Sabriel

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.

Much like my own cat, Mogget is actually a primordial monster trapped in the body of a cat by magic, and for every time he does something deceptively cute, he also does something to remind you that he is one unsupervised moment away from going on a blood-soaked rampage.

In addition to understanding that cats are equal parts eldritch horrors and cool little buddies, Garth Nix also invented one of the most truly original magic systems that I’ve encountered.

If I can tell a character is scared and emotional about their mission and then they force themselves to do the right thing despite that fear, I get a warm spot in my chest and think “I want to be brave like that, too.” Sabriel is an amazing heroine because she goes into extremely scary places, accepting her calling as the Abhorsen and learning to ring these bells of death that help her to send dead monsters back to the underworld. I love her grit and courage as she gets the job done, even though it’s absolutely terrifying! This book… show more.

Now, this is the one book on the list where the school itself isn’t magical, but this has been one of my favorite fantasy books since I was about twelve years old. In Nix’s classic fantasy, Ancelstierre is divided into the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom. Sabriel is sent to a boarding school in the New Kingdom, which echoes the feel of twentieth-century Great Britain. Across the Wall in the Old Kingdom, magic exists and dead things have a tendency not to stay dead, and Sabriel’s father is the Abhorsen, a necromancer tasked with keeping the dead from wreaking… show more.