Friday Memes: Across the Great Barrier by Patricia C. Wrede

 Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Being a heroine is nowhere near the fun folks make it out to be. 

Friday 56:

Professor Torgeson seemed a bit absent-minded as she tied her horse to the hitching rail. Her eyes kept straying to the faint shimmer in the air about halfway across the river. It dawned on me that she'd never been through the Great Barrier Spell before. Vinland had no need of such a thing, being an island, and what with all the settlement failures, the Settlement Office hadn't called on any of the college magicians for help since she'd arrived.

This week I am spotlighting Across the Great Barrier by Patricia C. Wrede. It is the second in her Frontier Magic Trilogy. I read these as they were published ten or more years ago. This time I am mainly listening to the audiobooks. Here is the description from Amazon:

From New York Times number-one best-selling author Patricia C. Wrede, the second in the series of magic on the western frontier.

Eff is riding west, away from the safety of the frontier city she's always known.... 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.

With wit, magic, and a touch of good pioneer sense, Patricia C. Wrede once again weaves a fantastic tale of the very wild west.