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Summary: Love magic, love cats, love NYC!
Review: This morning I was sitting in Grand Central reading Book of Night with Moon for probably the tenth time. For anyone who lives in NY and likes fantasy that takes place in contemporary time, this might appeal to you. Admittedly I'm hopelessly in love with the feline race as well, and this book just works so well! The scene with Pavorotti had me howling with laughter (and won me a few strange looks from the people around me.) Worth a read, especially if you can hang out in Grand Central to do it!
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Summary: Brilliant Book
Review: I must admit, this is one of the best books I've ever read. While the Ailurin vocabulary is slightly confusing in the beginning, and there are some slightly slower parts, the whole book is worked together brilliantly. I highly recommend this book whether you love or hate cats, cause that's really not quite the main point of the novel. All the characters have their distinct personalities and everything you could hope for in a good book is there.
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Summary: Rattling good fantasy
Review: When an ancient evil invades our world, flooding it with surreal horror, it falls to four small wizards - feline champions - to fight this evil with every bit of magic at their disposal. Together they must cross the River of Fire and hunt the Children of the Serpent, spending many of their nine lives in a battle between the light of their world (and ours) and the darkness from another dimension. In "The Book of Night with Moon" Duane covers a lot of ground; her central characters are all cats, and this in itself is difficult enough, given that very few authors have done this genre as well as Richard Adams did with "Watership Down." She gives us a quest, which is a very potent plot in western literature, and she gives us a rattling good urban fantasy a la Charles de Lint. The plot is simple enough, and one that's done in a great many fantasy novels: Seemingly unstoppable evil must be faced and defeated by the hero(es) who are really just regular people (or cats) at bottom. Tolkien almost defined the genre with his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and since then, every fantasy author worth her/his salt has tried to ring an interesting change on the formula. And in fact, when it fails, this plot is just that, formulaic. But in Duane's hands this plot becomes quirky as a cat, "full of sass and vinegar" to quote Jane Yolen (from the back cover.) Feline character informs the plot, moves it and shapes it, and this is what makes the book so special. Duane's central character, Rhiow is well drawn, and - dare I say it? - very human as well as being very feline. All of her characters, human as well as cat, are well drawn, which is one of the great pleasures of this book. But it's Duane's craft which really makes this novel more interesting than a lot of others of its type. Too many authors could make the trappings of such a novel seem leaden, bogging the reader down in the created world. Duane, though she does create a feline vocabulary as well as other details of feline life, never allows these details to stop the smooth flow of her story. She remains comprehensible even while she is teaching you the cat word for such things as "human" or "person." (Ehhif, as in 'my ehhif, my person.') Some writers might succumb to the temptation of making such a created world a little too precious or a little too facetious, but while her sense of humor is firmly in place, Duane never treats her creation with anything less than respect, knowing just how far to go with her details, never too far into territory that's over-cute or firmly in the nudge-nudge category. In short, she never throws you out of her story for the sake of a cool-sounding bit of detail. She never winks at her readers as if to say, "Look how clever I can be." She respects her work, her characters, and, I'm pleased to say, she respects her readers. If you're a cat lover as I am, this book will be a delight. If you're not, it's still a darn good read and I recommend it highly. One caveat: I wouldn't recommend you trying to speak Ailurin to your cats; you'll get it wrong and they'll laugh at you behind your back.
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Summary: A Delightful Story
Review: Diane Duane did a wonderful job on this delightful tale. It made me laugh and cry. There was a lot of thought put in these characters. I think any kid would like this tale that is wound with magic.
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Summary: Great Book
Review: I absloutely LOVE this book!!! I've read it so many times the cover has fallen off. if you like this book, you have to read To Visit the Queen, which has some to the same characters, and tells you about Arhu's past! Even though Saash isn't there, I think it's a great book.
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Summary: Good cats; slow science
Review: The premise is simple: cats (and some dogs) are more intelligent than most humans think they are. Some are even wizards (as are some humans). Wizards quietly live among us and keep the world running smoothly. The cat protagonists are a team that monitor and fix the interdimensional gates that allow the wizards to travel about the world in space and time. When the gates start misbehaving, travel becomes chancy, and the team gets busy. Eventually they end up on a primal world, full of dinosaurs resentful of everyone, confronting a malignant entity to save the gate system and the world which would otherwise be run over by the dinosaurs. Along the way they rescue a kitten destined to be a wizard and encounter the first dinosaur wizard. The cats, ranging from a pampered pet to an alley cat, are engaging and superior enough in attitude for the majority of cat lovers. The story is relatively fast-paced. What slows it down are periodic forays into gate physics and philosophy, most of which comes off more like Star Trek science-speak. It isn't needed to justify the way the gates work, and doesn't make much sense anyway. But it wasn't annoying enough to stop me from searching for the sequel.
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Summary: The Cat's Meow
Review: I expected straight fantasy, with cats performing adorable acts of magic. What I got was much deeper. When I put down the book I took with me the lesson that we must accept those who are different from us, and attempt to understand them, even if we are at odds on the surface. This sounds like a big lesson to get from cats, but perhaps coming from the animal world it makes more sense than if it came from humans. Character development was terrific. I often forgot that the main characters were cats, they were developed like human characters. Also, excellent use of setting, although there was a lot of techinical jargon that I'm not used to reading.
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Summary: You will never look at cats the same way again!
Review: This book totally changed my feelings on the feline species. It is a true fantasy book with wizardry and unknown species and trips to the "downside". But I thought it was very well written, with its own way of making you never want to put it down! And the way Duane wove a seperate language, Ailurin, into the simple English language was most enjoyable. This is the first book I have read by Diane Duane and I can't wait to buy the second in her feline wizardry novels, To Visit the Queen. This is truly a remarkable book with more than just magic. It shows the happiness of having ture friends and the struggles of getting new things thrust upon you with the expectancy of you not only not abandoning it, but helping and teaching it. I highly recommend this novel to not only cat lovers, but anyone in for a gripping read.
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Summary: True purrspectives.
Review: The Book Of Night With Moon is an absolutely terrific book. It is a great story for cat lovers, fantasy fanatics, and those who flock to the truly extraordinary. Duane tells a truly and remarkably complex story while still managing to keep the story amazingly readable and plotline untangled, and without making any part of it boring to tears. This book centers on a feline wizard named Rhiow and her team of worldgate technichians. When the team stumbles over a curiosly malfunctioning gate and a badly wounded kitten (who just might be a fellow wizard) they find themselves a little in over thier heads. Soon the team and the kitten (Arhu) are of on a wild adventure to stop the lone power and his race of saurian servants from rerouting and restyling eternity into their own personal dark playground. Duane expresses a remarkable ability to tell the story through a feline point of view, and even shows the various factions and opinions within felinity itself. She winds wizardly and daily worlds skillfully together, and keeps readers guessing at every turn. This book had me crying twice (I had to set it down to recover), laughing to many times to count, and trying too solve the numerous riddles posed within it. Anyone who has read Tailchaser's Song and found the lack of resolution at the end a little disconcerting can take heart from this book. I recommend reading So You Want To Be A Wizard first, so you don't suffer a mental warpage from trying to adjust to both feline and wizardly perceptions at the same time. A great read, this book really helped me get in touch with my Ailurin side.
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Summary: Give it a try!
Review: This story is very amazeing indeed. I read this book over a year ago but it is still lodged into my memory. This is a purfect book if you are a lover of cats and really like fanasy stories. I recomened that you atleast give it a try. In the begining it was kinda boreing so if you find it boring skip the first chapter then go back when your done with the rest of the book.
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