Sabriel (Old Kingdom, 1)

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?

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.