Forum: scifi.stackexchange.com
Tags: <story-identification><magic>
Title: Fantasy book where character can see visible magic elemental threads of different colors and lengths
Question: I read this book between 1989 and 1998, I can't remember its title, book cover, or author. The only thing I can remember is a loose idea on how the magic system worked.  In this book the main character could see strands/threads of various lengths and colors in the environment. The character could pull on one of these threads to tap into the power. The color represented a specific element while the length represented the amount of power that could be pulled from the thread.

Answers:
sents: text: This was the magic system in Changeling , by Roger Zelazny, and its sequel Madwand .
text: From the Wikipedia article: The strands he can use to perform magic are everywhere around him
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/21183/rojomoke
score: 10
sents: text: In Knights of Dark Renown by David Gemmell (1989), magic is tapped from "threads" of different colours accessible, with training, only by the "gifted".
text: The main character spies on a craftman-magician and eventually becomes his apprentice.
text: Green thread is nature-related and used for healing, black for Earth and for example used to make a sort of "boots of speed", and so on.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/55713/Fabio
score: 3
sents: text: I was googling the same terms looking for a specific book, which I eventually found!
text: The Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card.
text: I highly recommend this book.
text: Quote from Wikipedia: Hushidh Luet's older sister, she is a raveler: able to see the relationships between people manifested as threads in her vision.
text: This gives her remarkable insight into what people are thinking, as well as the ability to know what well-chosen words will break weak threads.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/84196/Venar303
score: 2
sents: text: That sounds like the magic system in the Chapel Hollow series by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.
text: The Thread That Binds the Bones is probably the one in question, it was published in 1993 and had a male protagonist.
text: He can shift his vision to see colored threads that he can manipulate and pull or weave to perform the equivalent of magic in the setting.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/22668/Viergacht
score: 1
sents: text: Could this be Bad Magic by Stephan Zielinski (2004)?
text: Magic is real.
text: Strange forces and uncanny creatures abound.
text: Cosmic evil is loose in the world--especially around San Diego--along with transcendent evil, primordial evil, simmering evil, objective evil, and specific evil.
text: The main character created a cloak of invisibility by pulling threads of invisibility from the homeless.
text: (Not so much being invisible but, unnoticeable like people couldn't focus on you.)
text: Also, he would go to the hospital burn wards and pull out red threads of pain from the patients.
text: One to help ease their pain but
text: , He would also use them for offensive means.
text: I think he ran a shop and ended up getting pulled into some war between light and dark forces.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/116742/Steven Hill
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
This may have been the magic system in Cageling or Madwand by Roger Zelazny; Knights of Dark Renown  by David Gemmell; The Homecoming Saga  by Orson Scott Card; the Chapel Hollow series by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; or Could this be  Bad Magic  by Stephan Zielinski.
The book may be from the Chapel Hollow series by Kiriki Hoffman or is potentially one of the following: Changeling by Zelazny; Knights of Dark Renown by Gemmell; The Homecoming Saga by Scott Card; or Bad Magic by Zielinski.