Ongoing Effort to Re-Title “World of Tiers” (Not, Apparently, Its Real Name)

Thank you all very much for your multitude of comments and suggestions!

I agree that The Thing of Thing and Thing is horrifically cliched as the form of a title in YA fantasy novels. I also agree that

Thresholds of Air and ShadowDoorways of Air and Shadow

Or some other variant is not terrible, despite fitting the X of Y and Z format.

I also agree with Sandstone that anything with “doorways” runs the risk of recalling “Every Heart a Doorway,” which is not desirable for several reasons, so thanks for pointing that out, Sandstone!

I’d be fine with something to do with tigers and dragons, but had somehow forgotten about Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, though I did feel like I was forgetting something. Therefore, anything that combines tigers and dragons is unfortunately a no-go.

So I was playing around with all this last night, particularly with suggestions to just ditch every suggestion similar to the above and do something else.

Here’s what I’m thinking of at this point:

Twelve Gates to Midnight

I don’t especially like that for this book, though in fact I might like it for a different book. That is, I like it as a book title, but perhaps not for this particular book. Among other things, the midnight tier is not in fact all that important. The nightmare tier is — but I am NOT putting nightmare into the title in any way whatsoever. This isn’t horror! Nothing could more forcefully shove the general impression toward horror than a title containing the word “nightmare.” Also, the nightmare realm isn’t twelve steps from the center of the world.

So then I thought: How many layers of the world are there? Thirteen. What can I do that might suggest something sort of SE Asian flavored? I don’t want to evoke China; the setting isn’t Chinese-flavored. Therefore, not “jade” or whatever else particularly calls China to mind. So …

Thirteen Petals of the World

or just

Thirteen Petals

How does that strike you ? I sort of like it. Add a waterlily or something on the cover —

Image from Pixabay

The lotus flower is, it turns out, the national flower of Vietnam, so it seems like a flower of this kind could evoke the setting. The national flower of Thailand is the goldenrain tree, which is lovely but doesn’t have the same single-flower-with-lots-of-petals thing going for it. Jasmine, Hibiscus, there are various possibilities, but count the petals above. A lotus flower like this can be pictured with thirteen petals.

The tiers are listed right there, up front, before the story opens, anybody can count them if they are so inclined and note that there are thirteen, even before any character explicitly thinks anything about the number of tiers of the world. And, in fact, I could perfectly easily have a character refer to the world as “thirteen petals” or as “a flower with thirteen petals,” though if I did that, I would look for just a small handful of other poetic metaphors to add to the story. Which is not a terrible barrier.

So that’s what I’m leaning toward now. Comments?

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