Sabriel

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Summary: Immersive Otherworlds
Review: Nix does a fantastic job of worldbuilding. This story is of Sabriel as a young girl, confronting an ultimate evil and finding her place as Abhorsen, the one person with the power to walk within the gates of death to make sure that the dead stay there.

Nix's concept of two very different worlds separated by only a wall is intriguing. To the South, a 1950's-style world as we know it continues; cars and radios, schools and governments... North of the Wall, technology is useless. Magic is real, and the dead often roam--the products of rogue freemages bent on destruction. When the scattered and disorganized attacks begin to become more concentrated and deadly, Sabriel's father begins to suspect a greater force at work. In the process of his research, he disappears.

I highly recommend this trilogy--Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen-- not only to anyone who enjoys fantasy, but anyone who appreciates literature in general. Nix's work is intelligent, his characters deep, and his stories many-threaded.

I also recommend visiting Garth Nix's own homepage. He writes and updates it himself. You'l get a glimpse into the entertaining mind of a very funny and clever man....

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Summary: THIS BOOK IS EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This book is excellent! Its about Sabriel, who goes in search of her father the abhorsen and battles enemy kerrigor and well everyone else has said it so theres no point telling the plot synopsis again but i absolutely loved this ...

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Summary: Sabriel
Review: I really enjoyed reading this novel, Sabriel. It got off to a slow start and I was just about to get ready to put the book down when it really started to get good and ended up being a really positive experience for me. I thought that it was a positive experience for me because I really enjoyed reading it and it was one of the best books that I ever read. It taught me about someone who, stood up to their fears and made sacrifices to save the world even though she let her father kill himself. She accepted that and knew that she had to do her job, which was to get to the paperwing. Although it did teach me a lot about bravery I think that the real reason it was a positive experience was that it made me want to read more. It was so good that I couldn't wait to get home and read it and even after I finished it I still wanted to get home and just pick up a book which was a weird feeling. So that's why I thought that Sabriel was definitely a positive experience for me and I would recommend it to anyone. I hope that you consider reading Sabriel and I look forward to reading Garth Nix's next book.
In this novel it was amazing how Garth Nix held my interest throughout the book after it got off to a little bit of a slow start. He is a fantastic author and writes very, very, well. He held my interest through the story with all the action he puts in, drama, and he just made me want to keep reading and reading. Especially when Sabriel was getting chased by that mordicant and just got to her father's in time before the mordicant got to her. I also think that Garth Nix was able to hold my interest through the whole story because he made everything really mysterious like when you think you know what's going to happen next but then he pops up with another idea. For example I thought that when Sabriel was crossing the stepping stones to get to the other side of her father's and suddenly she looked back and saw that the mordicant was just watching her. At that point I thought that the mordicant was going to jump across and then she would be doomed but instead she got over safely. So that's how I thought Garth Nix held my interest throughout the story and I look forward to reading his next book, Labriel.
Another thing that I thought was amazing about Garth Nix's writing was the scenes. Even though I couldn't see them it seemed that I really could with all the descriptive detail. Like when Sabriel was just starting to look for her father and she passed the perimeter finding all of these bodies and how he described them being beheaded, what they looked like, and I thought that was amazing. I also liked the parts when the dead were around like in the reservoir when Sabriel went into death to save her father. Then the dead started to close in and finally when Sabriel saved her father he used the bell, which killed everyone around slowing down Kerrigor to get to his body. I really enjoyed that part of the book. I thought that I liked that part because it was full of action, drama, sacrifice, and everything that I really enjoy reading about. That scene was definitely my favorite scene of that book.
After reading this book, I felt that even though it wasn't very educational and the author had a really wild imagination I learned a lot more than I thought I would from this book. I learned that when Sabriel lost her father for the good of the world I learned that you have to get over that and except what life unfolds. I also learned that when you have a person close to you die you have to move on and know that his or her spirit is always with you. This is a book with a lot of dying and death and I was amazed how the author made it seem so real how Sabriel was dealing with it. Sabriel lost a lot of close friends and family and she got through just like a real person should. I felt that even though I didn't learn a lot from this book, I learned one very important thing and that was to move on and know their spirit is always with you. I also thought that I gained a lot from this book. I read one of the best books I've ever read, I found out about a great author who I should look into if I was looking for a great book, and I found out that even someone with a crazy imagination can make a great book like Garth Nix. I thought that this book was so amazing and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a great book. This is a book that someone who loves fantasy would love and I salute Garth Nix for such a great novel. This was definitely a fantastic novel and I hope that you would read this book too.

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Summary: Dark fantasy for all ages
Review: 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.

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Summary: One of the best books I've read in a while...
Review: Sabriel, by Garth Nix is an amazing fantasy book with plenty of detail and action. The book is about a young girl named Sabriel who sets out into a world of dead and undead creatures hoping to find her father. It is a book where death and life are one in the same, where the dead come out at night and feast on people and steal thier goods. A world that shuns magic, but it is the only thing to protect them from the dead. A world of modern technology, which is useless, using swords and spells to defeat the some of the most feared creatures in existence. Sabriel, a young school girl, must travel into this world of the dead unknown and try and save her dying father. This is a compelling and very well written book with suspense, action, and a little romance, a pageturner for sure.

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Summary: The Outstanding World of Nix's Old Kingdom
Review: Even as an adult reader, it was impossible not to be struck by the talent of Garth Nix who has created a tremendous trilogy of books, beginning with "Sabriel". Authors who write fantasy novels are often carried away by the worlds they create and shamefully neglect their characters. However, Nix manages a deft mix of a facinating world and magical system while simultaneously turning out extrodinarily well rounded characters. Well done, Mr. Nix!

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Summary: A definite must-read
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read. It combines magic and technology to create a new world that is in some ways completely alien and in some ways frighteningly like our own. The book is centered around a girl named Sabriel, who is the heir to the post Abhorsen-a post whose job is, in essence, to keep dead folks dead and not let them kill living folks. With a set of 7 mystical bells and the help of the sarcastic, mysterious Mogget, Sabriel sets out to rescue her father and defeat the evil Kerrigor. A novel that will literally keep you spellbound through the last page and leave you hungering for more. I recommend this to anyone who has ever picked up a book. A word to the wise: Read Lirael after you finish this, and don't be put off by the length (700 pages)-it goes by very fast.

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Summary: The Magic Begins
Review: In an eloquent story, Garth begins what will be a beautiful yet unnamed trilogy. Sabriel has been living at Wyverly College, a boarding school for "girls of quality" since she was five, as her father's duties do not allow for her care. When her father, the Abhorsen, doesn't show up for his bi-annual visit shortly after graduation, Sabriel becomes worried.

The result leads her out of Ancelstierre and across the wall to the Old Kingdom, where there has not been a King or Queen for 200 years and a Regent for 20. With a little journeying, Sabriel discovers that her father may be in a danger so terrible that only she, the Abhorsen in waiting, can get him out. Follow Sabriel on the adventure of a lifetime and then read the rest of the story in "Lirael".

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Summary: Brilliant!
Review: In this epic story told not unlike tales in the golden age of fantasy, Garth Nix has successfully joined great names, such as those synonomous with fantasy (J.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis).
This book is not at all related to any other tale, it is an original, pure and simple, using no familiar concepts or ideas to convey the main point of the story.
In the story, a adolescent girl named Sabriel realizes that her father, Abhorsen, has been detained or trapped somewhere in the endless river of death, and as the story progresses, it becomes obvious that the culprit is the Great Dead creature Kerrigor, who had once, over two hundred years in the past, had tried to destroy the Charter, the magical force that binds the world together.
Along the way on the quest for an understanding of her heritage and her father, Sabriel meets the Free Magic being Mogget, chained to the power of the Abhorsens unwillingly, beneath the quiet exterior of his cat-like bady lies a murderous being of tremendous power which Sabriel will have to confront. She also meets the imprisioned prince of the Old Kingdom, who calls himself Touchstone, and is also unwilling to share with Sabriel his tarnished past which Mogget seems to know about.
The story includes magic, love, adventure, and brilliant new ideas by a writer rising in promenince among the literary society. All the components are there for an epic, and Nix brings them all together brilliantly. A classic.

Rating:
Summary: great...
Review: I first read this book about 7 years ago, when I was quite young. I loved it then and I have continued to love it the other four or five times I read it. This is a great book! If you have time, this is a good way to use it! I still can't put it down, and I know what happens in the end!