Where to Start with Garth Nix: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Garth Nix — whether to begin with Sabriel, Lirael, or Abhorsen. A complete reading guide to the Old Kingdom series and the Australian fantasy master.
Garth Nix (born 1963) is the Australian fantasy novelist who — with Sabriel (1995) — created the Old Kingdom series, one of the most original and most lasting works of young adult fantasy of the 1990s. The Old Kingdom world, with its Wall dividing a magical kingdom from a contemporary world, its unique bells-based necromancy, and its complex Charter magic, has influenced a generation of fantasy writers and remained continuously in print for thirty years. He is the most important Australian fantasy novelist and one of the most original world-builders in the YA genre.
Where to Start: Sabriel (1995)
The essential Nix — and one of the finest YA fantasy novels of its era. Sabriel is eighteen, a student in the south who has grown up in a school that feels almost contemporary, across the Wall from the Old Kingdom where magic is real and the Dead walk. Her father is the Abhorsen — the necromancer whose function is to return the Dead to death rather than allowing them to infest the living world. When he goes missing, Sabriel crosses the Wall and must assume his role before she fully understands what it demands.
Nix writes his world with the specificity of genuine invention. The Wall is a genuine border — between magic and technology, between the ancient world and the modern, between chaos and order — and the decision to have the reader encounter the Old Kingdom alongside Sabriel, crossing from a recognisable school world into something utterly other, is formally inspired. The bells of the Abhorsen — Ranna the Sleeper through Astarael the Weeper, each with a specific function in negotiating with the Dead — are the most original magic system in 1990s YA fantasy, and Nix uses them precisely: every bell is deployed in ways consistent with its properties, and the danger of misuse is real and consequential.
The Old Kingdom is dark. The Dead are genuinely frightening. Death itself — the cold river through which the Abhorsen moves, deeper and more dangerous at each level — is rendered with an originality that makes it unlike the afterlife of any other fantasy world. Sabriel is a novel about taking death seriously, which is unusual at any reading level.
Lirael (2001)
The second Old Kingdom novel — set fourteen years after Sabriel, following a different protagonist. Lirael is a Daughter of the Clayr (prophetic glacier-dwellers) who has never manifested their gift of Sight and feels fundamentally out of place. The novel traces her growing up in the glacier libraries and her discovery that her calling is different from what she expected. A longer and more introspective book than Sabriel, focused on belonging and identity before the larger external conflict emerges. Requires Sabriel.
Abhorsen (2003)
The conclusion of the original trilogy — the narrative of Sabriel and Lirael’s linked stories reaches its climax. The threat that has been building across two books is confronted; the costs are real. Nix provides a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy while leaving the world open for the later novels. Best read directly after Lirael.
Reading Garth Nix
The Old Kingdom trilogy (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen) is the essential Nix — and one of the small number of young adult fantasy trilogies worth recommending to adult readers without qualification. Begin with Sabriel, commit to all three books, and approach a world that takes its darkness and its magic with equal seriousness. The later Old Kingdom novels (Clariel, Goldenhand) extend the world but are secondary; the original trilogy is complete in itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Garth Nix?
Sabriel (1995) is the only starting point — the first Old Kingdom novel and one of the finest works of young adult fantasy published in the 1990s. Eighteen-year-old Sabriel, daughter of the Abhorsen (the necromancer who keeps the Dead from returning to life), crosses the Wall from the modern world into the Old Kingdom to rescue her missing father. The magic system — Charter magic and Free Magic, and the bells of the Abhorsen — is original and carefully designed; the world is dark and takes death seriously. Lirael (2001) and Abhorsen (2003) are the direct sequels and form a complete trilogy.
What is the Old Kingdom series about?
The Old Kingdom is a fantasy world separated from a contemporary world (resembling 1900s England) by a Wall. To the south of the Wall, modern technology works; to the north, Charter magic and the Dead govern. The Abhorsen is a necromancer whose function is to send the Dead back into Death rather than allowing them to walk among the living. The series follows two Abhorsens across two generations: Sabriel in the first novel, and Lirael — a girl from the Clayr (prophetic glacier-dwellers) who discovers she has an unexpected connection to the Abhorsen line — in the second and third. The magic system is among the most original in YA fantasy.
What makes the Old Kingdom magic system distinctive?
The Old Kingdom magic system is divided into Charter magic (structured, learned, part of an ancient agreement that shapes reality) and Free Magic (wild, dangerous, and corrosive). The Abhorsen uses neither primarily — the Abhorsen's art is the use of seven bells (Ranna the Sleeper, Mosrael the Waker, Kibeth the Walker, Dyrim, Belgaer, Saraneth the Binder, Astarael the Weeper) to negotiate with the Dead across nine levels of Death, a cold river flowing deeper than reality. Each bell has a specific effect when rung, and misuse can turn the bells against the user. The system is specific, consistent, and genuinely used — the novels don't just invent it as backdrop but build their plots around its possibilities and limitations.
Is Sabriel appropriate for younger readers?
Sabriel is marketed as young adult but deals with death, loss, and horror with unusual directness for the category. The Dead in the Old Kingdom are genuinely frightening — rotting, malevolent, purposeful — and the novel treats their threat as real rather than merely atmospheric. Most readers aged thirteen and up will find it entirely manageable; younger readers may find the darker sequences disturbing. The novel is one of the few in YA fantasy that takes death seriously as a subject rather than using it as a plot device. This is one of its most distinctive qualities and one of the reasons it has remained in print for thirty years.
