I will meet idiots today, went one version of her after-waking meditation, and one of them will probably be me. Iau Hau’hai, Queen of Life and of Making Things Work, grant me of Your courtesy the courage to shred that idiot’s ears when I meet her, and then get on with work… for being right is nothing next to having things be right…

From The Big Meow by Diane Duane.

I strongly recommend reading The Book of Night With Moon and To Visit The Queen (American title)/On Her Majesty’s Wizardly Service (UK title), before reading The Big Meow. In even the first chapter of each book in this series there are (necessarily) spoilers about aspects, sometimes major aspects, of how the previous books turn out.

Here are links to the Kindle Store for both of those other books (you can read Kindle books on most computers and a variety of other devices, you don’t need a Kindle):

The Book of Night with Moon
To Visit The Queen

Those books are also often available used for very little money.

Here is a link to the currently free online edition of The Big Meow (3rd book in the series):

The Big Meow

They’re a series about a bunch of cat wizards, and they’re the only books I’ve ever read that have even half-plausible cat characters. Not that they got it perfect (or anything else perfect), but it’s a hell of a lot better than Tailchaser’s Song and the like. They’re also a very rare type of book that get at aspects of reality most books don’t, if you know what you’re looking for. (Much like Momo or A Wrinkle in Time.) So they’re good even without the cats. Some people have told me there were problems in the plot of some kind… but honestly, I’m not some kind of professional academic literary type who knows what plot “should” and “shouldn’t” be like, I just like certain books, and I loved these books.