Sabriel by Garth Nix

One of my favorite books of all time, I first discovered Sabriel in book-on-tape form sitting on the shelf of the Beaver library. My sister and I were really big on audio books so I picked it up, examined the girl in her fancy surcoat with her shiny bells and long black hair and decided it was something I wanted to hear. I took it home alone with its two sequels, Lirael and Abhorsen, and spent the next few nights listening to the sound of Tim Curry’s voice reading me a story of adventure and necromancy.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve listened to it over the years. I even bought the book during my first trip to Barns and Noble’s. It’s a fantastic story filled with adventure, horror, passion and of course, magic. And it’s exactly the type of book I’ve always wanted to write.

Sabriel takes place in a 1920’s esc world. We don’t know much about the planet; just that it’s like earth, mostly. We are focused on two countries; Ancelstierre, which is a world of science and technology much like ours, and The Old Kingdom, a land full of magic that seems to be stuck in the dark ages. They are separated by The Wall which is as old as the Charter itself. What’s the Charter, you might ask? That’s a very good question. There are two kinds of magic, Free Magic, which is extremely wild, dangerous, and often corrupt, and Charter Magic, which is pure and controllable, using Charter marks for spell casting and so on. It’s a sort of light v. dark thing, I guess. All magic started as Free Magic until the Nine Bright Shiners formed the Charter. You don’t see them until the second book though, so pay them no mind. The only thing you need to know is that they made the Charter, built the Wall and formed the Three Blood Lines: The Crown, The Abhorsen and The Clayr.

Our hero, Sabriel is a sixth form school girl in Ancelstierre who is getting ready to graduate. While she may appear to be a normal girl, she’s a powerful Charter mage and her father is a necromancer, but not of the usual sort. He’s known only as Abhorsen and where others raise the dead, e only thing I wish I could do he puts them back to rest. But you don’t thwart the powers of darkness without making a lot of enemies and when a very powerful free magic spirit known as one of the Greater Dead traps him in death, he has no choice but to pass his name, sword and bells down to Sabriel without an explanation.

Naturally, Sabriel is determined to find her father. This means leaving her nice home in Ancelstierre where things are nice, clean and simple, and venturing forth into the rather wild, unsettled country of The Old Kingdom, which is filled with free magic, dead things and anarchy. To help her in her adventures she is stuck with Mogget, a cat shaped Free Magic creature bound to the Abhorsen, and Touchstone, a mopey Royal Guard who was imprisoned as a figure head for two hundred years. Both are fantastic characters. Sabriel, having been raised in Ancelstierre, knows very little about The Old Kingdom and would be lost without these two.

One of my favorite aspects by far is the bells. There are seven bells used for necromancy, named for seven of the Nine Bright Shiners, the seven who made the Charter. Each bell has a different size, sound and power. I used to be able to list all of them and what they did, but unfortunately my memory fails me and I must use Wikipedia to tell me their names.

Ranna – Sleeper

Mosrael – Waker

Kibeth – Walker

Dyrim – Speaker

Belgaer – Thinker

Saraneth – Binder

Astarael – Weeper

All are pretty straight forward except for Astarael, the Sorrowful. Astarael casts all who hear it into death. Ranna is the smallest and Astarael is the largest. The bells are used to bind the dead to the will of the necromancer, but each has a personality of its own and can easily turn on the ringer if not rung properly. Normally they use Free Magic but the Abhorsen’s bells are engraved with Charter marks that guide the magic to bind the dead.

Another unique aspect of The Old Kingdom world is death itself. I’m not sure if Garth Nix took this from some culture or what culture if he did, but death is shown as a river with nine gates. Death is not a safe place either. It’s full of free magic creatures and twisted dead spirits who have fought against the river for far too long, trying to claw their way back to Life. You’re not really gone until you pass the Ninth Gate. Most of the gates are either waterfalls or whirlpools but the Ninth Gate is a starry sky under which the water is finally calm. Again, you don’t see that until the third book. Half of Sabriel’s adventure takes place in Death, as is the way with necromancers.

I didn’t mean to go on this long, I really didn’t. As is my way, I start on one track and keep thinking of new things to go off on until I’ve lost my point completely. At any rate, the point is, I love this book. I love the plot and the characters and the world and I’m extremely jealous that I can’t write like that. I also may be slightly in love with Tim Curry’s voice. It’s so fancy and fitting. I hear it even when I read it by myself. Sabriel is my favorite, but Lirael and Abhorsen are also fantastic. They’re more closely related to each other, however, and have a much different feel, though really they’re about the same thing. I highly recommend all three.