Selachian posted:

Matt Christopher. A favorite of mine when I was a kid too (despite being totally unathletic in reality).

Big Bad Beetleborg posted:

Children's animated book published pre-1999 with a visual complexity somewhere between an Usborne puzzle book and Graeme Base. I'm not certain now if it was a puzzle book itself, or just had very complex drawings.

The only thing I can recall is that the young male(?) protagonist meets another boy who is sad, because at one stage he'd had a wish granted to be young/live forever and watched all his friends grow up and die.

wizzardstaff posted:

Is this How To Live Forever by Colin Thompson?

Maxus posted:

Can anyone help me? I've periodically trying to find a book I read more than twenty-five years ago when I was in elementary school. Would have been published before 94/95.

A fantasy book, maybe middle-grade, might have been for older readers (I was an advanced reader).

-There were two main characters, a boy and a girl (young man/young woman?) I remember the guy is introduced when he's walking down a forest trail a bird flies right by him, but he doesn't turn to look because he's only letting himself look backwards every mile or so. This distinctly stuck out to me because I couldn't imagine having the discipline to do that. He's a on a journey or something.

-I remember the heroine dies at one point, kinda early on, gets revived, and the hero is so glad he kisses her.

-I know the villainess is an evil sorceress queen. Who rules the country they're in. Seems like she's after the heroine?

-The couple find a house that I remember being shared by an old woman and a woodcutter(?). The old woman has treated the house's floor (waxed it?) so no evil can enter the house for a month, but the woodcutter works for the evil queen (more because he can't beat her or something, I remember it felt like) and grumbles about how it's the queen's country and if she finds she can't enter a house in her country there'll be trouble.

-Seems like the woodcutter got killed by a claw from a summoned dragon that he was turning to stone with his bestowed powers from the Queen (I think). He was doing something to it to render it immobile.

-Also, there's a part late in the book where the hero is riding on the back of serpent or a seal thing that can go through a magic shortcut and it's completely dark and so silent and he can hear the rush of blood in his ears.

I want to find this and read this and see how bonkers it is and what the actual plot was and it's been bugging me off and on ten years or more.

xcheopis posted:

This sounds very Susan Cooper.

Runcible Cat posted:

If it's Susan Cooper it's probably Seaward. The details ring a faint bell but it's been years since I read it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11308.Seaward

Runcible Cat posted:

Ed: yeah, Westerly's doing the not-looking-back thing on the first page.

Ed ed: pffft, q!=e

Maxus posted:

DUDE.

THIS IS IT.

This has resisted every attempt I've made to track it down based on googling details I remember for the past ten years and I'm not bad at it. It's stumped other "What's that book" threads.

Seriously, thank you. I just ordered this and then I'm going to read it.

quote:

So it's a fantasy with sci fi elements. Main character is an alien boy who's father is running a town that's a human town and has a human concubine that is the alien boy's stepmother one detail I remember is that he goes to some bad guys hideout and they're talking and the guy offers him food and the food looks terrible to the kid but he eats it anyway because he wants to show he's tough then the guy laughs at him and says it's rotten squid guts and basically to trust your instinct and not try to be so cool. At some point the kid turns into a human girl and is on a quest for something there's another character who becomes a Dragon Knight and that's pretty much what I remember it's also a book series

Runcible Cat posted:

If it's Susan Cooper it's probably Seaward. The details ring a faint bell but it's been years since I read it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11308.Seaward

Gejimayu posted:

Human Tornada posted:

My dad is trying to remember a sci-fi/mystery novel where an alien weapon on a moon of Mars shoots two warning shots, one through the Earth and one through Mars and it goes from there. Possibly from the 2000s. Anybody have any ideas?

Human Tornada posted:

My dad is trying to remember a sci-fi/mystery novel where an alien weapon on a moon of Mars shoots two warning shots, one through the Earth and one through Mars and it goes from there. Possibly from the 2000s. Anybody have any ideas?

Human Tornada posted:

My dad is trying to remember a sci-fi/mystery novel where an alien weapon on a moon of Mars shoots two warning shots, one through the Earth and one through Mars and it goes from there. Possibly from the 2000s. Anybody have any ideas?

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

It's a book by Lincoln childs or Douglas Preston. I remember it. Can't recall the name though. There's the initial one that blows the poo poo outta the moon and a shot at earth that ends up making some weird special gemstones that a dude gets hired by the government to investigate, I think. It gets tied all together at the end.

Human Tornada posted:

My dad's pretty sure it was Impact by Douglas Preston, that's exactly the kind of author he reads. Thanks all.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

It's a book by Lincoln childs or Douglas Preston. I remember it. Can't recall the name though. There's the initial one that blows the poo poo outta the moon and a shot at earth that ends up making some weird special gemstones that a dude gets hired by the government to investigate, I think. It gets tied all together at the end.

DreamingofRoses posted:

Here’s a weird, vague one that my mind dredged up from a decade ago that I want to reread. It was a fantasy/romance book that involved a magic system that required people to be paired up, one to act as drummer (I’m pretty sure it was specifically drums) for the other one. A woman gets reluctantly paired up as drummer for a playboy type character nicknamed ‘The Stallion’ (IIRC), but it turns out that he was actually inexperienced/a virgin at the end.

I read a lot of weird fantasy books in college.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

If it was kinda feminist based, it might be part of the Spellsong Cycle by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

I recall it has drums and rhythms and whatnot, but I bailed on it after the first book.

The Chad Jihad posted:

Dude gets sucked into a fantasy world, discovers that their magic system can like, be translated into binary or something and uses that to become super good at magic. There was also a dumb sub-plot where the love interest thought he was only interested in her because she cast a love spell on him, but it turned out the spell didn't work to begin with. In the end he actually loses to the head evil guy because he's still a novice with no stamina but another wizard saves the day (the only interesting part). I feel like riding dragons may have featured

Popped into my head because it's basically one of those garbage isekai stories but it had to be at least a decade or two old and before those got really big

Stupid_Sexy_Flander posted:

P.N. Elrod has a vamp detective series, can't recall much about it though. Remember any other details? Ebook or paperback? Cover art? Plot? What was the mystery about?

I'm wondering if I read it, this seems to be the kind of crap I used to read and still do read all the time.

regulargonzalez posted:

I've intentionally forgotten most of it but sounds a bit like Off To Be The Wizard

The Chad Jihad posted:

That was too recent, however you still get the credit as reading that books description led me to google "magic is computer code book" which popped up Wizards Bane which is what I was looking for

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/631233.Wizard_s_Bane#bookDetails
(Fun fact the main characters name is literally Wiz)

Shrecknet posted:

I read a book about a police detective in cleveland who gets turned into a vampire and solves crimes with his human partner. It's not Simon R Green, or it might be - but it's not his nightside series. Date it to approximately 2010-2015. Cannot for the life of me remember the title or author. Any help?

Shrecknet posted:

Its not the Vampire Files, those were in Prohibition Chicago. It was modern day and he was dealing with his son being a vampire too while he was still human (he turns at the end)

It was contemporary and in paperback, had a lime green or yellow box on the cover and was a pretty lighthearted book, not grimdark. The finale was at a dam.

TommyGun85 posted:

Late 80s or early 90s fantasy. I only remember snippets:

- exiled holy knight who returns home
- theres a thief kid who ends up being his squires kid
- theres a little mute girl who is actually a goddeas
- theres a haunted castle
- he has to go into a tomb to retrieve a spear
- theres a gollum ripoff character