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.