Lifeboats is a full 90,000 word Young Wizards story. The planet Tevaral is about to be destroyed by its moon, and a large group of wizards have been recruited to help with the evacuation. The only problem is that a large subset of the population doesn’t want to leave.

Lifeboats is told entirely through Kit’s POV. The other characters do appear, of course, but for the most part Lifeboats is focused on Kit. I was all right with this set up, but I still would have liked more time with the other characters as well. That said, Kit was really the only one who had an impact on the plot, so it makes sense that Duane’s following him (plus this story deals with Kit’s feelings about Ponch).

Diane Duane purposefully wrote Lifeboats to be a different type of Young Wizards story. Instead of a small group of characters working alone, in Lifeboats they are at the periphery of a large group project. Thus, Lifeboats isn’t as climatic as many of the other Young Wizards stories. It is more focused on the emotions of the various characters, particularly Kit. It also gives a different view of wizardry.

The previous two stories ("Not On My Patch" and "How Lovely Are Thy Branches") were both in the holiday specials vein. This wasn’t as true with Lifeboats, but the story does take place near Valentine’s Day, which gives Duane a handy reason to explore the changes in Nita and Kit’s relationship. In this vein, Lifeboats was a bit more explicit and “teen” than most of the prior stories have been. ( )