High Wizardry is either just second or just third on my list, depending on how I'm feeling about A Wizard Alone this week. The best parts of Wizards at War are updates on High, although she never quite achieves its quality.
High Wizardry is a wonderful, spectacular book, which nearly does out-Lewis Lewis (I have to think about that), but Deep Wizardry takes it for me because of Ed, who is the best incarnation of the Lone Power *ever*. At any rate, that's how I read him, because all of the other books have direct argument with the Lone One in a way that Deep Wizardry didn't seem to me to do, until I thought it over, and went, okay, there's the obvious Big Nasty Serpent... and then there's the other one, who actually *subtly* foretells the cosmic shift in the nature of the Powers of that universe that High Wizardry brings out in blazing detail. In every other conflict with the Lone One, it's all Power-y and a Force to be Reckoned With and you can't trust it, but with Ed all that is right out there as part of his nature and it... matters, but is part of what makes him worth interest and attention, to Nita. And so I see the redemption of the Lone One in that universe as a thing that came about, fairly largely, because Nita could love a shark for being what it is enough to send it to Timeheart.
Duane's not gonna beat that one with me-- I mean, I'm writing a novel in which the protagonist's main quest is the importation of sharks to Mars, and the genesis of said book was well before I read Duane. So.
Wizard Abroad, by the way, is, in its entirety, the reason I stopped buying new Diane Duane novels in hardcover before reading them first.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-09-16 04:46 am (UTC)High Wizardry is a wonderful, spectacular book, which nearly does out-Lewis Lewis (I have to think about that), but Deep Wizardry takes it for me because of Ed, who is the best incarnation of the Lone Power *ever*. At any rate, that's how I read him, because all of the other books have direct argument with the Lone One in a way that Deep Wizardry didn't seem to me to do, until I thought it over, and went, okay, there's the obvious Big Nasty Serpent... and then there's the other one, who actually *subtly* foretells the cosmic shift in the nature of the Powers of that universe that High Wizardry brings out in blazing detail. In every other conflict with the Lone One, it's all Power-y and a Force to be Reckoned With and you can't trust it, but with Ed all that is right out there as part of his nature and it... matters, but is part of what makes him worth interest and attention, to Nita. And so I see the redemption of the Lone One in that universe as a thing that came about, fairly largely, because Nita could love a shark for being what it is enough to send it to Timeheart.
Duane's not gonna beat that one with me-- I mean, I'm writing a novel in which the protagonist's main quest is the importation of sharks to Mars, and the genesis of said book was well before I read Duane. So.
Wizard Abroad, by the way, is, in its entirety, the reason I stopped buying new Diane Duane novels in hardcover before reading them first.