Category Archives: Fantasy

351E: Chest tattoo rite of passage women

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The book I’m looking for I read sometime in the late 90’s early 00’s, I got it from a local bookseller, possibly a rummage sale in Utah. It was about a teenager who was older than most in her tribe(?) and hadn’t yet gone through the rite of passage all women in the tribe go through, and so still wore the high collars of a child. Most women wore lower cut dresses to display the spiral stick-and-poke tattoos that showed they were considered women in the tribe. (I think the cover showed this?) She was scared of the rite, which involved a bear, and she’d had a failed try at it. Eventually she went to the woods to find her own bear and came back changed, she’d found something there but not a bear I think, more like a god? And something to do with her mother or lineage maybe.

350R: Daughter of Lord Leads Resistance to Keep Father in Power (Solved!)

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I’m searching for a book that I can only remember the plot of. When I was around 13 I read a book about a girl who was the daughter of a lord. (I’m 35 now, so it would have been written 1998 or earlier). She was poor and was the leader of a small resistance trying to keep her father in his lordship. Eventually she got hurt and captured. She was brought to the capital. To the people she had spent over a year fighting. Once she got there she found that there was far more going on than she realized and the people she had been fighting were their own quiet resistance.
I don’t remember the picture on the front. It was YA, fantasy.
There was one scene that stood out. She received a gift from a “secret admirer”; it was a ring. Which finger you wore the ring on meant different things. She didn’t know that so she wore it on the one that fit.
I borrowed the book from the library and to this day I think about that book. I want to read it again but I can’t remember the title or author.

349Q: The Four Elementals and the Earth Children Raised in World with Magic

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The book was a children’s/YA book published sometime between 2005 and 2012. It was meant to be a quartet. I know 2 came out and I was curious if it was ever finished.
It had two main characters, a boy on earth who was disabled because he born on a world with magic. And a girl who is from earth but was raised in the world with magic, she’s the only one who can’t use magic and is immune to it.
There are evil magicians who can travel between the worlds, but doing so damages the worlds. The two main characters can move back and forth together but it damages the worlds. They’re told the only solution is to seek help from each of four elementals, societies of magic creatures that, if all four can be convinced to help, can make a bridge between the worlds in a safe way. Both of the main characters have to go to their birth worlds or it’s bad for the fabric of the universe or something, and this can only be accomplished with their help. The bad guys use dark magic and want to hunt them down. The boy struggles to learn the magic of his birth world. The first book dealt with the water elementals and the second with the earth elementals, I think. I think the name of the magic world started with an F
There’s a scene where the girl is on earth for the first time while they’re on the run and they go to a McDonald’s and she experiences a soda for the first time. I think her name starts with a K (Kira?)and the boy’s might be Marcus.

347V: Shape Shifting Amnesiac Becomes The Thunderbird

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I read this book in the 1970s or early 1980s. It is fiction/fantasy about a man with amnesia (modern times of the 1970s or 80s) who through adventures eventually discovers that he is a shape shifter who morphs into the SW Native (Indian) god/entity the Thunderbird. I think there are two books in the series and I seem to recall a female protagonist who also turns into a Thunderbird and the two characters go off into the sunrise together, but don’t quote me on that! The cover art was intriguing. And the end was sad because to become Himself as the Thunderbird the guy with amnesia had to give up the self he had become while in human form.

347E: The wizard, the chalice, and a wizardess that talks to trees

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I read this circa 1997-98 and it was from a used bookstore even then. Unfortunately, I lost track of it around 2003 and I don’t recall the title or author but I remember the plot pretty well.

It’s fantasy novel about a wizard; book starts with his training difficulties and at some point he gets terrible burn scars on his back. Time jump to him on a quest with other companions in search of a chalice. A noblewoman running from home stumbles into the mess but her hidden gift allows her save his life when he’s overwhelmed by the chalice’s defenses, though they are now bound together. After they both recover (separately; she was returned to her family) in the capital city, the country is at war from an attacking neighbor. The noblewoman makes friends with a young girl with a large purple birthmark on her face; she has also developed more magic, though she had always been able to talk to trees (she had run away from home because of her abusive father who hated magic). When the royal family is killed by a poisoned mist, the noblewoman’s young friend turns out to be a princess and becomes the next ruler. The noblewoman finds herself elevated to royal advisor.

The previous king didn’t trust the wizard because he was afraid of him, but the princess-turned-queen will listen to him because she trusts the noblewoman. The noblewoman moves into the wizard’s tower to learn magic; meanwhile the war is still going on.

In the end the wizard uses the chalice and sacrifices himself to defeat the enemy’s powerful mage. But due to the bond between them, the noblewoman-turned-wizard can still see him in the “other world” so she’s not alone.

Thanks again for your time!

347D: Cruel Soot Turns Good

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Hello all. I’ve been racking my brain for years over this one and I need some help. I remember my first grade teacher reading this kids’ chapter book to us in increments during class in the mid-90s, but I can’t recall many of the details. It’s bugged me to death for years.

Here’s what I can remember: The protagonist is female, probably an older kid or teenager. The book is written in third person and in English. The setting was a fantasy pre-modern city or town. Could be Victorian-esque, but maybe earlier or later. The villain is a cruel, miserable guy named (or nicknamed) Soot who wears all black and is feared throughout the area. I think he drives some kind of carriage or wagon but I’m not sure. The story opens with a king taking his last breath and then dying. The story ends with Soot turning good and joining the heroes in some kind of magic they’ve learned, and the protagonist falls asleep listening to their incantations. I think said incantations involve groups of three unrelated words, and the very last one mentioned was “dictionary”. The most frequently suggested titles, Awful Auntie and Keys to the Kingdom, are not the ones. I know this isn’t much to go on, but anyone who manages to put this to rest will have my gratitude.

347C: Book series about a magic school for teens

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The first book has a scene where the student almost dies due to a werewolf-like creature and is saved and recruited to a magic school. The school has a sanctuary for animals. The cooks at the school are Bob the troll and a hag who tries to eat the students on occasion. The main character learns how to the fight the werewolf-like creatures. The students play soccer on a magic field that changes (hills are added to the field during play). In one scene, the main character is in an art gallery and is almost killed, and the school is under attack in the last book of the series

345L: Children’s Book – Little Girl Trying to Hide a Giant (Cyclops?!)

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This was a book my father used to read to me at bedtime in the early/mid-90s. There was a little girl (perhaps with a pageboy haircut, pretty sure she had brown hair and bangs!) who, for reasons I cannot remember, comes upon a giant (who if memory serves had one giant eye) whom she has to hide. I feel like there may be a scene in a library and/or one involving a fence or hedge. I’ve been searching for this book for YEARS!
Thank you so much!

345C: Children’s Princess book with a dress making competition to find new Queen

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I’m looking for a book that I remember absolutely loving when I was about 6 or 7. The plot that I remember is about a young princess whose mother died when she was young. She loves dresses and her father the King thinks that as she grows up, it’s very important that she has a mother figure. So he (or maybe someone else) decides to start a kingdom-wide competition where all the women design their own gowns and there will be a big ball and the princess will choose which dress she likes best, and that will be her new mother. I think the book shows all the rich women in the kingdom spending all of their money on these fancy dresses and then there is a poor woman who makes her own beautiful and simple dress and goes to the ball and of course she gets picked to be the new Queen! I think there may be other details about the poor woman and the princess, but I can’t remember any! I thought that the title was something like The Princess Dress or something like that, but that may be completely wrong too.
This would be a fantasy children’s picture book. Probably aimed at grades kindergarten to second grade. I read it around the years of 2000-2002, but I don’t know when it was published.
I hope you can help! This has been driving me crazy for years!!