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Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted meets L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Tamora Pierce’s Wild Magic in this character-driven YA fantasy about bodily autonomy, family, and sacrifice with a setting inspired by growing up on a permaculture homestead in Alaska.
A Source was easy to spot in a crowd. They demanded attention, quite literally outshining everyone else around them. Though they could not use magic themselves, they were the conduits funneling the magic of their ancestors into the hands of those Sworn to their service. The magic a Source channeled pooled in their bodies until it saturated them, oozing out from their every pore. Zaz’s grandmother, Elspeth, Source of Magic in Creshell and temporary Source of Magic in Lockwell, was the most stunning and intimidating person Zaz had ever seen. Her dark purple dress and rich white ermine shawl were lovely and undoubtedly expensive, but they were entirely overshadowed by her long, shining lavender hair, the delicate, iridescent shimmer of lilac body hair across her skin catching the light of the now setting sun, and her brilliant purple eyes that churned and burbled with power like a pot of boiling water.
-- The Source of Magic, Chapter 1
Zaz is an almost sixteen-year-old girl scraping a living out of the soil in an isolated border outpost, just waiting to be old enough to inherit her mother's position as Source of Magic in Lockwell. In order to prove that she is the new Source, Zaz must attempt (and fail) to swear a magically binding oath to her grandmother, the Source of Magic in neighboring Creshell. After all, no Source can swear fealty to another Source. When her brother unexpectedly becomes the Source instead, even though the position usually runs through the female line, Zaz is left magically bound to her grandmother, struggling to balance her responsibilities to her family with her desire for a grander life and a new romance with one of her grandmother’s guards.
Zaz soon discovers the consequences of the magic she receives from her grandmother: the oath she swore gave her grandmother control over everything she says and does. Having lost control over her own body, Zaz must try to retain her sense of self while uncovering the dark secrets of her parents’ deaths at her grandmother’s hands. She realizes that her brother, the new Source in Lockwell, is now the only person in the way of her grandmother claiming Lockwell for her own. With his life and the lives of everyone around him hanging in the balance, Zaz must find a way to smuggle him to safety before time runs out.
The Source of Magic was my first completed novel, a 100,000 word YA fantasy.
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