The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs
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A lovely, short, fantasy/horror combo about a pair of wizards dealing with a slowly unfolding curse.
To be clear, these are not fire and brimstone wizards, daring all to master the cosmos. These wizards sit up late eating cheese and crackers, drinking, and smoking pipes by the fire. They tell tales, feel afraid, play jokes, confess ignorance, and resent boring food. They have friends who are not merely plot devices, but rather are people with whom they enjoy spending time. They leave notes for their housekeepers when they leave town.
The writing (as a matter of style) is actually a bit homely, but, then, so is the story (at least in the older sense of homely, which we normally use homey to convey in modern usage). That homeliness is actually a big part of what makes the story charming for me. I enjoy seeing fantasy in the humanistic vein of The Hobbit, that deals with relatable, comfort-loving people who remain relatable even as the stakes climb. The slow-building horror in the book is mostly in the unheimlich style: out-of-place things accumulate and are generally more unsettling than dangerous (although occasionally quite dangerous). This creates a nice contrast with the general coziness of the rest of the narrative.
Highly recommended for lovers of fantastical horror, or fantasy generally. This was billed (at least in some parts of the internet) as a children's or young adult book, but I think that's just because the author also wrote young adult fiction. I'm not sure this would be a good fit for most younger readers as it's really genuinely frightening (even for an adult!), although the generally prosaic style and the lack of gore or body horror might make it a good fit for a young reader who enjoys being frightened.