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Post by Vanguard the Newly Employed on May 21, 2005 22:21:34 GMT -5
Normally, I'm not a big fantasy fan, but my girlfriend lent me this to show my roommate who is. But my roommate's not home, so I checked it out for myself, and I'm really starting to like what I've read so far. I'm about fifty pages in.
It's about a young woman named Sabriel, who is the daughter of a necromancer, Abhorsen. She is a prefect at a college near the northern Old Kingdom, wherein lies the realm of magic, and the Dead. But the college is in the southern kingdom, where the powers of magic fades the further one goes from the Wall dividing the two kingdoms.
Abhorsen is no ordinary necromancer. Where most necromancers raise the dead, Abhorsen works to bind them, driving them to True Death. He is scheduled to meet Sabriel one night, but she finds a beast of the Old Kingdom instead, she communicates with it, and recieved a package: Her father's sword, empowered with magical wards, and his magic bells, which are his toold of necromancy. Sabriel believes her father must be trapped in the land of the dead, and in danger, and sets off into the magical Old Kingdom to find him.
One neat thing I've noticed so far is the mixture of technology and magic. Guarding the wall dividing the two kingdoms are soldiers with guns. However, if the winds are blowing from the north, the influences of the Old Kingdom render them useless, and they must use ancient weaponry, as well as Charter Mages, who cast regular or 'charter' magic (i.e. necromancy is a rare trait, I suppose) with symbols and wards. Also, time seems to pass at different speeds in the two kingdoms.
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