Young Wizards: Lifeboats

Cover for "Young Wizards: Lifeboats"

When the renowned saurian Species Archivist to the Powers that Be summons young wizard Kit Rodriguez to participate in an urgent off-planet intervention intended to save many millions of lives, Kit’s hardly going to say “no.”

He soon discovers that not only he, but his wizardly partner Nita Callahan and her sister Dairine, his friend Ronan Nolan, and tens of thousands of other wizards from Earth have also been drafted in to intervene on the distant world called Tevaral. There the planet’s single huge moon Thesba has become tectonically unstable and will very soon tear itself apart, its massive fragments smashing down onto the surface of Tevaral and utterly destroying it. The wizards’ mission: to extract Tevaral’s hominid population and “raft” them off-planet to new homeworlds before the apocalyptic disaster begins.

There’s only one problem: millions of the people of Tevaral don’t want to go.

Kit, Nita and their thousands of fellow Earth wizards must now race against time to find a way to save all the Tevaralti despite their near-symbiotic relationship with their beloved world and its unique life forms. As doomsday inexorably draws nearer, hope is fading fast, and it seems like it’s going to take a miracle to keep the people of Tevaral from being wiped out. True, wizardry is all about miracles. But will one turn up in time?…


Young Wizards: Lifeboats is a 90,000+ word canonical work in the Young Wizards universe, and is set in February 2011, shortly after the events of the two preceding YW novellas, Not On My Patch and How Lovely Are Thy Branches. These three works together constitute a “transitional trilogy” preceding the events of the forthcoming Games Wizards Play.

The standalone ebook edition of YW: Lifeboats is now available at Ebooks Direct. A compendium volume, including Lifeboats and its two companion novellas, will be published in both print and ebook formats at Amazon.com in mid-September 2015.

Preorder “Games Wizards Play” at Amazon.com

'Games Wizards Play' cover by Cliff Nielsen
'Games Wizards Play' cover by Cliff Nielsen

‘Games Wizards Play’ cover by Cliff Nielsen

So here’s the cover of Games Wizards Play, which comes out on February 2, 2016, and is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com. (The cover artist is our old friend Cliff Nielsen.)

And if you need to get caught up with the series while you’re waiting for the hardcover: until May 17th we’re having a 50% off sale on the 9-book box set of the Young Wizards New Millennium Editions. (GWP slots neatly into the new NME timeline, taking place in the spring of 2011.)

What it’s about:

Every eleven years, Earth’s senior wizards hold the Invitational: an intensive three-week event where the planet’s newest, sharpest young wizards show off their best and hottest spells. Wizardly partners Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan, and Nita’s sister, former wizard-prodigy Dairine Callahan, are drafted in to mentor two brilliant and difficult cases: for Nita and Kit, there’s Penn Shao-Feng, a would-be sun technician with a dangerous new take on managing solar weather; and for Dairine, there’s shy young Mehrnaz Farrahi, an Iranian wizard-girl trying to specialize in defusing earthquakes while struggling with a toxic extended wizardly family that demands she perform to their expectations.

Together they’re plunged into a whirlwind of cutthroat competition and ruthless judging. Penn’s egotistical attitude toward his mentors complicates matters as the pair tries to negotiate their burgeoning romance. Meanwhile, Dairine struggles to stabilize her hero-worshipping, insecure protégée against the interference of powerful relatives using her to further their own tangled agendas. When both candidates make it through to the finals stage on the dark side of the Moon, they and their mentors are flung into a final conflict that could change the solar system for the better…

…or damage Earth beyond even wizardly repair.

How Lovely Are Thy Branches: A Young Wizards Christmas

JD 2455550.52 / December 20th, 2010: It’s five days till Christmas, and the day before the Winter Solstice. The biggest pre-Christmas blizzard seen for decades is heading straight for the New York metropolitan area. But in one small corner of the Town of Hempstead, everyone’s attention is on other business. That’s because there’s a party tonight at Juan and Marina Rodriguez’s house… and the guest of honor is a being from four hundred lightyears away who looks a whole lot like a Christmas tree.

 

The motive force behind the festivities is the redoubtable Carmela Rodriguez, intent on fulfilling her longtime intention to fulfill one of the great wishes of the wizard known as Filif — specifically, to finally get him into a full set of Christmas decorations. The two-day party that ensues (with an epic sleepover in the middle) brings together a cast of old and new friends to eat, drink, exchange presents, and see a few things the likes of which this world has never seen before…

 

This 35,000 word novelette is a canonical work in the Young Wizards universe and takes place between the events of A Wizard of Mars and the forthcoming Games Wizards Play. Purchase it here for USD $4.99 in all the major ebook formats:

 

 

(*Battle fleet not included)

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