Sabriel
Garth Nix’s 1995 novel. Sabriel is a schoolgirl in a country that looks like 1920s England, on the wrong side of a Wall from the Old Kingdom, where magic works and the dead do not stay dead. When her father, the necromancer whose job is to put them back, fails to return, she crosses over with his bells and his sword to find him. The first of the Old Kingdom books and the one that made Nix’s name.
Recommended by 1 Person
Samantha Shannon
I credit the Abhorsen trilogy with restoring my love of the genre after I drifted away from it for a while, as it was one of the first times I’d seen a female protagonist carving out her own story. It follows Sabriel, daughter of the Abhorsen – the one who controls the border between life and death – as she comes into her inheritance. Its magic system, the Charter, is based on runes.
Interview · October 2025
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