Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr

This is the second in Garth Nix's trilogy about a mythical "Old Kingdom" where magic rules and evil necromancers are always trying overtake the kingdom through death. The first book, Sabriel, is about a girl who is the "Abhorson in Waiting", a special necromancer who can combine charter and free magic to enter death and battle evil necromancers. She revives prince Touchstone, who had been trapped in death for 200 years and together they confront Kerrigor, the once heir to the Old Kingdom who had chosen instead to overthrow the ancient charter magic and rule eternally through death.

Lirael is the next Abhorson in Waiting, and as it turns out she is actually the half sister of Sabriel. She is also a daughter of the Clayr, which gives her the power to be both a necromancer and a remembrancer. And she is a librarian, to boot! ("There’s so much to see and smell here! Whole levels of the library that no one has been into for a hundred, a thousand years! Locked rooms full of ancient secrets. Treasure! Knowledge! Fun!" ) Together, she and Prince Sameth (son of Sabriel and once "Abhorson in Waiting" until he realized he was too much of a scaredycat to walk in death) confront another powerful and deadly necromancer, Hedge.

Okay, so this is pretty standard stuff, your basic good magic/bad magic fantasy. However, I kept reading these because the main characters are very interesting. They are both powerful and courageous, yet uncertain (as you might expect teenagers who are asked to save the kingdom might be). In a lot of ways, Sabriel and Lirael are similar to, say, Eragon; main characters who will fulfill some great destiny they do not yet fully understand, and which is revealed gradually through the relationships they have with other characters.

A well used theme in both books is the teacher/companion relationship. Luke had Obe Won Kenobe, Eragon had Brom, Edmond Dantes had Abbe Faria, and so on. Sabriel's companion is a cat and Lirael's is a dog (the Disreputable Dog- I loved that!), both are some kind of free magic constructs, and both are bound to serve. However both are also wise and in some instances far more important to the survival of the Old Kingdom than either Sabriel or Lirael understand. Nix uses the relationships between the companions to reveal history of the kingdom, the complexities of charter magic and generally to tie up loose ends in the plot. It works well enough for me; I don't really like it when the fantasy elements are too cryptic.