Clariel
Books | Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Epic
4
(3.4K)
Garth Nix
Award-winning author Garth Nix returns to the Old Kingdom with a thrilling prequel complete with dark magic, royalty, dangerous action, a strong heroine, and flawless world building. This epic fantasy adventure is destined to be a classic and is perfect for fans of Rae Carson, Kristin Cashore, Scott Westerfeld, and Cassandra Clare.Clariel is the daughter of one of the most notable families in the Old Kingdom, with blood relations to the Abhorsen and, most important, to the King. She dreams of living a simple life but discovers this is hard to achieve when a dangerous Free Magic creature is loose in the city, her parents want to marry her off to a killer, and there is a plot brewing against the old and withdrawn King Orrikan. When Clariel is drawn into the efforts to find and capture the creature, she finds hidden sorcery within herself, yet it is magic that carries great dangers. Can she rise above the temptation of power, escape the unwanted marriage, and save the King?
Dark Fantasy
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More Details:
Author
Garth Nix
Pages
416
Publisher
Harper Collins
Published Date
2014-10-14
ISBN
0062216805 9780062216809
Ratings
Google: 5
Community ReviewsSee all
"All of the Old Kingdom books have been dark because so far they've focused heavily on death, the dead, and the ruin of the kingdom. While this book takes place before the interregnum and the river of death only makes a few offstage appearances in Clariel, if you're into the darker side of the Old Kingdom's magic system and the forces of will at the edge of the Charter, you're in luck. Clariel is dark in the way that narratives about the Hindenberg or the Titanic can only be dark. Though it's a prequel, Clariel was written to be read by someone who at the very least has read Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen (if not all of the canon novels and short stories). <br/>You would think that given the prescient knowledge of the ultimate fate of the characters in this book, it'd be difficult to become fully invested in the story... maybe it's just my personal taste or maybe it's that Nix is just wonderful at writing sympathetic characters, but all of it was really compelling and though it was bittersweet, it didn't have that "what's the point" hopelessness. <br/>I did feel like the ending had nowhere to go though... you can see a trajectory and the ultimate destination, but because the narrative's set up like it's going to fill in the blanks, you're left feeling like someone's done half the MadLibs page and put it down to do something else. Either way, I was really happy to read this book and I'm happy to hear in the afterword that in about 30 years, we'll get another Old Kingdom book because this really is my favorite fantasy vacation destination. A+ Thanks Garth!"
"This entry in the Old Kingdom series was very satisfying. I appreciated how the main character struggles with life and deals with with it in an a non-typical protagonist manner. <br/><br/>It was also cool to see the world before the great fall and to see how things functioned. I wouldn't mind more adventures set in this time period or before!"
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