To Visit the Queen (Cat Novel) - Softcover

Duane, Diane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446673188 ISBN 13: 9780446673181

Publisher: Aspect, 1999

Synopsis

Rhiow, Urruah, and Arhu, the wizard cats who saved New York City in "The Book of Night with Moon", are summoned to London to deal with a crisis which affects the very fabric of time.

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Reviews

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.

Cat fantasy, a sequel to The Book of Night with Moon (1997), wherein feline wizards keep magical transit gates functioning, prevent disasters and invasions, and generally tidy up, while humans go about their business in blissful ignorance. This time, the evil Lone Power has induced a Tower Hill, London, gate to malfunction, allowing unsuspecting humans to slide from or into the past. Sent by the Powers That Be, our heroes from Grand Central Station, New Yorkhouse cat Rhiow, dumpster resident Urruah, and impetuous young Arhuexamine the problem. The past, they discover, has already been changed: when Queen Victoria was assassinated in 1874, vengeful Britain bombed the world into a nuclear winter! How come? Well, one victim of the timeslipping gate dropped a modern scientific encyclopedia in 1816, giving rise to unrestrained and explosive scientific advances. The present, though, could change at any moment, so the wizards have to stabilize the timeline by preventing Victoria's assassination. They will have help, from the boy Arthur Conan Doyle (don't ask), while Ith, the dinosaur wizard from the previous adventure, investigates fragments of an ancient Egyptian spell written on cat mummy wrappings that might help stave off a nuclear winter. But despite all this, the Lone Power blocks access to 1874, and only when Arhu discovers the twin sister he never knew he had will the wizards find the power they need to enter it. After a dreadfully slow start, stuffed full of numbing details on the construction and operation of the gates, readers will discover little but recycled ideas and a stack of personal problems for the characters to work through. YA-ish and disappointing. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

When the evil power known as the Lone One opens a timeslide between centuries and worlds, the task of closing the gateway and preventing global disaster falls to a trio of feline wizards charged with guarding the Gates between the worlds. Duane's sequel to The Book of Night with Moon (Warner, 1997) continues the whimsical adventures of Rhiow and her teammates, Urruah and Arhu, who take their magical talents as seriously as they take all nine of their lives. Set in the same alternate earth as Deep Wizardry (Harcourt, 1996), this title belongs in most fantasy or YA collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Aspect
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446673188
• ISBN 13: 9780446673181
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368