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attackfishRemember 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...
Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen are fantastic. Run out and read them right now. Really, the descriptions of Death alone as a creepy, cold, dangerous place with its precincts and the ever-present river that acts like no river in Life, and the way the dead, even in Life can feel its waters, oooooh. I'm not a visual person, but the way Nix talks about every part of his world made me want to go there.
I like urban fantasy, but my heart goes to secondary world fantasy each and every time. I want the author to write a world I could get lost in, and Nix does exactly that in the Old Kingdom books. The bones of the world might be Medieval, but it doesn't feel that way. I wanted to work in the Clayr's library and fly a paperwing, and sail out to sea where magic is washed away, and I wanted to whistle charter marks and ring the Abhorsen's bells. In other words, I wanted to do everything that was dangerous in Nix's world.
Also, there's something about realistic modern politics in the "modern" side of the wall (though really Ancelstierre felt more like pre-WWII) interfering with government in the Old Kingdom that really makes me wan to take these books to bed with me at night like a literary teddy bear. It might just be that I'm a political science major, but really, we don't see enough realistic politics in fantasy, especially YA fantasy.
Nix also manages to write fantastic female characters, both leads and secondary characters. The Disreputable Dog ("Disreputable Bitch if you want to get technical") is hilarious, brilliant, and very much a dog, Lirael is moody, teenage, and wonderfully curious, Sabriel is overconfidant, quick to anger, and at the same time frightened of everything she has to do. Of course she doesn't let that stop her. He doesn't shortchange his male characters either. I want a Nick and a Mogget of my own. Mogget, a catlike spirit of malcontent, actually reminds me of my dog, who thankfully does not talk, and Nick, as he stays blind, almost to his distruction, of the very different logic of the Old Kingdom from his home in Ancelstierre, made me want to read more, even as everyone else was having adventures. He gets his own adventures too, in the novella "Nicolas Sayre and the Creature in the Case" in the anthology of Nix's stories, Across the Wall.
Lirael and Nick are a couple I could really root for, and I don't usually feel that way about canon fictional couples.
Oh, and there's going to be another book published in 2010, Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen about one of the villains, and an as yet unnamed one that takes place a few years after Abhorsen; I hope it has Lirael and Nick in it.
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...
Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen are fantastic. Run out and read them right now. Really, the descriptions of Death alone as a creepy, cold, dangerous place with its precincts and the ever-present river that acts like no river in Life, and the way the dead, even in Life can feel its waters, oooooh. I'm not a visual person, but the way Nix talks about every part of his world made me want to go there.
I like urban fantasy, but my heart goes to secondary world fantasy each and every time. I want the author to write a world I could get lost in, and Nix does exactly that in the Old Kingdom books. The bones of the world might be Medieval, but it doesn't feel that way. I wanted to work in the Clayr's library and fly a paperwing, and sail out to sea where magic is washed away, and I wanted to whistle charter marks and ring the Abhorsen's bells. In other words, I wanted to do everything that was dangerous in Nix's world.
Also, there's something about realistic modern politics in the "modern" side of the wall (though really Ancelstierre felt more like pre-WWII) interfering with government in the Old Kingdom that really makes me wan to take these books to bed with me at night like a literary teddy bear. It might just be that I'm a political science major, but really, we don't see enough realistic politics in fantasy, especially YA fantasy.
Nix also manages to write fantastic female characters, both leads and secondary characters. The Disreputable Dog ("Disreputable Bitch if you want to get technical") is hilarious, brilliant, and very much a dog, Lirael is moody, teenage, and wonderfully curious, Sabriel is overconfidant, quick to anger, and at the same time frightened of everything she has to do. Of course she doesn't let that stop her. He doesn't shortchange his male characters either. I want a Nick and a Mogget of my own. Mogget, a catlike spirit of malcontent, actually reminds me of my dog, who thankfully does not talk, and Nick, as he stays blind, almost to his distruction, of the very different logic of the Old Kingdom from his home in Ancelstierre, made me want to read more, even as everyone else was having adventures. He gets his own adventures too, in the novella "Nicolas Sayre and the Creature in the Case" in the anthology of Nix's stories, Across the Wall.
Lirael and Nick are a couple I could really root for, and I don't usually feel that way about canon fictional couples.
Oh, and there's going to be another book published in 2010, Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen about one of the villains, and an as yet unnamed one that takes place a few years after Abhorsen; I hope it has Lirael and Nick in it.
familiar
Date: 2009-01-12 11:47 pm (UTC)Re: familiar
Date: 2009-01-13 12:08 am (UTC)