like alien wizard who was a houseguest of the Callahans in a previous adventure. Thanksgiving is coming, and Nita is having a very hard time with this first Thanksgiving without her mother. She wishes they could skip right to Christmas--and Kit's sister Carmella pulls Nita into planning a holiday party and sleepover for a few days before Christmas. The guest list will include their offworld wizard friends, including Filif--who has been excited about Christmas ever since he learned Earth people had a holiday involving bringing trees inside and decorating them. This one, unfortunately, is a nice enough story, but very slight.

Lifeboats is a short novel, and the real meat of this collection. The planet of Teveral is about to become uninhabitable; its moon, Thesba, is starting to break up and will rain its fragments down on the planet. There's very little time to move the inhabitants and enough of their biosphere elsewhere to save them, and the job is complicated by the fact that not all the Teveralites are willing to go. It's a huge undertaking, and Nita, Kit, and Ronan are among the wizards drafted to help manage the worldgates that will transfer those willing to evacuate to their new homes. Nita and Kit are assigned to different areas, and Kit spends his off-shift time getting to know colleagues of species he hasn't encountered before, and the Teveralites' octopus-like pets, called sibiks. One of those sibiks gets lost from its owners, who are among the natives refusing to leave, and begs crackers from Kit. And as Kit gets to know this particular sibik, and realizes how much he wants to get back to his family, he also finds an important clue to why so many are refusing to leave. This might be the key to making this intervention more successful than anyone had hoped. This is the strongest of the three stories, and it's funny, heartbreaking, and moving by turns. And while I'm not sure about the other two, this one is published in this collection for the first time, and is Hugo-eligible for the 2016 awards at MidAmericonII.

The is is a very satisfying collection for fans of the Young Wizards. Recommended.

I bought this book.

[Wenwei · Rating 5 out of 5]

My actual rating: 4.4 stars. I rated these novellas highly because they're set in the Young Wizards universe; I loved those books as a child and still love them as a 20-something-year-old.

[Swankivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two stories were pretty short reads (especially the first one), while the second was a pretty epic story about saving a population from a dying world. I think I felt about this collection about how I felt about most of the other Young Wizards books: there are certain aspects that I get tired of and groan at, but mostly I really like the ideas and characters. I am more in love with the concepts than I am with the people, but the people are pretty fun too sometimes. Now that there are more than ten separate books about them, I have trouble keeping track of everything that's happened (which isn't the author's fault, of course), but I guess that stands to reason since I have read them over the course of a couple decades. (I remember getting the first three from the library as a kid, and rereading them as a mid-twenties bookstore employee!)

The Halloween story was kinda silly to me. You have Nita bonding with her pumpkin that she carved for the holiday and then having it sort of warn her that zombies were randomly attacking, after which she assisted the pumpkin in countering the attack. References to pop culture abounded as usual, which is one of the things I tend to just kinda tolerate in these books.

The Christmas story was a little more fun, and involved the return of a group of characters we got to know in a previous book. It's weird, I did kinda miss Roshaun, even though I actively disliked him in the book where he was introduced. (I know, you're sorta supposed to, he was obnoxious.) I have weird mixed feelings about Kit's sister Carmela, honestly; she's hilarious and it's funny to watch her holding her own amongst wizards when she is not one, but sometimes her wildness feels too much like "hawhawhaw, that wacky Carmela's at it again!" and it gets to be too much for me. I thought Filif, the Demisiv wizard (from a treelike race), was kind of weird--I guess I always think that about him, and his weird bordering-on-kinky desire to get covered with Christmas tree decorations felt weird to watch. I did like the storytelling about his species' initial choices to become who they are now, though I found all the references to modern media kind of tiring. I guess if you have a bunch of wizard friends from other planets, holing up in the basement to watch Christmas movies seems like . . . something one could do . . . but I don't know, I wasn't very into it. I did actually like though that this was about a bunch of wizards just chillin' and there really wasn't a huge overarching crisis to deal with, beyond the easily disposed threat of bullies from the neighborhood coming to vandalize what they thought was an unsupervised Christmas tree.

Last of the bunch was my favorite story, which was about Nita and Kit going to Tevaral, a doomed world that needed wizardly help to evacuate. They were basically drafted to go help manage the worldgates that were being used to transport the indigenous species off the planet to their new homes, because their moon had anomalies that was going to cause it to break up and kill everyone on the planet. And one of the issues was that a good chunk of the population didn't want to leave, and no one knew why. They were claiming they would be dying with their world instead of escaping, and even other Tevaralti people didn't understand why they were making that decision.

I kinda didn't like this, because the story was set up like there was going to be some underlying reason they wouldn't abandon their world, and that Kit was going to be instrumental in discovering this and convincing them to evacuate. But it turned out to be kind of simplistic in description and in the presentation within the story. There was a lot of stuff about "being of one mind" in the story, since the Tevaralti race was sort of low-level empathic and that extended to both each other and their weird octopus-like pets, but it just sort of confused me why they couldn't just talk about it, even to each other, and why even other Tevaralti mostly didn't understand why these groups were holding out.

The other thing I didn't like at all was that Kit spent a bunch of time talking about Star Wars with aliens because one of them looked like a Wookiee, and he made them watch the trilogy and talked about it a lot and discussed opinions regarding the later-released movies and . . . I dunno, I get tired of the pop culture, which was more explicit this time, with more specific references to characters getting name-dropped, and it sort of felt like it was leaning on an expectation of reader recognition of the movies. (I have seen those movies once each and really am not a fan, and remember very little about them. I do like Yoda.) The story had the protagonists getting assigned to worldgate duty with other humanoid aliens and Kit was put with these two characters named Djam and Cheleb. They put a lot of focus on Cheleb being a third gender (instead of using he or she, Cheleb used "hae"), and I was on board with that because I love when there's nonbinary representation of some kind in a book even if it's an alien, so I was kinda disappointed that there were MULTIPLE instances of the character getting called "he" and "him" by the narration. (Not the characters slipping up. The narration. A lot. More than two dozen times. Most of the time it got it right, using "hae," "haem," and "haes," but if the author keeps accidentally calling the character "him," you know the character is still being mentally gendered male in the author's mind, and no editors caught it.) Also there were several uncomfortable scenes where Kit talks about porn with another guy (including enough info that you knew exactly what kind of porn) or narrates the finer details of getting an unwanted erection. Happy to see more escalation of a realistic teenage relationship morphing from an intense childhood friendship into a romance, but I wanna see more subtlety. Details on wrangling a boner? No thanks, argh.

The other thing I wasn't a huge fan of was soooooo many cameos--that's a common issue I have with the series, because it's gotten so broad over the years and a lot has happened, so a character popping up and saying their catch phrases and making references to the stuff they did together before disappearing to somewhere else on the planet was just not really my bag and I get tired of it.

What I really DID like was how intense the idea was--that the wizarding community in this universe has systems in place to create whole new ecosystems on new planets using the standards of the old ones and can transport entire populations there if their worlds start dying. It made me sad to think they were actually transporting them to multiple worlds and this previously unified species would theoretically become more separated and culturally divergent depending on what planet they picked to raft to. They didn't go into this much, what it must be like for the individuals of that species to make this catastrophic journey--an outsider's perspective was offered several times through Kit feeling bad for them, but there wasn't much information about them specifically and what their cultures were like. There was more emphasis on the concept, with a lot of cool science associated with it. Not so much the personal aspects, which I usually like more. There was enough to hint at it and I could imagine it, but I had to if I wanted to get it.

Still, there was enough emotion to sink your nails into--enough that I cried a few times while reading the long story. :)

[Callie Hornbuckle · Rating 3 out of 5]

As Duane says herself in the author note at the end, this collection of two short stories and a novella is a product of the new era of self-publishing. Written for fun for the fans of the ongoing Young Wizards series, these stories give us a glimpse of semi-ordinary life for the protagonists. My main issue was that the novella dragged quite a bit - of the pacing had been tightened up, it would have been great. But as a less frantic side note to the main novels, these were a treat.

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lifeboats: 👍👍

[Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interim Errantry It's hard to write a compelling story in a shorter format. Diane Duane is one of those authors who struggles with a limited word count, and this is most evident when working through this collection.
 
Not On My Patch: This is the shortest work in the collection. It's frankly too short and pages that should have been spent building up to the end, is wasted on Nita getting ready to go Trick or Treating. When the fight starts at the end, there is no real sense of urgency or any investment in the outcome. 1 star
 
How Lovely Are Thy Branches: The second longest work in this collection fairs much better. There's still not enough time spent building up to the ending, but it's better than the previous story. 2 1/2 stars
 
Lifeboats: This is the longest work in the collection and where Duane really shines. It has all the elements I enjoy in the Young Wizards series, a conflict with a not so obvious solution and characters that really care, the ending was well worth the journey. 4 stars

[rivka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not On My Patch: Ok, but didn't do much for me. 3 stars.

How Lovely Are Thy Branches: Very sweet. 3.5 stars. (And the outtakes over on the YW site showing up day by day on an Advent calendar are pretty hilarious.)

Lifeboats: Sweet, and funny, and sweet again. Made me sniffle and tear up repeatedly, and needed tissues a couple times. I did find the re-use (or very close) of the aliens from Captain's Orders a bit irritating, but that's because I love that book and reread it often. I'd imagine people who last read it in 1990 when it came out won't even notice. Even with that slight annoyance, quite lovely. 4.5 stars.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE EVERYTHING YOUNG WIZARDS.

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first collection of stories in Duane's "Young Wizards" series, consisting of a short story, a longer story, and a short novel, centered around three holidays.

"Not on My Turf" At Hallowe'en, Nita starts talking to the pumpkin she's carving. As they begin trick-or-treating, it reveals (through the somewhat limited perspective of a pumpkin) that the "Lone Power," i.e., this fictional universe's equivalent to the Devil, has a plot to wreak havoc through the pumpkin patch it came from. The company head over there and find a small army of zombie-creatures rising from the ground. As wizards on the spot, they have to handle it.

"How Lovely Are Thy Branches" is pretty much a Young Wizards Oz party. At Christmas, Kit's sister decides to hold a big shindig for all the group's friends near and far. Some come from distant star systems, including Filif, an alien from a race of pine-tree-like creatures. He volunteers to be "dressed up" with the ornaments. Remniscing (but not about previous stories) occurs. A small evil is averted.

"Lifeboats" is the real winner of the book, a short novel from Kit's point of view, in which pretty much every wizard on Earth, and several other planets, is "drafted" to help evacuate the people of a planet whose moon is becoming very, very unstable, before it goes boom. The biggest problem is not the logistics - that has been worked out in advance - but the fact that a small percentage of the population, though they know what is happening, refuse to go. Oh, and the holiday involved is Valentine's Day, which Kit is finding difficult.

The writing is sprightly and effective, the characters - at least to someone like me who was already familiar with them - comfortable to inhabit. If only "Lifeboats" is of any significance, the others are reasonable entertainments.

[Julianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

These short stories were nowhere near her best work, but enjoyable nonetheless. Seeing everyone involved with Halloween and Christmas was a treat, but at the same time, it is obvious why such things do not make up their own books. However, I would have loved to see how these characters handled these holidays, without some sort of token wizardly conflict seemingly shoehorned in, as part of one of her mainstream books.

Lifeboats, on the other hand, I think was simultaneously fascinating and lacking. The ending didn't feel particularly earned, and the resolution, so simple, that it wasn't particularly compelling. I know that not all wizardry in this world is supposed to be fraught conflict, and sometimes even just the smallest accidental solutions do solve things in real life, but stories, to me, shouldn't be like that. I was also bothered by the sex focused storylines as I don't feel like it fit in with Diane's wizard books, despite the new status of the main two characters. I have always loved that this series focused far more on adventure and friendship than awkward sexually related situations, so this addition disappointed me.

In terms of the text itself, it could have done with some better editing. There were many times I felt pulled out of the story simply because a word was missing that should have been there to have the sentence make sense. I have noticed this trend with most of her digital books (though this was a print one, I believe it came out digitally first?), and would really like to see the quality improve in the future.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is essentially a collection of "holiday specials" short stories for the Young Wizards universe.

I absolutely loved "Not On My Patch" -- it is a tiny version of everything I love about the Young Wizards books and the unique way they paint the world. I may need to read this every October.

"How Lovely Are Thy Branches" was a fun little diversion, pure fluff for fans. There was something oddly calming about watching all the standard characters have a break and throw a Christmas party, even if it doesn't have any more substance than any other "Christmas special" I've ever seen.

"Lifeboats" was a huge disappointment for me. I think it brings home the downside of self-publishing by demonstrating how important having an editor is, even for the most wonderful authors I love. Because while there was a kernel of wonderful story in here, and there were lots of individual moments that resonated as Young Wizards and made me very happy, it was at least twice as long as it should have been. Constant repetition, long spates of technobabble, pop culture references that were drawn out for pages rather than being brief fun in-jokes, a few too many awkward puberty moments, and seemingly endless depressed self-reflection by the characters on the planet's situation that seemed out of character, never made sense to me, and did nothing to further the story. Even the resolution felt weak, which was frustrating after dragging myself through all of it.

[Julie Decker · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection of two short stories and a novella, we have our favorite young wizards Kit and Nita enjoying three holidays: Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine's Day. For Halloween, there are some problems with Actual Zombies that must be battled with a semi-sentient jack-o-lantern; for Christmas, we have the return of Filif (a treelike creature from previous tales in this series) who really just wants to get decorated while everyone shares the holiday cheer; and finally we have Kit and Nita being drafted into a planetary rafting mission to save the Tevaralti species from its disintegrating moon . . . while worrying about what they're going to give each other for Valentine's Day.

The long story was my favorite, while the two shorter ones felt like not much was going on besides character cameos and the sorta cutesy stuff I tend not to like about this series. I wasn't a big fan of the long story's main problem and resolution--felt a little simplistic--and wasn't into the abundance of Star Wars references or the surprisingly explicit descriptions of porn and sexual arousal when I wasn't expecting that--but overall I REALLY liked that Kit and Nita were involved saving someone else's world and really seemed to understand how even a success would be terribly sad. There was a lot of very specific complex feeling in this story, and I'm always impressed with how broad and detailed this universe is.

[Blind Mapmaker · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.25 I'm sad to say that this volume does not come up to the usual standards of the series - at least for me. The two short stories are okay if a little silly, but the novel is really hard to get into. The whole "how to evacuate a planet" was very well thought out and I don't object seeing wizards work on an organised scale with everyone just doing some little things.

The world-building doesn't save it though and the solution triggered by the protagonist was sign-posted too much. I even thought of the very same quaint old story he drags out of memory some fifty pages beforehand. It also smacks a bit of white saviour syndrome (yes, I know Kit is not supposed to be white, but he feels white to me - here more than ever). The sibiks creatures are charming and some of the dialogue was great, but the pop culture references are too heavy for me. But then I am not a Star Wars and not a dog person, so your mileage may vary.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adored this book. It's not just the well-written characters, interesting and creative premises, or impeccable setup that makes it good. Interim Errantry answers a question, fills a void, that most fantasy series never fill: what does this universe look like when things just... aren't that noteworthy?

Without letting on too much, I'll say that the stakes in these stories are never as extreme as the stakes in any of the main YW books. The impressive feat It manages is drawing us in and keeping us engrossed despite that. For the first two stories, I was motivated primarily by the chance to see my favorite characters interact; for Lifeboats, that motivation was matched by the need to understand the plot that was being laid out before me.

Absolutely read this book, and this series. It's worth your time.

[Ivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, there are three stories in this book. One is quite a short bit set around Hallowe'en, the other a several-chapter Christmas story, and the third a novel-length charmer lightly framed by Valentine's Day. Having not paid much attention to page count, I read the first one and expected the others to be about the same length, but they get progressively, and perhaps exponentially, longer.

That being said, they are all lovely stories that fill in some gaps in the Young Wizards canon without ever getting too serious. The characters are all delightful as ever, the gutpunches twist your heart around, and the resolutions to the problems will leave you smiling thoughtfully if you're at all like me.

Not a book to be read on its own, but the whole series is worth reading in order.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am doing a read-along of the Young Wizards series with Mark Reads, and this volume is fairly late in the series. The volume consists of two shorter stories and a short novel. I thought the two short stories were fun and sweet, but lacked substance.

I thought "Lifeboats," the short novel, was excellent. The main characters, Kit and Nita, work with several thousand other wizards to evacuate a planet before its moon becomes unstable and explodes, causing the destruction of the planet. What really makes this book for me is the character interactions, especially Kit's interactions with the native sapient species (and their pets) and Kit's interactions with his non-human wizardly co-workers.

[Evan Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun side view into the YW universe.

“Not On My Patch” is a bit more fantasy than the usual sci-fi fare, but a fun read. The climactic battle is creepy, and I don’t know if I’ll ever look at a pumpkin the same way.

“How Lovey Are Thy Branches” is a celebration of Christmas through wizardly and alien eyes, and exploring different culture’s views on the same events. Also has a bit of foreshadowing that may well be very alarming.

“Lifeboats” returns to the sci-fi, and does so very well. Small changes can make a big difference, all is done for each, and the parable of the man in the boat all play a part, as does some truly hilarious cross-cultural and -species conversation. A fitting conclusion.

[Rob Rundle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fortunate enough to discover the Young Wizards right back when the first book was published, and then was really overwhelmed by the brilliance of 'Deep Wizardry', the second book. Since then I've enjoyed them all, though they are not all equally good.

I have given this collection 4 stars. If it just been 'Lifeboats' then it would have been 5 stars. The first two stories, to be honest, made me cringe, and I wish they didn't exist. But it would have felt harsh to mark the book down more (e.g. to 3 stars) when the third story is just so good! I'd recommend readers to skip the first two and just read Lifeboats, a truly superb novella/novelette (or whatever) that shows Diane Duane can still do the business.

[Sophie Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a small collection of in-between stories in the Young Wizards universe, and for me, they’re a mixed bag. A lot of what Duane has written here is downright delightful – characters showing how much they’ve grown and what good friends they’ve become – and that’s really satisfying to read after my marathon read of the previous nine books. At the same time, I keep tripping over the stumbling blocks that make it clear that I don’t fit in this universe as a Jewish aro-ace person. Christonormativity and allonormativity abound here, and I’m old enough now to see it for what it is.

But Kit’s interactions with the sibik are the best thing I’ve read in any sci-fi story, ever.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Duane's work is typically enjoyable and contains great reflection into people's and organism's perspective on right and wrong and how one should live life. I've even reread these as an adult and found them fun and fascinating. However, this anthology of short stories and a novel was anything but. Frankly, the author didn't even need to write these short stories, and more than half of the attached novel. The reason I mention that blunt opinion is that there was no conflict from the characters to grow from in nearly all of the stories in this book. I don't mind a peek into other parts of the characters' world, especially when the wizards are not on 'erranty', but there was nothing to build upon, to aid the reader's understanding of characters, conflict, and setting. In reference to the novel Lifeboats, it had potential to be another great 'Young Wizards' book, but, in my opinion, there was nothing of substance to grow from until after halfway through the book. A world dying that needs Nita and co's help should automatically be exciting. However, there was little exploration of the plot's conflict with more description of the teens nervous about leaving home and interacting with different lifeforms, rather than balancing that with the issue at hand. I will still read Games Wizards Play and am assuming it will be better than this intermediary work.

[Karina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this over a year ago, read about half then got busy. It wasn’t the best of the series but then these are just a few shorter “interim” stories between the main ones. I had enjoyed the second story (from what I recall) with Filif a wizard looking like a tree. The last story was a bit hard to get into.

[Roget · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite tales in the series

This collection of stories set in the universe of the Young Wizards truly shines, with both perspectives and storytelling elements that are rarely seen in popular fiction. The best part was a glimpse at the larger world beyond the core group, as they grow in both skill and experience.

[Susan Peak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two short stories and a novel set in Diane Duane's Young Wizards universe, all very good. You do need to have read some of the main books in the series to make sense of some parts of these stories, but they are very enjoyable for those who have. Duane's style is engaging while dealing with both humour and deeper issues.

[James R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Values get Broader

I have read the main books of this series, and each one goes higher, or wider, or deeper into the meaning of things. But these ‘interim’ tales get broader, involving more of life’s concerns, bridging from phantasy through allegory to civil life. This is noble writing!

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read! The two shorter works were a lot of fun - enjoyable holiday tales! The third piece dealt with heavier issues, so I hesitate to say it was fun, but it was a good read. The afterword gave great insight to it, as well.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as gripping as the regular Young Wizards books. Still it's fun getting the backstory of those who turn up in other tales.

[Kaitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was really nice to be back in the world or the Young Wizards. The two short stories were cute and the novella was fun to read.