Garth Nix Books

Garth Nix has been quietly shaping fantasy for thirty years. The Australian author published Sabriel in 1995, and the Old Kingdom series it launched became foundational YA fantasy, the kind of books that today's romantasy authors grew up on and still cite. Before writing full time he worked as a bookseller, editor, and literary agent, and that lifetime inside publishing shows in his consistency: across dozens of novels he almost never misses. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and collected multiple Aurealis Awards, and 2025 marked thirty years of Sabriel with anniversary editions celebrating the milestone.

The Old Kingdom is the heart of his catalog. Sabriel introduces a world split between a magical kingdom overrun by the restless Dead and a mundane country next door with guns and telephones. Sabriel, a teenage necromancer, crosses the Wall to rescue her father, the Abhorsen, whose duty is not raising the Dead but putting them back down, using a bandolier of seven enchanted bells. The bells, the Charter magic system, and the river of Death with its nine gates make up one of the most distinctive magic systems in fantasy, still unmatched for eerie elegance. Lirael in 2001 and Abhorsen in 2003 completed the original trilogy and introduced the Disreputable Dog, one of the genre's best animal companions. Later additions include Clariel in 2014, Goldenhand in 2016, and Terciel and Elinor in 2021, a prequel about Sabriel's parents. A new Old Kingdom novel is under contract, so the series is not done.

Beyond the Old Kingdom, Nix has range. The Left-Handed Booksellers of London from 2020 and its sequel The Sinister Booksellers of Bath are witty urban fantasies about a secret clan of magical booksellers in 1980s England. The Keys to the Kingdom and The Seventh Tower series own a generation of younger readers' childhoods, Frogkisser! is a genuinely funny fairy tale riff, and his Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz stories give him an outlet for sword and sorcery about a knight and his puppet sorcerer companion.

Now the honest caveat for this site's readers: Nix is not romantasy. On The Fae Shelf spice scale he is a 0 to 1. Romance exists, Sabriel and Touchstone, Lirael's quiet connections, the banter driven pairings in the Bookseller books, but it is restrained, secondary, and entirely closed door. Nobody should come to these books for heat.

Come instead because this is genre ancestry. The competent, duty burdened heroine who walks into Death armed with bells is the great grandmother of half the protagonists on this site. Reading Sabriel today is startling, partly because it holds up completely, partly because you can see how much modern fantasy, from Leigh Bardugo to the necromancy boom, grows out of soil Nix tilled first. His books also make ideal palate cleansers between spicy reads, atmospheric and propulsive without a single blush.

There is also a craft lesson running through his career that genre readers pick up on eventually: Nix understands restraint. His Dead are terrifying because he keeps them just offstage, described by sound, the shuffle and creak of things that should not move, more often than sight. His magic stays mysterious because he never over explains the Charter, and his books are short by modern fantasy standards, rarely wasting a page. In an era of eight hundred page epics, an author who can build a world this deep in three hundred pages per book feels almost radical.

Start with Sabriel, always. Read the original trilogy in order, then Terciel and Elinor if you want more of that world, or jump to The Left-Handed Booksellers of London for something lighter and funnier. The bells are waiting, and they ring exactly as well as they did in 1995.