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Sabriel - Synopsis
Garth Nix
Interview with Garth Nix about Sabriel
Quotes from the Book
Interesting Facts

...Fanlistings

A fanlisting is simply an online listing of fans of a subject, such as a TV show, actor, or musician, that is created by an individual and open for fans from around the world to join. There are no costs, and the only requirements to join a fanlisting are your name and country.

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...Sabriel

Sabriel is a fantasy novel by Garth Nix, first published in 1995. It is the first in his Old Kingdom trilogy, and is followed by Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr and Abhorsen.
When the current Abhorsen is overcome by one such evil, he sends his daughter Sabriel - who is being raised in Ancelstierre, out of reach of those who might try to strike at her father through her - his bells and sword, she must return to the Old Kingdom to rescue her father and prevent the evil's return.
Sabriel is joined on her journey by an ancient Free Magic construct of unknown origin named Mogget. Mogget appears in the form of a white cat and is bound by a red Charter magic collar to serve the Abhorsen. Sabriel is told never to release Mogget's collar. Sabriel and Mogget take a craft known as a Paperwing to try and find her father. On the way, they are attacked by the Dead. The craft is wrecked, and in order to save herself, Sabriel releases Mogget. The cat reveals himself to be an incredibly powerful Free Magic elemental. It almost kills Sabriel, but she rebinds him with a ring she received for just such a purpose.
Sabriel and Mogget then find themselves in the pit of Holehallow, the burial place of ancient royalty, where they come across their next companion, the mysterious Touchstone, who has been magically imprisoned as a wooden ship's figurehead for over two hundred years. He claims that he doesn't remember his past, or even his own name. At Mogget's suggestion, he asks to be called Touchstone, even though it is a jester's name, because he secretly remembers his failure to protect his family.
The three of them trek through the Old Kingdom in an attempt to find the Abhorsen. When they find him, however, he has stayed too long in Death, and thus cannot return. With what little time he has left, the Abhorsen tells Sabriel about the ultimate evil known as Kerrigor. Kerrigor has risen far from death and is headed to wreak havoc in the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. Sabriel must stop Kerrigor and take on her new path as the Abhorsen.

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...Garth Nix

Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia, to the sound of the Salvation Army band outside playing 'Hail the Conquering Hero Comes' or possibly 'Roll Out the Barrel'. Garth left Melbourne at an early age for Canberra (the federal capital) and stayed there till he was nineteen, when he left to drive around the UK in a beat-up Austin with a boot full of books and a Silver-Reed typewriter.
Despite a wheel literally falling off the Austin, Garth survived to return to Australia and study at the University of Canberra. After finishing his degree in 1986 he worked in a bookshop, then as a book publicist, a publisher's sales representative, and editor. Along the way he was also a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve, serving in an Assault Pioneer platoon for four years. Garth left publishing to work as a public relations and marketing consultant from 1994-1997, till he became a full-time writer in 1998. He did that for a year before joining Curtis Brown Australia as a part-time literary agent in 1999. In January 2002 Garth went back to dedicated writer again, despite his belief that full-time writing explains the strange behaviour of many authors.
Garth currently lives in a beach suburb of Sydney, with his wife Anna, a publisher, and new born baby Thomas Henry.

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Interview with Garth Nix

Imagine a world where magic is a living thing, and those that can master it can venture into a place between life and death to bring back the good and banish the evil. Sabriel , the daughter of a powerful necromancer, lives in Alcestierre, a land which borders just such a world: the Old Kingdom. But Sabriel's father has gone missing in the Old Kingdom and now she must cross the boundary between the worlds to seek him out. Sabriel has power of her own but it is untried and untested, and she knows little of the Old Kingdom: its ways, its history or its inhabitants. As she searches for her father Sabriel learns more about herself: who she is and who she is to become. The adventure is only just beginning. The stunning first book in a new fantasy trilogy from Australian author Garth Nix ,Sabriel is an enthralling read for children and adults alike. The bold cover is sure to catch your eye while the story will transport you to a brand new world. To give you more of an idea of Sabriel and the man behind the book, read our interview with Garth Nix below.

Sabriel is set in two completely different environments, yet unlike most fantasy novels they are both part of the same world: the magical realm of the Old Kingdom, where technology fails and dies, and Ancelstierre, a land of technology where magic struggles to have any effect. These two lands are separated by a wall and defences. Just what was the inspiration for such an amazing setting? It's difficult to pin down exactly the inspiration for anything. But I think the very basic seed for the two countries and the wall that separates them was a photo I saw once of Hadrian's Wall, where there was snow on the northern side and a green lawn on the southern side. So it looked like there were different seasons on either side of the wall. The Perimeter on the Ancelstierran side is very much influenced by my interest in the first World War, in which many of my forebears fought and some died. Before I started Sabriel I was thinking about writing an historical novel set in the first World War. I didn't, but some of the research and my feelings about the war sort of slipped into the fantasy novel. I guess I half wanted to write an historical novel and I half wanted to write a fantasy novel, and I ended up writing a fantasy novel that has elements of the historical novel, hence Ancelstierre with its 1918-ish technology and the Old Kingdom with its magic.

Where did you get the idea for the novel? And did you always intend to continue the story when Sabriel was complete? I wrote the prologue a good six months before I really started the novel. In that prologue I wanted to explore the concept of a necromancer who uses his powers in the opposite way to what you would expect, in that he banishes creatures who have come back to life. So I expected to write a book about the Abhorsen, Sabriel's father. However in writing the prologue I found Sabriel herself was much more interesting and I ended up writing about a young woman who is a kind of anti-necromancer, rather than a middle-aged man. Sabriel is a stand-alone novel, or was when it was first published in Australia in 1995. When it was published in the US in 1996, there was some pressure to write a sequel. But I didn't have a story in mind and in any case I was busy writing ShadeÕs Children, a dark, post-apocalypse (but an unusual apocalypse) novel. By the time I finished that book, I did have a new story in mind, which became Lirael and then expanded into Abhorsen. These two books continue a loose trilogy begun with Sabriel. Though Sabriel is not the main character in Lirael and Abhorsen, she is still very significant.

Do you write with a specific audience in mind? I ask as Sabriel has won many childrenÕs fiction awards, but in my mind it is one of the best fantasy novels I've read. Did you set out to have as broad an appeal as possible, and did this affect any of the subject matter you dealt with, most particularly the evil forces and legions of the dead? No, for Sabriel and sequels I didn't think of a particular audience and I didn't pull my punches or self-censor. I am the audience and I try and write a book that I would like now as (hopefully) a mature adult and that I would have enjoyed at thirteen or fourteen and upwards. In fact, I considered Sabriel simply as a fantasy novel and it has been published that way in various countries, not as a children's book. It tends to fall into the children's category because it is fantasy, the protagonist is eighteen years old, and because the book does particularly appeal to teenagers. Mind you, it also seems to particularly appeal to readers of any age who enjoy a good fantasy adventure.

On the subject of the dead, the imagery of the River and the Gateways into death are incredibly vivid. How did that come about? I was thinking about death at the time I was writing Sabriel. My grandfather had suffered a series of strokes and was hovering in that limbo between life and death. He was the first person close to me to be dying, and it really made me think about the whole cycle of life and death and also the mythology, superstition and religious beliefs that surround dying, the afterlife and so on. Rivers are associated with death from classical mythology, and a river is also a powerful image of change and travel. So I started with a river of death and then had to think about what could happen along it. As death is also often seen as a boundary or gate that is crossed, it wasn't a great step to think of the river having gates along it, and nine seemed the right number. I didn't really think this through all that much at the time of writing Sabriel, though it is explored more in Lirael and particularly Abhorsen.

The technological side, Ancelstierre, has set up military defences against the dead and necromancer's magic and yet felt very like the entrenched troops in an old war movie. Along with the boarding school this all felt very British... do you have any roots or much experience of the land of tea and tweed? Growing up in Australia in the late 1960s and 1970s we were not as detached from Britain as is now the case. We sang 'God Save the Queen' in primary school, till it changed to 'Advance Australia Fair' in the mid-70s. Even as recently as my great-grandparents they would have thought of themselves as British subjects as well as, and perhaps more importantly than, being Australian. Personally, a great proportion of the books I read while growing up were British, as was much of the television we watched. Later, when I was 19, I spent six months in the UK doing the youth hostel travelling thing all over the place, and I've been back to visit numerous times since then. While I think Australian society as a whole has moved a long way away from its British heritage, we still like to claim the good parts, such as the literary traditions, while disowning much else. The Ancelstierran Army stuff draws on my interest in military history and my own experience of five years in the Australian Army Reserve (part-time, like your Territorial Army). The Australian Army is descended directly from the British (and in the first World War was effectively part of it) and even with the US influence, still has a great deal in common with the British army. The Perimeter in Sabriel is a kind of World War I trench-line in more ways than just its physical appearance. There is a similar general staff level of stupidity, in that the most effective means of combating the Dead are discouraged and despite all evidence the forces on the Perimeter are ordered to conform to military doctrine and tactics that simply don't work and lead to a lot of frontline soldiers getting killed.

The world of Sabriel is incredibly detailed. Have you been building a sort of guidebook to the lands, the Charter symbols and the history and can we expect to see more tales from the same world after Lirael and Abhorsen? No, I haven't been building a guidebook, though I do make ad hoc notes. I think this is a dangerous trap for fantasy writers. You can get caught up 'worldbuilding' and end up with all sorts of amazing detail and no story. I actually tend to make up only as much detail as I need for the story as I go along, though I do try and give the impression that there is much more there. I just don't know what it is unless I need it for the story later, in which case I'll work it out. I believe a fantasy novel should be like an iceberg. You can see some of it all the time, but you know there is much more, lurking dark and mysterious beneath the surface.

The necromancer's bells are an inspired creation, using sound instead of wands to command the dead. Yet along with Mogget, the young characters are playing with dangerous and often hard-to-control forces in their battles against evil. Was this a conscious decision, symbolic of anything? It was a conscious decision, though I don't know whether it's symbolic of anything. I just personally hated (and still hate) books where the magic might as well be technology. You know that it will work in exactly the same way every time, just like a light switch, without danger. I think magic is much more interesting and certainly much more suspenseful if it's at least partially unknown and potentially dangerous.

Besides the Sabriel trilogy, what other works have you created, and will we see any of them in the UK? My other novels include my actual first novel (there is some confusion about this as it came out in the US at the same time as Sabriel, in a much smaller way) The Ragwitch, in which a young girl from our world is absorbed into the mind of an ancient evil in the shape of a seven-foot rag doll who is trying to reconquer the kingdom she lost centuries ago. Then there is ShadeÕs Children, the science fiction novel which I have already mentioned. I have also had published in the US and in various foreign languages a six book series for the 9-12 year old core audience called The Seventh Tower, which is a fantasy adventure set on a world where it always dark and three very different societies are about to be at war. And I've written three chapter books for the 6-8 year old audience, including my personal favourite because Stephen Michael King's illustrations are so good, Serena and the Sea Serpent. At the time of writing none of these books are readily available in the UK.

With the success of the Potter movie(s) and Pullman's His Dark Materials undergoing cinematic production, can we expect to see Sabriel on the big screen anytime in the future? There has been continual interest in Sabriel film rights over the last few years. I've always said that I'm prepared to sell the rights either to people whose work I respect or for vast amounts of money, preferably both! Typically, most of the approaches have been from people whose work I don't respect offering small amounts of money. But there are some ongoing discussions with some excellent film-makers so I remain hopeful.

And finally, your website has advice for anyone who wants to be a writer, the first piece of which is "You can't write if you don't read". What are your favourite books and what do you find inspirational? Inspiration comes from many quarters. It may come from staring out my window and watching a crow being chased by sparrows; from a biography or history I'm reading; from someone else's novel (hopefully merely an inspiration); from a song; from a walk to the shops. But certainly I have been deeply influenced by many books, particularly the ones I read in childhood. A truncated list would include works by J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin, Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Lloyd Alexander, Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton, John Masefield, C. S. Lewis, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Sayers, Rosemary Sutcliff, Ronald Welch, Cynthia Harnett, Patricia McKillip, Jane Austen, Victoria Walker, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Ransome, Margery Allingham, Joan Aiken, Charles Dickens, Brian Aldiss, Jack Vance, Robert Graves, Diana Wynne Jones, Robin McKinley, E. J. McGraw, Nicholas Stuart Gray, J. P. Martin ...

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Quotes

"A tall, curiously pale young woman stood over the rabbit. Her night-black hair, fashionably boobed, was hanging slightly over her face. She wore no makeup or jewelry, save for an enamelled school badge pinned to her regulation navy blazer. that, coupled with her long skirt, stockings and sensible shoes, identified her as a schoolgirl. A nameplate under the badge read "Sabriel" and the Roman "VI" and gilt crown proclaimed her to be both a member of the Sixth Form and a prefect..."

"Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"

"Travel without regret, do not look back."

"I am a necromancer, but not of the common kind. Where others of the art raise the dead, I lay them back to rest. And those that will not rest, I bind--or try to. I am Abhorsen..."

"Puzzled, she touched his immobile face, fingers tracing the grain of the wood. ‘A kiss,’ said Mogget sleepily. ‘Actually, just a breath would do. But you have to start kissing someone sometime, I suppose."

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Interesting Facts

Garth Nix's idea for Sabriel came from a photograph of Hadrians Wall.

He wrote his first draft in longhand in small, easy-to-carry notebooks.

The name "Sabriel" could relate to the Sabra plant, a prickly pear. Native Israeliss are often named Sabra - supposed to represent a prickly exterior but warm heart. Adding the - el would give you something like 'cactus of God'. Also, there is Bulan Sabriel who was the first Jewish Emperor of Khazaria.

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