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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 Game of Thrones.
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is loose in the city, her parents want to marry her off to a killer, and there is a plot brewing against the old and withdrawn King Orrikan.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?
"Starred Review. Between striking characters... and Nix's brilliantly complex magic system, this superb tale is exactly the book fans of the series have been awaiting." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. This excellent work can be enjoyed independently of the other Old Kingdom novels, but will certainly draw readers to those works." - School Library Journal
"A thunderstorm of a tale, bitter and brutal but dazzling in its ferocity. Ages 14 & up." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. Themes of freedom and destiny underpin Clariel's harrowing, bittersweet story, and readers will delight in the telling (and in fan favorite Mogget's return)." - Booklist
"Beautifully written, magnificently imagined, and wholly original, Clariel is Garth Nix's finest work yet." - Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author of The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
"The old magic returns in this sterling prequel to one of YA's classic series." - Scott Westerfeld, New York Times bestselling author of the Uglies series and Afterworlds
"A brilliant return to the Old Kingdom - one of the most exciting and original magical worlds ever devised." - Alison Goodman, New York Times bestselling author of Eon and Eona
This information about Clariel was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Garth Nix has worked as a bookseller, book sales representative, publicist, editor, marketing consultant and literary agent. He also spent five years as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. A full-time writer since 2001, more than five million copies of his books have been sold around the world and his work has been translated into 40 languages. Garth's books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly (US), the Bookseller (UK), the Australian and the Sunday Times (UK). He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and two children
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