Gr 7 Up-Tim Curry's tour de force performance is a perfect match for Nix's eloquently written high fantasy featuring Sabriel, a young necromancer seeking to free the spirit of her father from Death. Curry pulls out all the stops for the purring, growling cat companion, Mogget, a free magic elemental whose motives can never be trusted. Curry repeats his vocal feats in Lirael and Abhorsen. A prequel, Clariel, is narrated by Graeme Malcolm. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Sabriel is her last year at Wyverley College, a private school in Ancelstierre, where Magic does not work, but near the Border with the Old Kingdom, where it does. She and her father are also highly skilled necromancers, who fight the dead who seek to return to Life. But when her father is somehow trapped in Death, she must journey into the Old Kingdom to find him. She does not know that it is wracked by struggle (like that in Ursula LeGuin's The Farthest Shore)-a magician has brought chaos by refusing to die and hopes to use Sabriel and her father to further consolidate his power. Sabriel goes on a long journey throughout a densely imagined world, learning as she goes, and meeting such strange characters as Mogget, a raging natural force contained in the shape of a cat. She also develops a relationship with Touchstone, a young man who turns out to be as crucially involved as she is. Although Sabriel is possessed of much heavy knowledge ("A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don't feel young any more"), she is still a teenager and vulnerable where her father and love for Touchstone are concerned, making her a sympathetic heroine. Rich, complex, involving, hard to put down, this first novel, an Australian import, is excellent high fantasy. The suitably climactic ending leaves no loose ends, but readers will hope for a sequel. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Gr. 7^-12. The mage Abhorsen is an "uncommon necromancer," who, rather than raising the dead like others of the art, lays the dead back to rest or binds those that will not rest. Sabriel, his daughter, has been sent for her safety to boarding school outside the Old Kingdom, where she is in her last year when she receives her father's sword and necromancy tools, which means that Abhorsen is either dead or trapped in the realm of Death. Determined to find her father, Sabriel enters the Old Kingdom, which is under attack from the minions of Kerrigor, an evil being who once was human. There, with the aid of Mogget, a Free Magic elemental who is bound in feline form to be the servant of Abhorsen, and Touchstone, a young man whose past harbors a terrible secret, Sabriel goes up against Dead spirits, Shadow Hands, gore crows, and the like, in a desperate quest to find her father's body and fetch his spirit back from Death. Nix has created an ingenious, icy world in the throes of chaos as Kerrigor works to destroy the Charter that binds all things for the good of the land and its inhabitants. The action charges along at a gallop, imbued with an encompassing sense of looming disaster. Sabriel, who entered the Old Kingdom lacking much of the knowledge she needs, proves to be a stalwart heroine, who, in the end, finds and accepts her destiny. A page-turner for sure, this intricate tale compares favorably with Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass [BKL Mr 1 96] and will surely appeal to the same audience. --Sally Estes

Sabriel's quest to find her father begins without warning when she is pulled from her life at a select private school and plunged into the Old Kingdom, a world of magic, spells, and mystery. In the sequel, Lirael's adventure starts in the Great Library of Clayr, whose ""old levels"" are so hazardous they can only be entered armed. The pressurized sense of danger that drives these fantasies makes both of them ideal choices for audio. Curry is a master of the deftly placed pause, using silence the way an artist uses negative space. The voice he chooses for the narrator, deliberate and grave, is a foil for his seamless transits from character to character. And at over twenty-five hours in recorded time, there is ample opportunity for listeners to take root in Nix's richly imagined landscape. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.