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Margaret Ball's Lost in Translation, a portal fantasy about a college student who accidentally ends up in Fantasyland on her way to spend a semester abroad in Europe, is not just a nineties fantasy novel but in fact THE MOST NINETIES FANTASY OF ALL. Our Heroine Allie probably hung out with Cher from Clueless in high school; now she is in college, she totes a Walkman and a giant backpack of spare batteries all the way around Fantasyland, and Margaret Ball wastes no opportunity to remind us that she is constantly listening to Pearl Jam and Hootie and the Blowfish.

That is one of my favorite things about the book. My other favorite thing is how it takes poor clueless Allie a solid hundred pages to figure out that Fantasyland is not actually JUST EUROPE. She has a lot of conversations that go like this:

ALLIE: So everybody seems to walk everywhere here at school! I guess this town is a pedestrian zone?
FANTASYLANDER: . . . what else would we do, fly?
ALLIE: Oh, that sophisticated European sense of humor!

FANTASYLANDER: Allie, how about we go to the market to buy you a bolt of fabric for the tailor to make into a tunic and trousers for you?
ALLIE: Golly, bespoke tailors? People here are so trendy about their clothes! None of this mass-produced junk here! EUROPEANS, AMIRITE

FANTASYLANDER: I am off to magic class to learn some magic to protect our magic land from the magic monsters that beset it.
ALLIE: Huh, who knew Europeans were so into D&D?

Allie's cluelessness also extends into people skills, as her nineties Silicon Valley-child daddy issues promptly lead her to imprint like a baby duckling on the evil mage who summoned her into fantasyland to begin with. She ends up as his lab assistant, and is so haplessly excited to have a real job for the first time in her life that even the evil mage is like, "man, too bad I have to ritually sacrifice her for my evil plans, it'll be like killing a sweet dim kitten."

Allie actually overhears this conversation, with the aftermath as follows:

EVIL MAGE: I am totally not planning to ritually sacrifice you, despite having plainly said so ten seconds ago. That was ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING, would you like straight As in all your first-year classes?
ALLIE: Oh my god, you're trying to BRIBE ME WITH A GRADE?!?!
EVIL MAGE: Wait, what?
ALLIE: I bet you're going to fire me as your lab assistant too!
EVIL MAGE: Yes, because you will be sacrificed -- wait, what?
ALLIE: You never loved me at all! JUST LIKE DADDY.
EVIL MAGE: ??????

Then she trips and cracks her head open on the floor. The evil mage is so relieved that he decides to drop out for a glass of wine before completing the ritual sacrifice, which gives Our Brooding Hero With a Tragic Backstory time to conveniently drop in and rescue her so they can get on with their quest through Fantasyland.

Meanwhile, one of Allie's school friends gets tragically transformed into a sentient phallic clay pot. I just feel like this is worth mentioning.

My other other other favorite part: ( spoilers for the end )