What book is this??

January 22, 2020 5:09 AM

Do you ever remember this one random thing from a book but it isn't enough to get good results from Google? Please help me figure out where this is from! It's a fantasy novel that I read in the last three or four years, but it might not be recent. It's probably by a woman because I rarely read books by men. Details below.

So in this book, there are temples and the temples have like buckets of tiles with symbols/runes that people use for fortune-telling. Like when a baby is born, they draw a tile to see the baby's fate, and the kid carries that tile with them. They can also use it to get guidance for their current issues. The tiles are different based on where the temple is (ie poorer villages have like older ones or whatever). The protagonist draws some super rare tile.

I don't think this is the Ann Leckie Imperial Radch books. What book is it, though???

posted by leesh to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Not exactly what you're describing but tiles are used to communicate with the gods in Ann Leckie's recent book The Raven Tower. You mention liking her so perhaps that?
posted by Wretch729 at 5:42 AM on January 22, 2020

Best answer: I’m pretty sure this is one of the books from Sharon Shinn’s “Elemental Blessings” series. They definitely have this exact mechanism - people pull blessings in a temple for babies and then for guidance as adults. I think at least the first two books have one of the protagonists pulling rare blessings. The blessings are runes carved on small coins or tiles.
posted by cimton at 5:52 AM on January 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: YES!! It is totally those Sharon Shinn books. THANK YOU.
posted by leesh at 5:55 AM on January 22, 2020