Sabriel

Three worlds in one book! There’s the not-so-important world of the Ancelstierre, roughly Edwardian or early-20th-Century-ish, and there’s the Old Kingdom, basically medieval, where Charter Magic wars with Free Magic (and how well Nix thinks through the workings of his forms of magic).

But the third world is the one that takes the cake! An underworld of the dead, with its different levels, gates, and sills. Sabriel discovers her own special inheritance and powers—OK, that’s standard fantasy fare, except that Sabriel’s powers are those of an abhorsen. It’s the Abhorsen’s role to make sure that the dead stay dead, and… show more.

When I reached the end and put this book down, I felt elated, at peace with the world once more. I had been reading so many crappy books with high hopes and promises that turned out to be big let downs, that Sabriel was a breath of fresh air.

I actually went into it expecting very little and it took a while for me to settle into the rhythm of this story but once I stopped holding my breath, waiting for the author to ruin everything, I found myself thoroughly enjoying it.

The story doesn't get bogged down in emotions,… show more.

I loved this book both because Garth Nix is an amazing storyteller and because of its fictional setting on the cusp of an industrial era. Most inhabitants deny or don’t believe in undead and ghouls, but they do exist.

This story kept me reading up at night, well past the hours I should have been asleep, and will be a book I reread in the future. 

Sabriel by Australian author Garth Nix is a YA dark fantasy that captivated me with its visceral descriptions of Charter magic and the brutal realism of life in the Old Kingdom—where the dead do walk.

The protagonist, Sabriel, is raised in a mundane, magic-less world beyond the Wall but is thrust into a realm teeming with dark magic as she searches for her missing father. This journey forces her to grapple with her identity as she navigates the expectations of others who see her only as her father's successor while she remains steadfast in her determination to find and rescue… show more.

I love magic and mystery and this book has plenty of it, along with a river of death. The first of three books, we meet the main characters here and become embedded in their world. Once started I couldn’t put this (or its sequels) down. I fall in line and live in the strange lands depicted here. Ride the river of death to bring back a lost soul. I became anxious about the fate of Sabriel and absorbed in a tale of a land I could never visit

Sabriel was one of the first fantasy novels I picked up and read. In my early search, I found it difficult to find good fantasy stories that featured female heroines both realistically and respectfully. That’s why I was so delighted when I found this book.

Sabriel is the 18-year-old daughter of the Abhorsen, and she’s called to an epic quest filled with strange magics and deathly dangers. I like that she has lots of help along the way, besides being a necromancer herself who’s following in her father’s footsteps.

Personally, I don’t like my book heroes to come pre-packaged and… show more.

When her father goes missing, Sabriel leaves college to find him. The plot sounds like a simple retrieval story, however, Sabriel’s father is the Abhorsen, a magician charged with keeping the dead in the Old Kingdom across the wall from rising and attacking the ‘normal’ world. Of course, one powerful necromancer is already attempting to break through. I was completely enamored with the idea of the magical and normal worlds being merely across a wall from each other, but even more fascinated by Sabriel’s ability to enter—and leave—another realm: Death.

One of my all-time favorites, Sabriel follows the story of a young necromancer as she battles the forces of the underworld to save the Old Kingdom from a looming darkness. When her father is attacked by an evil spirit and trapped in death, Sabriel becomes the next Abhorsen—and must take up the grisly task of putting the undead to rest. I have read this book so many times that I’m surprised the pages haven’t fallen out of the spine. The world is darkly immersive, and the magic system is fantastic. Sabriel’s bravery in the face of unimaginable evil is something… show more.

In this story we follow an apprentice necromancer, Sabriel, in her search for her disappeared father. Regularly, she has to step into the afterlife, and each time it is a more desperate and dangerous journey, hard to get back from. 

There are many worlds within worlds in that one, between a kingdom set in science versus the old kingdom seeped in magic, between the living struggling in a perpetual winter, and the afterlife, dark and void, between the present lost in a broken post-war era versus the past desperate to repair what was lost. This is an adventure that starts… show more.

I have still never read anything else like Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom books. Sabriel, the phenomenal introduction to Nix’s world of necromancers and seers, talking animals, and gated rivers flowing down into Death, follows the daughter of the current Abhorsen—the bell-wielding, good necromancer who keeps the dead dead—as she learns about her heritage and inheritance and gets swept up in her father’s old conflicts. Featuring the most catlike cat fiction has ever seen, a kingdom-sweeping, perilous journey, and one of the coolest magic systems I’ve read. Every time I enter the Old Kingdom, I am incredibly reluctant to leave.