The Old Kingdom trilogy: Garth Nix
Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Mage Abhorson, is missing, and Sabriel must cross into that world to find him. 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. . .
The first novel in Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series, Sabriel follows a young woman as she takes on her inheritance--the position of Abhorsen, who, unlike other necromancers, puts the dead back into death--and searches for her father, trapped in Death. To do so, she crosses from Ancelstierre and into the Old Kingdom, where both Charter and Free Magic hold sway and the emerging weaponry and technology of Ancelstierre don't work.
As is probably obvious, I love worldbuilding of novels a lot. And that's one of the attractions of the Old Kingdom; there are actually three separate worlds. The first is Ancelstierre, an analogue to our world, circa the turn of the 20th century. One is the Old Kingdom, across Wall guarded by Ancelstierran soldiers (on their side, anyway. The Old Kingdom does not post sentries.) The last is Death, which Sabriel, as the daughter of the Abhorsen, can access. It's a strange, grey world, and very dangerous--not only are there dead creatures trying to drag you in, but also the whole world of death itself is trying to drag you further in. It manifests as a cold river with a strong current.
Sabriel is definitely a character who has suddenly had a huge load of responsibility dropped into her lap, but she deals pretty admirably with it. She has a legacy left by her father, but she has known a little all along and has learned Charter Magic in preparation. Sabriel (novel) is a portal-quest fantasy, but one that handles the exposition well, without inundating the reader with information.
And on a completely unrelated note, I love the covers. The one linked above is gorgeous and striking (relevant to the book too! That's the surcoat she's wearing, and I love the slightly inhuman look they have. It kind of reminds me of medieval art actually.) There are two sets of covers I saw, and I am showing you the second set too because I love, love, love these covers' calligraphy. Look at how the title's done! One version of Lirael I was reading in the library was like this--huge wide margins (like a manuscript), lovely font, and gorgeous calligraphy on the chapter titles. The only bad part was the kerning; double quotation marks would seem suspended over or just before periods, which was annoying. But yes! The calligraphy is delicious.
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Lirael, the next book, skips ahead a generation and is centered around Lirael. Lirael is born into the Clayr, a group of women who can see the future. Separately they see small snatches, but pooling together their strengths in what is called the Nine Day Watch can allow them to see a great deal more, which is how they aided Sabriel earlier. Lirael, however, does not receive the Sight, even as she reaches her fourteenth, then fifteenth, then sixteenth birthday, even as the younger girls around her receive the Sight at twelve. To keep her occupied, Lirael starts to work in the library of the Clayr, a huge and sometimes dangerous place inside the Clayr's Glacier. This library is extensive and not fully known anymore. There are places sealed off, places where no one has gone for years, and unknown dangerous creatures sometimes inside the rooms. Librarians are equipped with distress signals in case something happens, which speaks to how
[Rest of the review]However, Lirael does not stay within the Glacier forever. Increasingly withdrawn, Lirael goes secretly exploring. The Clayr live in rooms cut out of a massive glacier, and like the library, there are passageways and rooms fallen into disuse and forgotten. In these explorations Lirael discovers she doesn't have the Sight, not in the usual sense. She cannot see into the future, but she can see into the past. At the same time, the Nine Days' Watch--swollen to almost all the Clayr to pool their vision--tell Lirael that she is needed. They have finally seen her in a vision, and in that vision she is far out in the Old Kingdom where they haven't been able to See for years.
Traveling with Lirael is the Disreputable Dog and eventually Sameth, the son of Sabriel and Touchstone. Sameth and Lirael are more similar than they realize, though they almost mistake each other for an enemy initially. Lirael is instantly sympathetic, but all the supporting characters are interesting too, the Disreputable Dog especially. This novel gives a great deal more information about how the Old Kingdom works, especially about the seven bells that the Abhorsen uses on Dead creatures.
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Abhorsen is the final book in the trilogy. Following the revelations in Lirael, [Spoilers for previous books]Lirael and Sameth rush to prevent the necromancer Hedge from reassembling the Destroyer. Buried in the ground for millenia, split into two pieces to dampen its power, the Destroyer was broken to prevent it from annihilating the world.
Sameth and Lirael (and the Disreputable Dog and Mogget) are now frantically trying to prevent this from happening. Lirael and Sameth are hurrying to the Red Lake, which is where the image the Clayr saw was set. In the picture is Sameth's friend Nicholas Sayre--an unfortunate classmate of Sameth, who came under Hedge the necromancer's influence while Hedge was searching for Sameth.
I like how Lirael is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting; I like how it plays a little with the conventions of inheritance. The position of Abhorsen is handed down from parent to child, since the power is in the blood. But instead of Sameth being Abhorsen--who is terrified of Death, courtesy of his run-in with Hedge the necromancer--it passes to Lirael. Lirael is actually Sabriel's half-sister, so the inheritance goes sideways instead of down.
Like the previous books, I particularly enjoyed the characters' interactions--I really liked how at the end, it's the whole royal family and many of the supporting characters from previous books, like Sanar and Ryelle. The plot didn't work so well for me, though; it's stretched out over two books and was pretty predictably about a catastrophe that the protagonists frantically try to avoid (where they have to run around at the very last minute because they've only just found out something else happened.) This is unfortunately what the ending of Sabriel is, so the two major climaxes of the series are the same.
Crosspost: http://silverflight8.dreamwidth.org/140257.html.