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alt title(s): The Abhorsen Trilogy; Abhorsen A young adult fantasy series by Garth Nix consisting of three volumes — Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen — plus at least one novelette, "Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case" (appears in Across The Wall, a collection of short fiction), a sequel of sorts to the trilogy. A prequel — Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen — and a sequel are set for 2010 and 2011.
Set in a world sharply divided into the Old Kingdom, where magic rules, and the Southern Nations, where science is law, the Old Kingdom series revolves mostly around the conflict between two varieties of magic — Charter and Free, which correspond roughly to the traditional alignments of Law and Chaos. Charter magic is defined by the Charter, a runic language, which gives structure and purpose to sorcery to make it a beneficial and constructive force; Free magic is wild, uncontrolled and given to corruption and wanton destruction. Poised between the two is the Abhorsen, who partakes of both to defend the people of the Charter from the undead and other monsters that Free magic and its servants spawn in order to work their wills.
The first book tells the story of Sabriel, a young girl who discovers that she has had the role of The Chosen One forced on her, and must protect the world from the hordes of undead that threaten it. The second and third are set some years later and follow several other protagonists as they attempt to prevent a great evil from escaping its prison.
Although parts of the setting bear a superficial similarity to the "stock" medieval fantasy, Nix quickly heads off into new territory, bringing a unique and different flavor to what might have otherwise been yet another fantasy Cliche Storm. The magic systems used in the book are radically different from the expected and contribute signficantly to its originality. One of the more interesting touches is the presence of the more advanced technological lands to the south of the Old Kingdom — in particular Ancelstierre, home to many of the characters, which comes across much like England circa 1910-1920.
This series provides examples of:
- Agent Scully (Nicholas Sayre thinks his best friend's obvious magic is just showing off, and other obvious signs of magic are superstition.)
- In Nick's defense, his brain was operating rationally on the subject until Hedge planted a shard of the Destroyer's prison in his heart)
- Always Chaotic Evil (The Dead, who even when not affiliated under a necromancer will kill anything that moves, if only to eat their life force. Being a walking and animated sin against the cosmic order will do that to a person.)
- Apocalypse How (It's suggested that a Class 1 or Class 0 scenario happened north of the Wall two hundred years before the story opens, in response to Kerrigor's assassination of the royal family, and his armies of Dead ravaging the land. In Lirael, Class 5, Planetary Extinction, is the Sealed Evil In A Can's goal.)
- Arc Words: "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"
- Awesome Moment Of Crowning ( Touchstone is revealed to be the last surviving member of the royal family, a bastard son of the Queen, and so in eighteen years, not only are he and Sabriel happily married, they're king and queen as well.)
- Badass Bookworm (Sabriel qualifies, but Lirael is a much more extreme example. Aside from being the Second Assistant Librarian, her secret after-hours activities regularly include awakening horrible Free Magic creatures locked in the deepest dungeons of the library, and destroying them with the help of the Disreputable Dog.)
- Bad Powers Bad People (Averted for the heroes. The Abhorsens have the same abilities as necromancers, namely those of awakening and otherwise controlling dead bodies and spirits. The Abhorsens' bells, however, are fired through with Charter Magic, hence their commitment and ability to keep the Dead journeying down the river of death.)
- The Berserker (Touchstone, when he's pushed to the edge. This is a result of his father having been a warrior from the North.)
- Book Of Shadows (The Book of the Dead.)
- The Call Put Me On Hold (Get used to it, Lirael.)
- For the record, she did. And she feels better about being the Abhorsen-in-Waiting than a reject Clayr.
- Catch Phrase (Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?)
- Cats Are Mean (Mogget, who qualifies for one of the meanest beings in the Old Kingdom.)
- Cat Scare (There're at least two occasions when Sam hears something in the grass, freaks out, and draws his sword and it turns out to be Mogget.)
- Changing Of The Guard (The main character of the first book is Sabriel, and the story focuses on her first quest as Abhorsen. In the second and third books, set 18 years later, Sabriel is offstage for most of the story; the story focuses in part on her son Sam who is in training to be the next Abhorsen himself. The trope is played with in that he is obviously desperately unqualified to be an Abhorsen and then perhaps double-subverted, in that the other main character turns out to be Sabriel's long-lost sister, and she becomes the next Abhorsen.)
- The Chosen One (The Abhorsen, responsible for making The Undead Deader Than Dead)
- The Corruption (This is what happens to dead spirits that decide they don't want to travel up any farther past the River of Death. Also an explicit consequence, even for the living, of tarrying in Death (only the Abhorsen knows how to avoid these pitfalls.))
- Crowning Momentof Heartwarming (Yrael's Choice)
- Dark Skinned Blond (The Clayr)
- Dead Ex Machina ( the entire line of Abhorsens, including her father for Sabriel, and the Disreputable Dog for Nick. Both examples send the recipient back to the world of Life.)
- Deadpan Snarker (Mogget, in spades.)
- Derelict Graveyard (Sabriel, in the first book, lands her Paperwing in a very unique Derelict Graveyard: the underground and enchanted grotto full of the burial ships of kings. As such, there's nothing harmful lurking there, but she does find a Human Popsicle that needs rescuing while she's there.)
- Estrogen Brigade Bait (Touchstone. aaaahhhhkilt)
- Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: Sabriel was rather surprised to find out that Abhorsen was not actually her father's name, but instead his title.
- Evil Is Not A Toy (The villain Kerrigor is unleashed from being Deader Than Disco by a necromancer who thought he could handle one of the most twisted and powerful Dead in all of history.)
- Not to mention that idiot Chlorr. "Oh, I hear there's an ancient and mysterious force of evil near the Red Lake! I shall go grab it, since there's obviously no way it could outclass me!"
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture
- First Girl Wins (Sabriel to Touchstone.)
- The Force (The Charter, which organizes the world and energizes it against the corrupting influence of Free Magic.)
- Functional Magic (Several varieties: Rule for Charter, Wild for Free, and a mixture of Theurgy and Device Magic for the Abhorsen.)
- Gender Equals Breed (The usual "Dogs are Boys, Cats are Girls" is subverted. The Disreputable Dog is actually a "Disreputable Bitch, if you want to get get technical". If she's a bitch, Mogget is a certainly a bastard.)
- Geometric Magic (the Charter Marks are unique and named runes, each of which has its own power, which can be written with hand or sword, or even whistled or barked [if one is so inclined.])
- God Was My Co Pilot (The Disreputable Dog (Kibeth) and Mogget (Yrael).)
- Happily Married (Eighteen years after their escapades in the first book, which caused many a Squee, Sabriel and Touchstone are shown to be very satisfied together, while not verging into mushy territory.)
- Hellish Horse (Hedge has one. It is on fire.)
- Heroic Bastard (Touchstone)
- Heroic Self Deprecation (Lirael and Sam. Even Touchstone, to an extent.)
- Heroic Sociopath (Mogget toes — or paws — the line between this and...)
- Hidden Agenda Villain (Aside from his stated desire to torture all the remaining carriers of the Abhorsen bloodline to death in vengeance for his millennia of servitude, when Mogget acts independently, his motives are never quite clear.)
- Hufflepuff House (The (live) Southerlings in Abhorsen, who border on being a Mauve Shirt Army.)
- Human Popsicle (Touchstone has been sealed for 200 years as a wooden figurehead to a ship)
- I Got Better (The Dog bends the rules when it suits her, and it suited her to bring back Nick.)
- I Lied (The Reveal that The Disreputable Dog is Kibeth directly contradicts an earlier statement, when she said she wasn't one of the Seven. This is the explanation: "After all, I am the Disreputable Dog.")
- Improvised Weapon: In Lirael, Sam and his classmates fend off zombies with cricket equipment. (Note: the book pre-dates Shaun Of The Dead by three years.)
- Incendiary Exponent (Quite a few of the higher-level Dead are on fire.)
- Instant Expert (Lirael, at being an Abhorsen.)
- Intellectual Animal (Several, including the Disreputable Dog)
- In The Blood (Lirael's morbid personality and even her idea to kill herself in Lirael make sense when one learns she is the last Abhorsen's daughter. She also has a strong affinity to Free Magic, the pipes and bells, and the Book of the Dead, despite having no exposure at all in her upbringing.)
- Kid With The Leash (Played with with Mogget. The Abhorsen has his leash, all right, but there's a very good reason they keep him on it.)
- Kill It With Fire (One of the ways of dealing with the Dead, especially those who aren't fazed by running water.)
- Last Boy Wins (For Lirael. She first encountered a visitor in the Clayr's Glacier, but was too depressed (and fourteen years old) to notice he was trying to ask her out. Then she met Sam, while he was busy running away and she was undertaking a voyage to find out what Hedge was up to and Sam turned out to be her nephew, so yeah. Last guy she meets? Nick Sayre.)
- Long Lost Sibling (Lirael is Sabriel's half-sister.)
- Mad Oracle (The Clayr. An entire clan built of this. In most circumstances, their power of Sight is divided among the hundreds of Clayr, granting each of its members with random fragments of possible futures. This also gives them a rather incoherent sense of time and causality (which might help explain the number of one-night stands they have.))
- Magic Mirror (The Dark Mirror, a handheld portal into the past, only workable by Remembrancers. By walking into Death and reciting the incantation, the user can see into past events. The farther back one wants to look, the farther into Death she must walk.)
- Magic Music (The necromancers' and Abhorsens' bells. Each of the seven — named for the creators of the Charter — has a different effect. One of the bells casts the listeners deep into the realm of Death, but if you're appropriately skilled and/or powerful, you can just walk back.)
- Magical Girl (Technically, Sabriel and Lirael.)
- Magnificent Bastard (Mogget. And how.)
- The Mind Is A Plaything Of The Body (Lirael can make skins that allow her to take on the form of an otter, or a bear, or an owl, but each one alters her temperament for a while, even when she takes them off [the otter-skin gives her a great craving for fish, for example, and the bear-skin makes her extra irritable.])
- Naked On Arrival (Touchstone)
- Offscreen Teleportation (Mogget and the Dog)
- One Gender Race (The named Clayr characters, for some never disclosed reason, are all women — or almost all women — and all blonde, willowy, and tanned. There is no plot reason why there shouldn't be any male Clayr, though.)
- Technically, there are male Clayr — they just aren't called that, since they don't possess the Sight and as such have little status in the society. (They are also allegedly quite rare.)
- Really? I never got the impression male Clayr didn't have the sight. I couldn't help but imagine a male Clayr or two acting like any Clayr; Seeing stuff, sleeping with lots of women, not afraid of anything.
- Our Zombies Are Different (Even if your guns work, don't bother with headshots. You have to destroy the entire body. And that's just the Dead Hands; the "Shadow Hands" don't even have proper physical bodies.)
- Royal Blood (Not only the kingship, but the Abhorsen and the Clayr are also defined by bloodline. At the beginning of the story, the kingdom has gone to pot because there's no legitimate heir of royal blood to take the throne.)
- Save Both Worlds (Ancelstierre ends up at risk from both Kerrigor and the Destroyer, and as the Abhorsen will probably tell you, The World Is Always Doomed in the Old Kingdom.)
- Sealed Evil In A Can (Lots, ranging from the seriously dangerous to all but the very skilled to the World-Destroying God-Thing. The Clayr Library, for starters, keeps sets of tools lain out centuries ago for precisely the main character, as well as various Free Magic monsters and an artifact capable of summoning one of the beings which created the world. And it's an effing library.)
- It is made clear that it's a rather unusual library. Badass Bookworm status is essentially required to work there.
- In fact, Lirael gets an enchanted whistle that's basically there to call for help. The gist of the conversation: "What's the whistle for?" "In case you run into something."
- It's positioned so you don't need your arms to blow it... in case something's holding your arms.
- And then there's the regulation magical voice-activated clockwork mouse that runs back to the Reading Room and sounds the alarm in case you get into trouble and no-one is in earshot of the enchanted whistle...
- Sealed Evil In A Teddy Bear: Mogget
- Self Fulfilling Prophecy (The Clayr live on these. They initiate a new member into their ranks because... they Saw themselves initiating her!)
- Tear Jerker (The 'death' of the Disreputable Dog in Abhorsen.)
- Too Cool To Live (Subverted. Nick seems a) cool enough to overshadow Sam and b) doomed. He actually does die, but the Dog objects to this.)
- Two Part Trilogy (Lirael and Abhorsen were conceived of as one book.)
- Unstuck In Time (The Clayr live like this. See Mad Oracle.)
- Wangst (Depending on the reader's preferences, either Lirael, Sam, or both in Lirael; frequently lampshaded by the Dog, Mogget, and occasionally Lirael and Sam themselves.)
- In the Dog's case, aggressively lampshaded. It's mentioned that Lirael has dog bite scars from when she was considering suicide again.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness (Poor, poor Nicholas Sayre.)
- Not that you couldn't see that coming a continent away, but at least he got better.
- Zombie Apocalypse (the Dead, who are corpses reanimated and somehow deformed by Free Magic, are mindless, squishy, and very persistent)
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