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    Sabriel: The Old Kingdom, Book 1
    Unavailable
    Sabriel: The Old Kingdom, Book 1
    Unavailable
    Sabriel: The Old Kingdom, Book 1
    Audiobook10 hours

    Sabriel: The Old Kingdom, Book 1

    Written by Garth Nix

    Narrated by Tim Curry

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A tale of dark secrets, deep love, and dangerous magic!

    Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the random power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Charter-Mage Abhorsen, is missing, and to find him Sabriel must cross back into that world. With Mogget, whose feline form hides a powerful, perhaps malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage, Sabriel travels deep into the Old Kingdom. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life--and comes face-to-face with her own hidden destiny.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 23, 2002
    ISBN9780807205570
    Unavailable
    Sabriel: The Old Kingdom, Book 1
    Author

    Garth Nix

    Garth Nix is a New York Times bestselling novelist and has been a full-time writer since 2001 but has also worked as a literary agent, marketing consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. Garth’s many books include the Old Kingdom fantasy series, beginning with Sabriel and continuing to Goldenhand; the sci-fi novels Shade’s Children and A Confusion of Princes; the Regency romance with magic Newt’s Emerald; and novels for children including The Ragwitch, the Seventh Tower series, the Keys to the Kingdom series, and Frogkisser!, which is now in development as a feature film with Fox Animation/Blue Sky Studios. Garth has written numerous short stories, some of which are collected in Across the Wall and To Hold the Bridge. He has also cowritten several children’s book series with Sean Williams, including TroubleTwisters and Have Sword, Will Travel. More than six million copies of his books have been sold around the world and his work has been translated into forty-two languages.

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    Reviews for Sabriel

    4/5

    3,134 ratings186 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I first read this book in middle school (maybe high school?). I remembered that I'd read it, but I'd completely forgotten the plot. This was so good! Plus, now I know where George RR Martin got most of his ideas.
    • 5/5
      A young woman finds herself thrust into a task that she feels unprepared for, and of course you have to hope that, despite the odds, she succeeds. This being fantasy, first cousin to fairytales and heir to human dreams, you can be almost certain that she will. But, to quote the song, it's not what you do but the way that you do it: that's what gets results... And because Garth Nix is a talented writer, with a long track record in publishing and editing, the end result is a very distinguished and impressive first volume in The Old Kingdom series. (In some countries the trilogy is named the Abhorsen series, from the title of the gatekeeper between the realms of the living and the dead.) Nix, an Australian author, seems to have used Scotland and the North of England as his inspiration for the trilogy, though it's a Britain very different from anything we're now familiar with, not least because technology and attitudes correspond more closely to the early decades of the twentieth century. The Old Kingdom, at present without a king, is a realm where magic is so prevalent that the boundaries between Death and Life are easily crossed by adepts. It most resembles Scotland in being a land where kilts are not unknown, lying to the north of an edifice corresponding to Hadrian's Wall which divides it off from a rather unmagical Ancelstierre. But you will look in vain to identify equivalents in Scotland for features in the Old Kingdom, though the royal city shares some similarities with Edinburgh (as well as medieval Byzantium). There are even two types of magic: Charter Magic, the purer form, and Free Magic, much harder to govern. I very much liked Nix's treatment of things magical, and while the rationale behind it (Where does it come from? Why is it strong in the Old Kingdom?) is rather vague in this story, its manifestation and all its detailing (Charter Marks, the taste of Free Magic) is well imagined and described. As a musician I was entranced by his wonderful concept of the sounds of bells precipitating magical effects, and I felt that each of Sabriel's seven bells was imbued with its own character to match its effects. In vain did I try to link them to systems in other cultures, though the ancient idea of the Music of the Spheres came close.Some readers have complained about the rather perfunctory love story in this young adult novel, but I thought that the balance between this and the fantasy elements was about right. In any case, as the plot driver is mostly about the relationship between Sabriel and her endangered father, any overloading of romantic elements would have distracted from the parent-child bond that Sabriel concentrates on.The sheer inventiveness that Nix displays is very impressive: I particularly liked the paperwings, gliders that respond to Charter Magic; gliders were of course still a relative novelty in our equivalent early 20th century culture. Other commonplace elements, such as the dead being reanimated, are treated in a way that feel fresh, for all our modern familiarity with zombies and their ilk. One of his wonderful conceptions is Mogget, a snow-white cat who is not what he seems, and who functions rather like a Cheshire Cat to Sabriel's Alice role. The touches of sly humour that Mogget provides helps to leaven the sheer and sustained dread that confronts Sabriel throughout the novel and which continues virtually to the very end of the tale. There are also the wordplays that wordsmiths like Nix like to employ, wordplays such as Kerrigor, the name of the character who has precipitated the crisis and who perhaps derives his name from a medieval Arthurian poem. In this Welsh poem reference is made to an Otherworld castle called Caer Rigor, the Royal Fort, and which itself perhaps contains a pun on Latin rigor, 'harshness' or 'severity'. Another series of allusions concerns the holders of the post of Abhorsen, whose names end in -el, such as Sabriel, Terciel, Lirael and Clariel. This is surely a nod towards the names of the Biblical archangels, such as Michael and Raphael, the suffix of which means 'power' or 'divinity' and which is cognate with elohim, one of the Hebrew names for gods or God. Sabriel and her fellow Abhorsens are like those mighty powers who guard the boundary between this world and the next, comparable to the unnamed angel who stops Adam and Eve returning to Eden or to Michael who defeats the armies of Satan. Sabriel is perhaps the Hebrew sabra or prickly pear, tough on the outside but soft inside, both a young girl on the cusp of womanhood and a guardian angel.Like many a good tale Sabriel works on different levels: a solid narrative to appeal to a first reading, and layers of allusion and echoes of other narratives, especially apt in a plot involving bells, to add to the joy of subsequent re-readings.
    • 3/5
      Despite flaws -- perhaps some more egregious than others -- I liked this book. It starts badly, laying out a set of "situations" without clarity and not at all intuitive to figure out. It's got a bit of Indiana Jones and Camelot Excalibur supernatural to it. Also, some Dracula. Some zombie apocalypse. More than a little Lord of the Rings. But it's really none of those things. Very slowly the reader just starts to accept certain "realities" without adequate explanation. And the pace, the tension just keeps building, and building, and building. As you get closer and closer to the last pages of the book, you have to start wondering if someone tore out some of the back pages, because everything just can't get resolved in time. Can it? It's also at this point that "real time" gets stretched out more and more. Five minutes of story line goes from a sentence or two to a few pages. Details of actions, emotions, consequences start to overflow the banks of the narrative river. Enough all ready. Just tell me what's happening. No lengthy commission report needed. Nevertheless, it never quite lost my interest. I wanted to find out what was going to happen next and that's something.
    • 3/5
      Idk how to rate this. I had totally forgotten about the annoying love story between Sabriel and Touchstone. I had also forgotten about Kerrigor being turned into a cat which is wonderful, how could I forget that.

      Mhm it's not as great as I had remembered it but also not as terrible as I feared it might be? Solid necromantic entertainment tbh. Also not too bad from a whump perspective.
    • 4/5
      so i tried the first in the Abhorsen Trilogy and liked it very much. setup is somewhat similar to Susanna Clarke's: a world of shrinking borders that denies/represses the existence of magic, and is much like ours, vs a world outside those borders, but encroaching, that is magical, darker, and stronger partly because the nonmagical world refuses to acknowledge it. in both cases the locales seem to be pretty much England and Scotland, too, which is... hmm. at any rate, the two writers have very different fish to fry, so let's leave that.Garth Nix writes pretty good, but his story is well inside the usual conventions and he's not engaged in torpedoing that set of boundaries, so his story isn't intended to carry either the power or the story Clarke is after. within that, he does what he does very well.there are two kinds of magic, and one is Free and one is Charter. it is the Free varietal that is black, which tells you something about where Nix is drawing his own line in the sand. the Abhorsen, though, who is basically meant to be the hero, is a necromancer who practices Charter magic, a magic of rules and built-in boundaries, unalterably opposed to what is Free. you're beginning to see my problem, aren't you? it's at this point that i get this: 'fer chrissakes macha it's just a book', but see right there they lose me.{g} okay, let's leave this too.anyway in Sabriel, the protagonist leaves school in the lawful south to find her father and her destiny beyond the boundary lines, where the world ends, and travels into the unknown borderlands. her father is the Abhorsen, and he leaves her his talent and his title, and nothing else. a coming of age story, quite nice, i liked it. though, this is where i start to quarrel with Current Trends in Bookselling, where they market fantasy as if it was aimed at teenage viewers. i dunno, you'd think after the Harry Potter phenomenon, they'd adjust their reader profile.... however, once, long ago now, LeGuin wrote a little coming of age thing about a boy named Ged, and that worked out okay, so no harm done, it's possible to overcome the current conventions of any genre. let's leave that too.it all ends well, of course. see, there's a prince...the interesting thing about it is, the Abhorsen travels through death as a matter of her profession. this isn't well developed, although it's certainly often played in the trilogy, but the world of Death is mostly Free, and it's full of levels. not clear if this levels thing is meant to be kinda Dantean. but anyway the Abhorsen, the anti-necromancer necromancer, travels through all of them using the rules and the spells of Charter magic to bind and rebind the Free back into these levels and out of the natural world. which is kind of an interesting idea to play with in that setting.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It had everything you would expect in a classic fiction tale, and was reminiscent of the Narnia series. Yes, there wasn't detailed character development, but that is to be expected in this kind of a story, and it worked well within this frame. The plot moved along pretty well and the different characters that were introduced were intriguing to read about. I liked the whole story line of necromancy and the dead and the power to control them. The magic system that the author has created is unique and I'm eager to learn more about it (as I'm sure I will in the next book in the series)! Overall, it is a well-written and imaginative fantasy novel geared towards pre-teens/teenagers. So if you are looking for a present for someone within that age group, this would be the one to get!
    • 5/5
      Sabriel Sabriel by Garth Nix. Sabriel Is a good fantasy book that explores a world of magic and necromancy, Sabriel is a girl who is pushed into a place that she is not ready yet, she accepts the role so she can find her father and save the Old Kingdom, Sabriel is my first Garth Nix book
    • 4/5
      Couldn't put it down! Love it
    • 5/5
      I randomly picked up this book from the library shelf when I was in 7th grade. With the exception of Lord of the Rings it is probably the best Fantasy world that I have found, because it is systematic, fun, but realistic within the rules Garth Nix created for this world. Plus I thought the main character was SO cool when i first read it and I still haven't gotten bored with her.
    • 5/5
      Terrific fantasy novel with an interesting and strong heroine.
    • 5/5
      I keep falling in love with this book. No matter how many times I read Sabriel.
    • 4/5
      Sabriel by Garth Nix is set in a world where Necromancy holds sway. Things and people die but death is not always so permanent. Traditionally necromancy is a really weird and creepy practice but in this book the main character is a necromancer whose job is to help those who have died complete their journey to death so that they are not reawakened by someone with sinister purposes. The main character is also sometimes able to return to life those who only just recently died but it comes at a cost and can be very dangerous.I'm not typically into stories that revolve around death but Nix was able to craft a story that focused on death but did not become super heavy and overwhelming. I very much recommend this book to anybody interested in a fantasy type story.(****)
    • 5/5
      I really liked this book, especially how the world of Sabriel works. The magic, the relation between life and death and the mystery surrounding the 'old kingdom' made me want to read more. Sabriel is a believable character with both strengths and flaws. The only downside for me was that a large part of the journey was over sea. I wanted to see more of the adventures in the Old Kingdom. Despite that flaw, I enjoyed every page of this book and I'm interested in the rest of the series.
    • 4/5
      Sabriel was sent to a boarding school in Ancelstierre as a young girl. As she is about to graduate Sabriel hears news that her father, the Abhorsen, has gone missing. Sensing that something isn't right, Sabriel knows she must enter the Old Kingdom to find him. Having little experience with Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead, Sabriel sets off on an adventure that will pit her against the forces of life and death and brings her face-to-face with her own destiny. Sabriel by Garth Nix is the first book in The Abhorson trilogy. The story opens fairly ominously with the death of a woman and child. The series of events that unfolds in the prologue grabs the attention and sets the stage nicely. We are introduced to two of the world's types of magic, given a little foreshadowing for what's to come and a slightly eerie tone is set. Once the story starts, we're gradually introduced to the world. Ancelstierre has a feeling of 1940's England while the Old Kingdom feels distinctly like medieval Europe where Free Magics and creatures that go bump in the night now reign. The two kingdoms are separated by a wall and crossing the border is like taking a portal to another world where even the weather is different. And, quite naturally, that wall is failing.The characters we get to know are also excellent. Sabriel is a great fantasy heroine. She's a smart, clear headed, strong and a well balanced character. She looks at problems logically to make informed decisions and isn't afraid to take action. Touchstone starts off fairly annoying. It's obvious that he's more than just a guardsman and his servile attitude at first is grating. I'm glad the character out grows this habit as the story progresses. Nix had a lot of fun with Mogget. Mogget is the perfect magical entity in the form of a feline that both says and does things I can imagine a cat would. The story is well paced. The action and suspense is superb. The final climax had me sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time. I love the eerie/creepy undertone that is carried throughout the book. It's exactly what you'd expect when dealing with the dead that don't want to stay dead. Nix has a refreshing take on necromantic magic that was quite fun to read. There is even an understated romance plot that is quite sweet and not at all like today's YA stories of instant love.I listened to the audio book of this narrated by Tim Curry. I think I could listen to Tim Curry read from the dictionary! He is especially fun at narrating villains and magical creatures. That said, his depiction of a young girl's voice at the beginning of the story is so bad I laughed out loud.
    • 4/5
      Sabriel is the daughter of Abhorsen, a powerful mage tasked with protecting the world from evil forces of death originating from the Old Kingdom, to the north beyond the wall. She is pulled out of a mundane life at boarding school when Abhorsen goes missing, and she has to travel into the Old Kingdom (and into death itself) to find him and save everyone from a terrible evil.I probably should have read this book earlier in my life, because I was not very impressed. The plot is a good fantasy adventure story, but my standards have changed in the past few decades! It's a very pre-Harry Potter type of fantasy, with lots of mood-setting but not much world-building. Post-Harry Potter fantasy definitely has its own problems with too much world-building, but had so many questions about the world of Sabriel that I had trouble getting a grip and I was distracted from the plot. Is Ancelstierre a country? A continent? How big is it? (The map in my edition only showed a sliver of Ancelstierre south of the wall.) What is life like for the people who live far away from the wall? Do they know that magic exists or are they just like us? Does this world have some relation to our world? When does the story take place in relation to our world? (I calculated roughly the 1920s, because there is a mention of tanks just having been invented, which is a very distinct choice to make when writing a book in the 1990s, so why??). Aside from world-building questions, the narration switched focus sometimes in a way that I did not like. The book was decent, but not outstanding. I might continue the series one day.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful world building and a page-turning plot.
    • 4/5
      Sabriel receives a satchel with her father's necromancer tool and the message that he is beyond the Seventh Gate of Death and that she needs to take over his role of Abhorsen and defeat Kerrigor who is attempting to resurrect himself and destroy the Charter of the Old Kingdom. What a great story! The characters are really believable (if not plausible) and the world building is pretty close to flawless. Can't wait to continue the series. The audiobook is read Tim Curry, who is a fantastic narrator.
    • 4/5
      It seemed long past time that I read Sabriel, one of Karen's favorite books, that she bought me for my birthday. It's not exactly a djinn book, but there are marids and necromancers and magic. It's not exactly polar fiction, but there is a lot of snow. Though early in the book, there were two instances describing snow that shook my faith in the author -- causing me to look up from my book and wonder if the author had ever seen snow before. Luckily, my suspension of belief was limited to only those two moments.

      In general I was immersed in Nix's world, and often appreciated its complexity. There were a few moments that didn't seem fully realized, that the story didn't seem to an exist in a universe with a history stretching back farther than the earliest plot points of this particular story. Mostly it was an intriguing and complicated world, and I suspect it may have only bothered me because I was holding it up in my mind for the scrutiny of my friend eventually asking me, "So, did you love it?"

      I enjoyed it. I would not be averse to reading the rest of the trilogy, but they aren't jumping right to the top of my to-read list, either. I liked the bells, the charmed cat, the flying machine, the concept of the boy turned to wood (though his character seemed a bit YA simplified.) A lot of lovely ideas here!
    • 5/5
      Sabriel Sabriel by Garth Nix Sabriel Is a good fantasy book that explores a world of magic and necromancy, Sabriel is a girl who is pushed into a place that she is not ready yet, she accepts the role so she can find her father and save the Old Kingdom, Sabriel is my first Garth Nix book.
    • 5/5
      Fabulous fantasy novel about necromancy.
    • 5/5
      The Old Kingdom series, which began with Sabriel, is one of the most engaging and unique magical worlds I have ever had the pleasure of coming across. The magical systems are well thought out and unlike anything else I've ever encountered; the characters are realistic, normal for their age, and very engaging. This is by far one of my favorite series, and it all begins here.
    • 4/5
      I liked this story of a young woman who suddenly finds herself inheriting her father's title as Abhorsen (= big wig necromancer) and on a quest that will take her across the wall and into another world. I love the world-building and the idea of the abhorsen and the plot conflict was great, but the characters seemed a little flat and although I did enjoy listening to this one, I didn't get involved enough to want to continue with the series. Tim Curry was excellent, though, as the reader.
    • 4/5
      This was an Audio book from the Library that I listened to on my way to work. There were times when I didn't want to get out of my car because I had come to an exciting point in the tape. This Audio book was narrated by Tim Curry and starts with a flashback in which a current Abhorsen, a special necromancer, loses his wife but saves his baby daughter Sabriel from a creature called Kerrigor, in the spiritual river of death. Many years later, at Sabriels English like boarding school, she must take up her father's magical sword and the bells of a Necromancer and try to find out what has happened to him. To do so, she must leave her new Kingdom school and go where magic rules and evil things like Kerrigor are stalking her.Along the way, she is accompanied by the guard Touchstone, a Royal and the King of the Old Kingdom and the charter magic contained 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 was a delightful fantasy that I am sorry came to and end. Sabriel comes to accept that her father, the former Abhorsen, is now on her own and is the new and last Abhorsen. She really just wants to be Sabriel and not the Abhorsen and she acts and thinks precisely like any young woman in this position. She's strong, intriguing, and no slack with a sword in a bad situation. I really enjoyed Garth Nix's charcters.Sabriel was a wonderful role model who also is developing feelings for Touchstone. Touchstone feels guilt for what he has allowed to happen but won't let Sabriel down as he feels he has done others. and Mogget was certainly unique. He's a peculiar mix of good and evel. 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 can be). 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 sending's, Charter ghosts, the inhabitants of the river of Death, where only Abhorsens go, and so on...I certainly enjoyed his writing style which the narrator helped to bring across. I would certainly recommend this book, especially the Audio book, to anyone. Jack Murphy
    • 5/5
      This book snagged me in and didn't let me know until the rest of the series was devoured by my brain.

      The worlds (yes, two different lands seperated by an intimidating wall) Nix created are livly and diverse, creating a place for you to enjoyably emerse yourself in. The action and adventure never really cease, as Sabriel explores the Old Kingdom - a place she's heard many stories about from her father but had yet to set foot in herself. Armed with some shaky but useful skills to keep the dead DEAD, she goes off to find her father with the undead trailing her, and the Charter on her side...

      If you like strong female charachers, epic battles, fast-paced storyline, and feel like a new twist on the fantasy and magic genre, this book needs to be read by you!
    • 4/5
      A weird and creepy katabasis story in a land where the dead walk and shadows threaten the living.
    • 5/5
      I first read Sabriel when I was a young teenager. I have read this series again and again, and will continue to do so. It's an amazing work of fiction.
    • 3/5
      I really liked the beginning but the ending felt way too rushed I felt like I was reading the end of the series ??
    • 3/5
      The narration is very nice in my opinion. The book itself - not so much. Not terrible, though. I listened while cleaning and didn't despise it.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully described world, the main character is a young woman who is destined to become an abhorsen which is kind of an “anti-necromancer”. Nice tension between an early a technological part of the world where magic doesn’t work and another part where technology doesn’t work. The audio book narrator did a fantastic job giving life to the story
    • 4/5
      A good example of this genre. While I don't read young adult fantasy, I was lent this book and found it well written and set in a believable world with a plot that was absorbing. I thought it had a bit of the Ancient Greek epics influences showing through which is always a good thing.