Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) [Hardcover]

Garth Nix (Author), Leo and Diane Dillon (Illustrator)

Book Description

Series: The Abhorsen Trilogy | Publication Date: September 27, 1996

Ever since she was a tiny child, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the random  power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who won't stay dead.  But now her father, the Mage Abhorsen, is missing, and to find him Sabriel must cross back into the world.

Though her journey begins alone, she soon finds companions: Mogget, whose seemingly harmless feline form hides a powerful-and perhaps malevolent-spirit, and Touchstone, a younger Charter Mage long imprisoned by magic, now free in body but still trapped by painful memories.

With threats on all sides and only each other to trust, the three must travel deep into the Old Kingdom, toward a battle that will pit them against the true forces of life and death-and bring Sabriel face-to-face with her own hiddden destiny.
A tale of dark secrets, deep love, and dangerous magic, Sabriel introduces Garth Nix an exceptional new talent.

Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Mage Abhorson, is missing, and Sabriel must cross into that world to find him. With Mogget, whose feline form hides a powerful, perhaps malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage, Sabriel travels deep into the Old Kingdom. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life—and comes face to face with her own hidden destiny. . . Garth Nix’s first young adult novel, Sabriel was recently nominated for the Aurealis Award for Excellence in Science Fiction in Australia.

Notable Children’s Books of 1997 (ALA)
1997 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1997 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror 1996 (VOYA)
Books in the Middle: Outstanding Books of 1996 (VOYA)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After receiving a cryptic message from her father, Abhorsen, a necromancer trapped in Death, 18-year-old Sabriel sets off into the Old Kingdom. Fraught with peril and deadly trickery, her journey takes her to a world filled with parasitical spirits, Mordicants, and Shadow Hands. Unlike other necromancers, who raise the dead, Abhorsen lays the disturbed dead back to rest. This obliges him--and now Sabriel, who has taken on her father's title and duties--to slip over the border into the icy river of Death, sometimes battling the evil forces that lurk there, waiting for an opportunity to escape into the realm of the living. Desperate to find her father, and grimly determined to help save the Old Kingdom from destruction by the horrible forces of the evil undead, Sabriel endures almost impossible exhaustion, violent confrontations, and terrifying challenges to her supernatural abilities--and her destiny.

Garth Nix delves deep into the mystical underworld of necromancy, magic, and the monstrous undead. This tale is not for the faint of heart; imbedded in the classic good-versus-evil story line are subplots of grisly ghouls hungry for human life to perpetuate their stay in the world of the living, and dark, devastating secrets of betrayal and loss. Just try to put this book down. For more along this line, try Nix's later novel: Shade's Children. (Ages 12 and older) --Emilie Coulter

From Publishers Weekly

Sabriel is her last year at Wyverley College, a private school in Ancelstierre, where Magic does not work, but near the Border with the Old Kingdom, where it does. She and her father are also highly skilled necromancers, who fight the dead who seek to return to Life. But when her father is somehow trapped in Death, she must journey into the Old Kingdom to find him. She does not know that it is wracked by struggle (like that in Ursula LeGuin's The Farthest Shore)-a magician has brought chaos by refusing to die and hopes to use Sabriel and her father to further consolidate his power. Sabriel goes on a long journey throughout a densely imagined world, learning as she goes, and meeting such strange characters as Mogget, a raging natural force contained in the shape of a cat. She also develops a relationship with Touchstone, a young man who turns out to be as crucially involved as she is. Although Sabriel is possessed of much heavy knowledge ("A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don't feel young any more"), she is still a teenager and vulnerable where her father and love for Touchstone are concerned, making her a sympathetic heroine. Rich, complex, involving, hard to put down, this first novel, an Australian import, is excellent high fantasy. The suitably climactic ending leaves no loose ends, but readers will hope for a sequel. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 13 and up
  
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: HarperTeen (September 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060273224
• ISBN-13: 978-0060273224
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (593 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,151,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Garth Nix has worked as a bookseller, book sales representative, publicist, editor, marketing consultant and literary agent. He also spent five years as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. A full-time writer since 2001, more than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world and his work has been translated into 38 languages. Garth's books have appeared on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Publishers Weekly (US), The Bookseller(UK), The Australian and The Sunday Times (UK). He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lush, completely imaginative fantasy-adventure, September 19, 2000

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) (Mass Market Paperback)

Possibly one of the greatest fantasy adventures of our times, Garth Nix's first novel is a lush, magical, dark-witty adventure about a young woman's battle with the hideous Dead.

The story starts with a flashback in which a special necromancer named Abhorsen saves his baby daughter Sabriel from a creature called Kerrigor, in the spiritual river of death. Many years later, at an English-esque boarding school, Sabriel must take up her father's magical sword and bells and try to find out what has happened to him. To do so, she must leave her relatively high-tech home for the Old Kingdom, where magic rules and evil things are stalking her.

Along the way, she is accompanied by the guard Touchstone and the menacing/funny cat-spirit Mogget. They must try to defeat the evil Kerrigor, who wants to blast the Charter which keeps all things from descending into evil.

Sabriel is the best fantasy hero I've read about since Lord of the Rings. Too many fantasy heroines are either damsels or warrior women--Sabriel is neither. She acts and thinks precisely like a young woman in her position. Strong, intriguing, and no slack with a sword in a bad situation, she is a wonderful role model.

Touchstone is a darling, but Mogget really is unique. Is he evil? Good? Or some peculiar mix? This ancient spirit forced to live as a cat is enslaved to the Abhorsen family for the good of everyone (we get a glimpse of how dangerous he is). The world that Garth Nix dreamed up, a mixture of Tolkien and WW2 England, is unparalleled in the fantasy genre. It's populated by animated ghouls, ghastly Mordicants, the almost-human sendings, Charter ghosts, the inhabitants of the river of Death, where only Abhorsens go, and so on...

His writing style is lush and hypnotic--you can actually see the events unfolding in front of your eyes, in this wintry but inviting world.

Thankfully, Mr. Nix appears to be writing a pair of sequels--I can hardly wait. Anyone else think this should be made into a movie?

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark fantasy for all ages, March 3, 2003

By 

bonsai chicken (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) (Mass Market Paperback)

Sabriel is the latest in a long line of powerful necromancers who can not only raise the dead but whose task it is to set the undead to rest. Residing at a private school away from home, she receives a message that her father is trapped somewhere beyond the realm of the dead. She must travel back to the Old Kingdom where she was born to free him, but finds herself pursued by dead forces which she may very well lack the training and experience to combat.

Sabriel's world is an unusual one in that there is magic as well as technology, but this book focuses more on the characters and leaves much of the world around them only hinted at. In addition, the author drops us right into the action with little preamble. This is disorienting at first, but it enables the reader to feel firmly entrenched in the world of the novel, and less like an outsider who is only reading about it.

While the story has a slow beginning, once Sabriel begins her journey it is gripping and suspenseful. It is not exactly horror, but its imagery does set it firmly in the realm of dark fantasy. And although it is written for and marketed to younger readers, adults should not find it beneath them. The story is complete but one gets the feeling that there is still much to explore, and I am very much looking forward to doing so in the books that follow.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of Sabriel, May 16, 2000

By 

Tamsin Green - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) (Mass Market Paperback)

We've all read stories starring the tough girl, out to kick the world head over tail kind of character. Sadly, these characters all too often have nothing better to do with their time than to wander around playing hero. Don't get me wrong- I love books with female heroines. But sometimes you get that feeling that they lack- well- heart. All too often the tough girl stance gets taken a little too far. Which is why I love this book. Sabriel is entirely human- a young woman who has her own goals, her own life, and who manages to uphold her values without ever giving in. Yet staunchness does not make the character; Sabriel's basic humanity is what lets her reach out and touch you from within her paper world. She gets angry, she gets even. She loves Touchstone, hates the evil that has invaded the Kingdom, treasures her father, respects Mogget. . . . It is almost a relief to 'meet' a character with such basic reasons. Don't get me wrong; there's nothing elemental about Sabriel. She has her reasons for doing what she does, and Gareth Nix does an exceptional job of writing within the female Psyche. I have, on occassion, run into those few and far between writers whose opposite sex characters behave nothing like real people, and have always regretted the experience. Okay- anyway, I found Nix's characters to be richly portrayed, human, rational, and logical. Better still was his world- on one side, a person might have a life much like ours. On the other you have a place where magic still thrives, and the great charters rule the land. The tension is nicely played out, the book climaxes nicely, and the end is resolved fairly satisfactorially. I certainly would not quibble with the concept of a sequel- In fact, for a book this good, I can only hope that at some point Nix returns and writes a sequel- either about Sabriel or about one of the Abhorsens before her; maybe the story of her father or the woman who built the paperwings. One can only hope.