Clariel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
An epic fantasy adventure, set six hundred years before Sabriel, featuring a doomed hero and her struggle to choose her own destiny.
SHORT-LISTED ABIA Award, Older Children
Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?
Clariel is the daughter of one of the most notable families in the Old Kingdom, with blood relations to the Abhorsen, and to the King. When her family moves to the city of Belisaere, Clariel finds herself at the centre of sorcery and intrigue: a plot is brewing against the old and withdrawn King Orrikan; her parents want to marry her off to a killer; and a dangerous Free Magic creature is loose in the city. 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?
Set approximately six hundred years before the birth of Sabriel, Clariel will delight Old Kingdom fans as well as new readers hungry for epic fantasy adventure.
'A thunderstorm of a tale, bitter and brutal but dazzling in its ferocity.' - Kirkus Reviews
'Elegant and complex world-building' - Sydney Morning Herald
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a prequel to his classic Old Kingdom series, set some 600 years before the previous novels, Nix introduces Clariel, the 17-year-old daughter of a supremely talented goldsmith mother. Clariel only wants to be left alone, "to become a Borderer, one of the wardens who patrolled the forests and woods of the kingdom," But unfortunately for her, she is also a close relative of the aging ruler of the Old Kingdom, as well as the Abhorsen, the kingdom's master of lawful Charter Magic, who must keep both the Dead and the Wild Magic in their places. Clariel soon becomes a pawn in the political machinations of both her mother and the ambitious guildmaster Kilp, who controls the capital city, Belisaere. Worse, she discovers that her occasionally violent temper may itself have dire (and magical) consequences for her future. Between striking characters from the heroic if not entirely competent young Abhorsen-in-Waiting, Belatiel, to the enigmatic, catlike Mogget and Nix's brilliantly complex magic system, this superb tale is exactly the book fans of the series have been awaiting. Ages 13 up.
