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Remember how I said that The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman made me feel like no one had ever gotten the walking dead trope that right? Well, someone did, and he did it in an entirely different way. Garth Nix's Abhorsen books revolve around the dead in a way no other secondary world fantasy I've ever read has. The heroine and titular character of the fist book, Sabriel, dies as she was being born, and her, known to her only by his title, the Abhorsen finds her spirit in Death and binds it to her body. In the first pages of the book, we're introduced to the world, the realm of Death, the strange relationship the dead have with the living, and to the strange, logical magic of the charter.
Except for her charter mark and the magic that goes with it, Sabriel is just like every other student at her upperclass girls boarding school, thinking about what university she wants to go to, and worrying about what will happen when she leaves, but when her father sends a dead spirit to give her the tools of his trade, the seven bells of a necromancer, but bound with the charter as no necromancer's bells ever are, she must cross the wall that separates the magical Old Kingdom from the land she grew up in.
The Old Kingdom is a land in disrepair, where, without the kings and queens and with two of the great charter stones broken with royal blood, the dead have swarmed into the land of the living. Dead spirits prey on the living to keep themselves in Life, free magic beings spread distraction wherever they go, and necromancers and free magic adepts bargain with and control some of these beings, sending them to do harm, even as they themselves are controlled by a dead thing more powerful than any of the rest, and he's hunting Sabriel...
And that's just the first book. Even after Sabriel restores the rightful king to the throne and binds Kerrigor, the dead prince who had been controlling the Old Kingdom, there are still problems. The south west of the Old Kingdom remains stubbornly outside of King Touchstone and Sabriel's control. No matter how many charter stones he erects, no matter how many dead things and necromancers she defeats, it won't stay free of the dead. The Clayr, the huge extended family of seers that dwell in the glaciers to the north, can see nothing at all in the region, until at last, they see one of their own, the sightless Lirael on the Red Lake in a reed boat with a dying man. Now she must leave the glacier...
( Cut for Sheer Length )
Except for her charter mark and the magic that goes with it, Sabriel is just like every other student at her upperclass girls boarding school, thinking about what university she wants to go to, and worrying about what will happen when she leaves, but when her father sends a dead spirit to give her the tools of his trade, the seven bells of a necromancer, but bound with the charter as no necromancer's bells ever are, she must cross the wall that separates the magical Old Kingdom from the land she grew up in.
The Old Kingdom is a land in disrepair, where, without the kings and queens and with two of the great charter stones broken with royal blood, the dead have swarmed into the land of the living. Dead spirits prey on the living to keep themselves in Life, free magic beings spread distraction wherever they go, and necromancers and free magic adepts bargain with and control some of these beings, sending them to do harm, even as they themselves are controlled by a dead thing more powerful than any of the rest, and he's hunting Sabriel...
And that's just the first book. Even after Sabriel restores the rightful king to the throne and binds Kerrigor, the dead prince who had been controlling the Old Kingdom, there are still problems. The south west of the Old Kingdom remains stubbornly outside of King Touchstone and Sabriel's control. No matter how many charter stones he erects, no matter how many dead things and necromancers she defeats, it won't stay free of the dead. The Clayr, the huge extended family of seers that dwell in the glaciers to the north, can see nothing at all in the region, until at last, they see one of their own, the sightless Lirael on the Red Lake in a reed boat with a dying man. Now she must leave the glacier...
( Cut for Sheer Length )
