A Wizard of Mars: The Ninth Book in the Young Wizards Series

Mars, Mars, MARS!!!

I love Kit and Nita from her previous books. This story expands Kit's character, and as always, I love his geeky nature. In this book, be becomes obsessed with Mars (as Diane Duane obviously has) and we are delighted throughout his adventures with true facts about current Mars discoveries and references to past classics about Mars integrated nearly seamlessly into Duane's fantastic Wizardly world.

Diane Duane always gives me everything I imagine would be true if two young geeky kids from a normal high school were suddenly thrown into wizard world similar to and yet delightfully different from Harry Potter. While J.K. Rowling expands the fantastical and ironical in "real world" scenes, Diane Duane emphasizes the realistic.

For instance, the opening scene introduces Kit, sitting in a high school history class a week before school lets out for the summer with the air conditioning broken. Having sat in a few classes high school classes as a student teacher this past semester where this was just the case, I completely commiseration with him, and his sneaky use of wizardry to fix the problem when he thinks the teacher isn't looking.

In addition, Diane Duane gives us a delightful ride in her classic world where wizards are real people, hiding their abilities from their non-wizard friends, dealing with day-to-day problems while fighting "The Lone Power". If you have not read her other books in this series first, I highly recommend that you do. In "A Wizard of Mars," we are thrown into a scenario that emphasizes the similarity of her story premise to that of C.S. Lewis' "The Space Trilogy," without the heavy Christian overtones in Lewis' books. And his books are not the only Mars books that she references in delightful and comic ways!

Diane Duane never seems to fail at making me laugh, cry and think, even when these stories are directed at a high school audience and I am much older than this! :) I just wish Audible provided more than just her Young Adult books, I'm dying to read some of her newer work!

Oh, and one last thing about Christina Moore's performance: Don't worry, the wizard dinosaur's speaking parts are over soon. You can make it through them!

Close to the top.

The last chapter when Kit and Nita had there moment :)

When Nita is in a fight over Kit

Im not shure there are to many books in the series.

really great book but now I want more!

I feel that this was the best of the series. I enjoyed how Diane was able to weave the multiple stories into one great adventure. I know that there is still more to come, without giving away any of the great meating of the various different creatures that she has created. I could not get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning, just listening to the story, I could not put it down.

Like the other reviewer, I too have read every book in the series. This is the first time I ever found Nita and Kit to be boring, clich??d and trite. This book lacked the wonder and power of the previous stories. Worse then that, Dari was kicked to the curb with only vague explanations and no real direction on what she was doing. The writing style was...bland even stodgy. Its like Mrs. Duane didn't actually write this one. I hope that this is not the last book she has to offer as this would be a truly disappointing way to end such a wonderful series.

I have listened to every book in this series and sadly this one was the worst. As the wizards grow older the books have become less fun and more serious, and with them growing weaker some of the fun and glamor is gone.

This book also lacks much of the interaction between the great people introduced in the books before. All those wonderful aliens made up for the weakened magic in the past, this time they just fall short.

I truly hope that any books in the future will change things around a bit. It may be time we stop spending so much time with kit......