read full post >

Arthur Penhaligon is the asthmatic new kid at school. He didn't know about the Monday run and doesn't have a doctor's note explaining how very bad his asthma is - so the teacher makes him run. When he's lying in in a field, collapsed and barely breathing, something strange happens that might be a hallucination, but isn't. A fragment of the Will left by the Architect has escaped the dead sun where it has been imprisoned for millennia, and manages to trick Mister Monday into giving the lesser key to Arthur, fulfilling the bare letter of the law of the Will (since Arthur is an heir and very near death).

Read more...

read full post >

As an infant, Sabriel nearly-- or, to be more accurate, briefly-- died. But her father, Abhorsen, stepped across the boundary between Life and Death, and brought her back. Abhorsen is a necromancer unlike any I have ever read about-- instead of summoning the dead, he binds the dead that haunt the living, and he assists-- or forces-- them to cross the final gate. Now a young woman and nearly finished with her schooling in Ancelstierre, Sabriel learns that something has happened to her father-- he is either bound somewhere in Death, or perhaps actually dead. So, she crosses back into the Old Kingdom, where she discovers that Abhorsen is not a name but a title, and that she has inherited it. A powerful, Greater Dead creature and its minions are stirring, and she must outrace them to find her father and save the kingdom.

Read more...