Second book of the Frontier Magic series by Patricia C. Wrede.
Eff could be a powerful magician if she wanted to. Except she's not sure she wants that kind of responsibility. Everyone keeps waiting for her to do something amazing — or to fail in a spectacular way. Worse, her twin brother, Lan, a powerful double seventh son, is jealous of all the attention she's been getting. Even as Eff protests that she's just an ordinary girl, she's asked to travel past the Barrier Spell with one of the new professors at her father's school. The land west of the Barrier is full of dangers, both magical and wild. Eff will need to use all her strength—magical and otherwise—to come safely back home.
This book provides examples of:
- All of the Other Reindeer: Eff's teachers and classmates bully her after she ends the mirror bug plague.
- Ambiguous Situation: Eff doesn't know if Brant is an Extreme Doormat and letting the neighbors bully their children, or if he's trying his best but the other Rationalist kids are too cruel. The same goes for him stopping Rennie from doing magic on the side. He's genuinely dedicated to his belief that a life without magic is healthier, but Rennie accuses him that there's some spite behind him busting her.
- Berserk Button: Wash has a thing about settlers doing their protection spells properly.
- Blessed with Suck: Lan finds out that there's a downside to having so much power. He accidentally causes an explosion in class when experimenting.
- Didn't Think This Through: Rennie's decision to elope with Brant and move with him to the Rationalist outpost shows more consequences of her thoughtlessness. In addition to raising a family when they're too young and he has the pressure as a prominent Rationalist spokesman, he gets wise to her doing little magic on the side. On principle, he makes her stop, which means the mosquitoes and annoying bugs invade their home. Rennie also didn't consider that her kids would face Fantastic Racism merely for the fact that she practices magic.
- Everyone Is Armed: Beyond the border enchantment that keeps magical and pleistocene animals out of the settled areas, being armed is a basic necessity of survival. This is apparent as soon as one enters the very first frontier settlement just outside the barrier.
- Fantastic Flora: Magical plants are a staple of the setting. Sometimes as staple foodstuffs, even.
- Germanic Efficiency: The leader of the saber-cat hunting group is vaguely Aryan-looking and comes from a settlement with a German name. He's very efficient about the whole business.
- Happy Ending Override: When Eff visited Rennie and Brant the first time in the previous book, the two seem to be Happily Married and Rennie is still doing some magic on the side. Here, he apparently got wise to it and so there's no more bug repellant charms or such. In addition, their children are bullied by others for the crime of Rennie having done magic and are blamed for a potential plague. This leads to Rennie accusing Brant of being an Extreme Doormat, and the two have more tension when Eff visits them again.
- Hope Sprouts Eternal: The grub-eaten land is slowly recovering from the mirror-bug plague.
- How Unscientific!: Torgeson has a problem with publishing untested hypotheses.
- Mr. Exposition: Wash about Promised Land settlement
- Old Maid: Allie starts worrying about not getting any younger when Mr. Boden starts walking Eff home.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Against animals because they are immune to magic.
- Single Specimen Species: A few things in the menagerie. They hope to change this.
