I just found an article online that complains about the lack of critical attention to Duane's books, and attempts to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, it's $5 to download the full article, so I haven't read the whole thing. Here's a bit from the online extract:
This essay examines the relationship of speech and metamorphosis within the work of Diane Duane. In Duane's Young Wizards books, magic is constructed through language, and her central protagonists--two sisters, Nita and Dairine--undergo a variety of amazing transformations as a result of their linguistic (and ethical) choices. Language, in fact, becomes the purest expression of their ethics, as they strive to encounter their others (both cosmic and contingent) in that crucial meeting of faith that Levinas describes as the very core of ethical life. I want to argue that, just as magic and shapeshifting often represent the violent transitions of adolescence within children's literature, physical transformation in Duane's work is also an expression of gender transgression and sexual rebellion. The Speech, the language of wizards, both human and non, remains the key to these transformations, and language itself becomes the battlefield upon which Duane's characters fight for control of their own identities.
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