SUMMARY: To give Nita a vacation from magic, her parents pack her off for a stay with her eccentric aunt in Ireland. But Nita soon finds herself with a host of Irish wizards battling creatures from a nightmare land.

EDITORIAL REVIEW: Young wizards Nita and Kit stand by their oath and come to the aid of a fellow wizard in need when Nita's little sister is sucked into outerspace through a door of the Museum of Natural History. Reprint. *K. PW. *

U.S.S. Enterprise with two other starships investigates the disappearene of ships and colonies, discovers a menace of unimaginable power and puts the Enterprise as bait to trap the entity.

From Kirkus Reviews

Fantasy set in the universe Duane created in a YA series (Deep Wizardry, 1990, etc.). Cats are intelligent and have their own language, Ailurin; feline wizards with their human counterparts keep transit gates open and the world safe from disasters and invasions. Three New York wizards, house pet Rhiow, neurotic Saash, and dumpster resident Urruah, are detailed by the Powers That Be to repair a malfunctioning gate beneath Grand Central Station before a train accidentally gets hurled into another dimension. In the train tunnel the three battle hordes of rats and rescue a kitten, Arhu, who, though resentful and hostile, is destined to become a wizard, too. Next, the trio must travel into an alternate world of the past, Downside, to locate the gate's power source--but the locals are dinosaurs, and very belligerent. Then the investigators' human Area Advisory vanishes; they discover a magic spell written in Ailurin on an ancient Egyptian papyrus; Arhu develops a talent for seeing the future; and it becomes clear that they're being opposed by a dinosaur wizard backed by the evil Lone Power. Often intriguing, with a well-worked backdrop, but it's hard to find a logical or emotional connection between cats and dinosaurs. Still, fantasy-loving ailurophiles will curl up and purr. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Amazon.com Review

"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

From Publishers Weekly

Duane returns to the engaging world of The Book of Night with Moon, where wizardly cats guard the magical Gates between worlds and protect Earth from those who would upset the delicate balance of space and time. Based in Manhattan's Grand Central Station, the cultured feline Rhiow and her colleagues, the street-wise Urruah and precocious young Arhu, are ordered to London to investigate a malfunctioning Gate. It turns out someone has sabotaged the portal, turning it into a dangerous "timeslide" that snatches folks from their own time and pushes them randomly into the future or the past. But this is merely the symptom of a bigger problem: the evil Lone One is overwriting history by creating a world set on an alternate timeline, one in which nuclear weapons introduced long before their true era are being used systematically to destroy civilization. The crux of events?the break where the alternate timeline begins?is the assassination of Queen Victoria. In order to save the universe, Rhiow and her compatriots must save the monarch and recreate a long-lost spell to stop the expanding disturbance in the timelines; a youthful Arthur Conan Doyle lends a hand. Duane presents her usual felicitous mix of magical high adventure and humor, avoiding much of the preciousness that can infect anthropomorphic fantasy. Even those who don't fancy felines should enjoy this purr of a tale.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

EDITORIAL REVIEW: **A near-future techno-thriller from *New York Times* bestselling author Diane Duane. ** It's the first quarter of the twenty-first century, and "massively multiplayer" on-line games have been around for a couple of decades. In an increasingly wired and computer-friendly world they've become a form of entertainment so popular they're giving television and films a run for the money. And the most popular gaming universe of all is Omnitopia, created by genius programmer Dev Logan. For millions of people around the world, Omnitopia is an obsession, a passionate pastime, almost a way of life. Omnitopia is a virtual place where dreams come true-players can create their own universes within the game's structure, and participate in the profits if their piece of the universe is a hit. Ten million players routinely play in Omnitopia, and at any given time, nearly a million of them are on-line, living in a world more real to them then their own. Worldwide, Omnitopia is now as much a culture as a game. Participants can become involved in it in a hundred different ways. Some game as if their lives depended on it, spending thousands of hours, or thousands of dollars, or both, on quests in search of "game glory" among their fellow players. Some game only to acquire sufficient in-game "value" to become entitled to become subcreators themselves, able to build new levels and start raking in the so-called "one percent of infinity" which is the leveler's share of the profits. But there are also people who don't game at all, preferring to use the massive platform simply to explore its worlds, or to interact with other participants. Some people do nothing but design on-line weapons and other items for Omnitopia gamers, and sell them-or act as brokers, buying and selling game artifacts to order. Some subcreators do the same kind of design and creation, but for tailored Microcosms or slices of them: these are the "unreal estate" dealers. Some players speculate in game "gold" on the success or popularity of Microcosms, rather than actually playing in them. And of course there are thieves and swindlers, cheaters who live to find the loophole in the game that will outside it in the real world. Now Dev and his people are preparing to rollout a major new expansion to the Omnitopia system. And even as players, staff, the media, and the heavy hitters on the world financial scene wait eagerly for this fast-approaching and momentous event, there are others preparing to play a very different game-one that is meant to strike at the heart of Omnitopia and bring the entire system crashing down....

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

The joke in Starfleet is that the only thing that can travel faster than warp 10 is news.

Of the many jokes told in Starfleet, this one at least seems true. For a Federation of hundreds of planets, spread sparse as comet-tail dust over thousands of light-years, news is lifeblood: without it, every world is as alone as if there was no other life, no other thought but its own. Few planets, these days, are so reclusive or paranoid as to want to be all alone in the dark, and thus the passage of news has covert priority even over the waging of wars and the making of fortunes. By subspace transmission (faster than warpspeeds, but not fleet enough), by pumped-phaser tachyon packet and shunt squirt, by compressed-continuum "sidestep" technology and sine avoidance, and (within solar systems) by broadcast carrier of all the kinds from radio through holotrans, the news of the many planets of the Federation and of planets outside it slides its way through and around and under and past the billions of miles and thousands of light-years.

The terrible distances take their toll of the passed-on word. Signals are corrupted by subspace noise, data is dropped out, translations are dubious or ambivalent: distance makes some pieces of news seem less urgent than they should, proximity makes other happenings seem more dire than they are. But no news passes unchanged, either by the silent spaces, or the noisy minds that cannot seem to live without it: and no news affects any two of those minds the same way.

This piece of news was no exception.

The door vanished, and the man walked into his rooms and stood still for a moment, then said the word that brought the door back behind him and shut all other sounds outside. His terminal was chiming softly, a sound that most people on the planet where he now lived could not have heard: it was pitched too high.

The man paused long enough to slip his dark cloak off and hang it on the hook beside where the door had been. Beneath it his tabard and trousers were dark too, somewhere between brown and black, his family's sigil bound into the fabric in gold at the tabard's throat. It was diplomatic uniform, made more impressive by his stature, tall but not slender anymore -- late maturity had left its mark on his frame. His looks somewhat matched his dress; a man dark-haired, dark-eyed, deep-eyed, a hawk-faced man with no expression...at least none that most people here were competent to read. There was energy in the way he held himself, some of those people would have said...perhaps too much energy, bound in check by a frightening control. They never knew how tight a control; they never knew how it slipped, sometimes, and left their thoughts open to him. He would have been embarrassed, except that he considered himself neither a child, a brute beast, or an alien, to be so possessed by an emotion.

He turned and paused again, gazing out the window at the brass-and-gold afternoon lying over the browned lawns outside. It was approaching sunset of what the people who lived in this part of the world considered a ferociously hot day, much too hot for spring. Several times today, various of them had said apologetically to him, "At least it's dry heat." They need not have been apologetic. To him this was a fair day in early spring indeed, cool, bracing, with a hundred kinds of plants in exuberant leaf; it reminded him of hunting mornings in his youth.

Eidetic memory has its prices. For a moment, whether he wished it or not, he found himself out on the plain again under the burning sky, smelling the air, terrified and out of control of the emotion, knowing that at the day's end he would either be a man or be dead. Then the fragment of memory, like a still holograph refiled, fell back into its indexed place in his mind. He lifted an eyebrow at his self-indulgence, made a note to himself to spend a little extra time in the Disciplines that evening, and moved to the terminal.

Its chiming stopped as he touched it: another second and the terminal had read his EEG through his skin, recognizing the pattern. The screen filled with column on column of blue symbology, a list of calls to the flat since he left. Most of them were unimportant compared to the one name and commcode at the far right-hand side of the list, the most recent, the one message that had caused the "urgent" chime. He had rather been hoping that the embassy would not need him further today: but hope was illogical. Life was about dealing with what was. He touched the screen, and the computer dialed the code.

He waited a moment or so before speaking. The link was scrambled, and before communications began, the computer had to agree with the one on the other end as to the eighty-digit "satchel" crypton they would use to keep the link secure. He had the utmost confidence in the ciphering process. Ninety-six standard years before, he had invented it.

He paused two point three seconds to let the process finish.

"Sarek," he said.

The voice that answered him did so, by the good offices of the computer, well above the frequencies that most people on this planet were capable of hearing. The slightest high-pitched hissing or squeaking on the air was all any listener would perceive. That tiny speech whispering into the air went on for a moment, and then Sarek said, "By what majority?"

The air spoke softly to itself again. "Very well," he said. "Whose was the request?"

Another tiny answer. "Tell her I will come," he said. "If all the transportation connections work correctly, we will be there in four point nine six days. Out."

He touched another code on the screen, not bothering to scramble the communication this time. "Sarek," he said again. "I am being recalled, informally. Make the arrangements with the usual carriers, and begin distributing my appointments between Svaid and T'Aimnu."

"Affirmative," said his attaché. "Being handled now. What reason shall we give the Federation Council and the immigration authorities?"

"Personal political business," he said. And, hearing T'Lie's unspoken curiosity, he added, "The Referendum has been called. I must speak for the proposal."

There was a pause. "There was nothing about that in the packet this morning. Perhaps there has been an oversight."

"No, no oversight. I was just notified. There will be a full précis in the next packet. Call a press conference and issue the statement as soon as you have a context-positive translation."

"Yes, sir."

"Out."

The Ambassador Extraordinary of Vulcan to the United Federation of Planets, and incidentally to Earth, turned away from the screen and sat down very slowly in a chair that faced the windows. The light and heat came streaming into the room, into the silence. Sarek leaned back and closed his eyes, and became still, tried to become the stillness, the warmth. But he failed: the stillness was an illusion. His mind was in disorderly turmoil. He would have been embarrassed at that, except that it would have made the turmoil worse.

If I fail in this, he thought, then my honor is in shreds and my family will bear the stigma of it forever. We will be ostracized. If I succeed...then my honor is intact and my conscience will remain whole. But my House will be broken...or if not, I will become an exile and outcast. And Earth...

He opened his eyes. Out the window of the towerblock, a redtailed hawk was balancing on the hot wind, as if on an unresolved thought, hovering. In the blue sky far behind it, past hills like cut-out cardboard, cream-white clouds piled along the horizon, basking and building in the heat, forging their thunders.

Earth will be dead to us, Sarek thought, and got up to make the call he had been avoiding.

Looking down from space, the miles-deep sea of atmosphere that breeds thunders and winds takes on another perspective. The endless star-pierced blackness presses down against a thin delicate wrapping of air, a bubble of glass swirled with white, glittering where the Sun touches it, the blue of oceans showing through the faintly misted shell. A fragile thing, brittle-looking, an objet d' art, round and perfect: but for how long? From far enough out in orbit, one has no doubt that one could drop the Earth on the floor of night and break it. An urge arises to step softly, to speak quietly, so as to keep whoever might be carrying the pretty toy from being startled and fumbling it.

That view, the wide curve of the planet, blue and brown and green streaked with white, was the one that Spock kept on the viewscreen by preference when he was alone on the bridge. He was alone now: indeed he had been alone now for nearly sixteen days, except for the briefest interruptions by maintenance crew and the occasional visiting bridge-crew member. It was curious how, even though they were on liberty, they could not seem to stay away.

But then Jim would surely say that it was curious that Spock couldn't stay away, either. And he would have laughed at Spock's grave attempts to rationalize away the analysis, for in logic there was no reason for him to be there: after a month's peaceful work on the bridge instrumentation, every piece of equipment was tuned and honed to even Spock's relentless standards. Jim would have teased him most assiduously. That was of course the captain's privilege, to refuse to take Spock seriously: as it was Spock's to raise (outwardly) his eyebrows over the amusing and irrational conduct of his human friend, and (inwardly) to rest satisfied that someone knew him well enough not to take him seriously, Vulcan or not.

Spock sat quiet in the helm, watching the Earth and idly going through lists in his head. When the heavier and more involved of their repairs were finished -- warp-drive adjustments, the replacement of the inside of one warp nacelle's antimatter containment system, installation of a new set of dilithium crystals -- Fleet had moved Enterprise out of the major repair and spacedock facility at San Francisco High to a parking "spot" over the North Atlantic, where Starf...

SUMMARY: The culmination of a saga twenty-two years in the making. They call themselves Rihannsu—the Declared. To the Federation, they are the Romulans. By any name they are adversaries as formidable as they are inscrutable. Self-exiled from Vulcan in ages past, they retain an ancient martial philosophy and a code of conduct that has sustained them through centuries of hardship, warfare, and thwarted ambition. Now their empire is gearing for war once again. Armed with the revolutionary Sunseed technology, which can destabilize entire stars, a Romulan vessel is warping toward the heart of the Federation. Its target: Earth’s sun. But this offensive comes at a perilous time, as a growing number of Romulan worlds are joining a revolution—one led by the renegade Commander Ael t’Rllaillieu of the warbird Bloodwing, with the aid of Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise and the Hamalki physicist K’s’t’lk, the Federation’s foremost authority on Sunseed technology. As the threat to Earth looms ever larger, Bloodwing and Enterprise lead an armada toward the Romulan homeworld for a final reckoning that will decide the future of the Rihannsu people.

SUMMARY: The Historic Saga Begins Born in the twilight years of Vulcan’s violent and passionate past, those who declared themselves Rihannsu chose to reign free in the unknown reaches of space rather than to serve under the new tyranny of logic. Having severed themselves from their homeworld, they survived the perilous voyage across the stars to wash ashore on a distant planet, there to begin the civilization that would one day flower into the Romulan Star Empire. Now, after millennia of wars and conquests, that empire is decaying from within, surrendering its noble heritage to reckless ambition, abandoning honor for kidnapping and murder. The corruption is so great that the Rihannsu’s finest military officer—Commander Ael t’Rllaillieu of the warbird Bloodwing—believes she can save her people only by joining forces with her greatest enemy: Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Meanwhile, on the Romulan homeworld, a Federation deep-cover agent has been posing as a household servant named Arrhae i-Khellian—but her operation takes a strange turn when a captured Starfleet officer is brought to her home… The lives of Ael, Arrhae, and the crew of the Enterprise come together in these astonishing adventures—originally published in four volumes: My Enemy, My Ally; The Romulan Way; Swordhunt; and Honor Blade—that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the Romulans.

About the Author

DIANE DUANE was born in Manhattan in 1952, a Year of the Dragon. She was raised in the New York City suburbs, on the south shore of Nassau County on Long Island, where all through her childhood she wrote to amuse herself. In high school she won a New York State Board of Regents Science and Nursing scholarship, and her first studies in college were toward a degree in astrophysics. A total inability to handle calculus and other higher math drove her instead into the arms of the biological sciences, and she used the nursing half of her scholarship to attend Pilgrim State Hospital School of Nursing on Long Island, from which she graduated in 1974 as a registered nurse with an honors specialty in psychiatry. She spent the next two years practicing the art at Payne Whitney Clinic of New York Hospital.

Feeling the need for a change of pace, she spent the next couple of years working as assistant to television and science fiction writer David Gerrold. During this period she wrote her first novel, The Door into Fire, which saw print for the first time in 1979. One book led to another, as so often happens, and since then she has written more than thirty novels, various comics and computer games, and fifty or sixty animated and live-action screenplays for characters as widely assorted as Batman, Jean-Luc Picard, Siegfried the Volsung, and Scooby-Doo.

Together with her husband of fifteen years, Northern Irish-born novelist and screenwriter Peter Morwood, she lives in a townland in the far west of County Wicklow in Ireland, in company with three cats and four seriously overworked computers-an odd but congenial environment for the staging of space battles and the leisurely pursuit of total galactic domination. She gardens (weeding, mostly), collects recipes and cookbooks, manages the Owl Springs Partnership's website, dabbles in astronomy, language studies, computer graphics, and fractals, and tries to find ways to make enough time to just lie around and watch anime.

Amazon.com Review

Ages 10 & up. In the spirit of Madeleine L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time, this is a fascinating and powerfully involving story about two lonely kids who are inadvertently caught up in the never-ending battle between good and evil. The problems of everyday adolescent life and the mysteries of magic are perfectly blended, along with plenty of humor and suspense. In a starred review, School Library Journal wrote, "well-structured and believable... this fantasy should have wide appeal." Horn Book wrote, "a splendid, unusual fantasy... an outstanding, original work."

From Publishers Weekly

As two young wizards embark on a mission to preserve the universe they encounter an eerie version of Manhattan. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Something stopped Nita's hand as it ran along the bookshelf. She looked and found that one of the books had a loose thread at the top of its spine. It was one of those So You Want to Be a . . . books, a series on careers. So You Want to Be a Pilot, and a Scientist . . . a Writer. But his one said, So You Want to Be a Wizard. her hand, confused, amazed, suspicious--and delighted. If it was a joke, it was a great one. If it wasn't . . . ?

Amazon.com Review

Don't take brilliant, shrewd Dairine Callahan for just any bratty younger sibling. Impatient for adventure, knowledge, and recognition, she finds her sister Nita's wizardry manual and reads the Oath aloud. Disappointingly, nothing happens. But when her family's new computer arrives, Dairene discovers more than the standard issue system software on it and launches herself on a reckless, universe-wide, high-voltage magical conflict with the Lone Power. Diane Duane's storytelling is skillfully mythic and wittily referential; Dairine's discovery and shaping of a new form of life is wondrous. For maximum enjoyment, read So You Want To Be A Wizard and Deep Wizardry first.

From Publishers Weekly

This continuation of the escapades of teenage wizards Nita and Kit centers on Nita's little sister, Dairine, whom Nita thinks is simply too smart for her own good. But when the family PC clones itself and suggests Dairine go to New York, Nita and Kit go along as chaperones, determined to keep her out of trouble. But they're too late: Dairine has read the book of wizardry and is on her wizard's test. There's nothing that the two girls can do to help her, as she must complete the difficult and dangerous test by herself. Duane is tops in the high adventure business, and her latest offering is no exception. Deftly pairing comic and sensitive scenes, this rollicking yarn will delight readers as they watch Dairine's transformation from pesky kid sister to strong-willed heroine. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8. Nita Callahan, a 14-year-old wizard from Long Island, is annoyed when her concerned parents ship her off to Ireland for six weeks on an enforced vacation from magic-working and her partner Kit?but what's time or space to wizards (see So You Want to Be a Wizard [1996] and its sequels [all Harcourt]). In any case, Ireland is hardly the ideal spot for a magic-free getaway, and indeed Nita soon finds herself involved in big doings. With the ancient harvest festival of Lughnasad approaching, signs point to a major attack from the malicious Lone Power, the very inventor of Death, in its guise as Balor of the Evil Eye. The assembled wizards of Ireland have but one hope: to find or re-create the Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danaan, said in ancient stories to have helped defeat Balor once before. Moving easily between light, everyday language and the sonorous formality of high fantasy, Duane seamlessly interweaves encounters with creatures from legend with glimpses of modern Irish life and teen culture. Her view of magic's place in the scheme of things is so clever and well reasoned that readers will have no trouble suspending belief. Nita is an appealingly hot-tempered teenager who faces slavering dire wolves and trollish drows with more courage than the dismaying realization that she's gotten "the hots" for young fellow wizard Ronan. Balor's appearance in the climactic battle is all too brief, but against this army of wizards, it never stands a chance. At least in retrospect. An unusually consistent fantasy, rich in details, subplots, and Irish lore.?John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Grade 5-8. Nita Callahan, a 14-year-old wizard from Long Island, is annoyed when her concerned parents ship her off to Ireland for six weeks on an enforced vacation from magic-working and her partner Kit?but what's time or space to wizards (see So You Want to Be a Wizard [1996] and its sequels [all Harcourt]). In any case, Ireland is hardly the ideal spot for a magic-free getaway, and indeed Nita soon finds herself involved in big doings. With the ancient harvest festival of Lughnasad approaching, signs point to a major attack from the malicious Lone Power, the very inventor of Death, in its guise as Balor of the Evil Eye. The assembled wizards of Ireland have but one hope: to find or re-create the Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danaan, said in ancient stories to have helped defeat Balor once before. Moving easily between light, everyday language and the sonorous formality of high fantasy, Duane seamlessly interweaves encounters with creatures from legend with glimpses of modern Irish life and teen culture. Her view of magic's place in the scheme of things is so clever and well reasoned that readers will have no trouble suspending belief. Nita is an appealingly hot-tempered teenager who faces slavering dire wolves and trollish drows with more courage than the dismaying realization that she's gotten "the hots" for young fellow wizard Ronan. Balor's appearance in the climactic battle is all too brief, but against this army of wizards, it never stands a chance. At least in retrospect. An unusually consistent fantasy, rich in details, subplots, and Irish lore. John Peters, New York Public Library (School Library Journal )