Garth Nix is an Australian author, from the Aussie-land capital, who has written quite a few novels. To be honest, most of them don’t much appeal to me; many years ago I tried a few others of his books and was unimpressed. But I fell in love with Sabriel not long after when it came out, maybe in 1997 or so, and bought both of its sequels, Lirael and Abhorsen when they came out. I’d rank them, as a group, as among my top ten favorite novels written for children and young adults; they’re maybe number three for most-read books.
The series takes palce in the Old Kingdom, separated from Ancelstierre by a magical wall. On the one side, Ancelstierre is a facsimile of the modern-day world, with electricity and telephones, perhaps a 1980s world. On the other side is the Old Kingdom, with magic and necromancy, upon which the series falls back. It’s by no means swords and sorcery, but the series is decidedly hardcore about its reliance on magic and avoidance of modernity—in fact, it’s quite clear that magic makes electricity and things produced by machines fall apart.
The main characters, however, cross both worlds, although the threats primarily are derived from the Old Kingdom, and primarily presented by the dead. What’s great about Nix’s world is how fully-formed it seems to be—the rules fit, the history is there, the reactions of people to strangeness is there. It’s also nice to have strong female protagonists, saving the world because it’s their duty and doing so with men, but really coming up with the ideas on their own. As far as fantasy books go, the series is pretty rare, even today. (Although I can think of some fantasy novel with strong female protagonists—look at Tamora Pierce, or Robin McKinley, or Anne McCaffrey—it’s just not always quite this clear.) Anyway, among the most engaging fantasy, and the most clever.
The other book I wanted to mention is Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, which came out just two years ago, and has already been followed with two sequels. It’s been selling very well, almost a million copies by now; I’ve heard it mentioned in quite a few places, although I first heard of it in February from a friend of my mother’s. The plot could be compared to any of a number of other works, none of them really children’s literature—the Japanese film Battle Royale, the myth of the minotaur, and any dystopian novel you’d like. The story is simple enough: Katniss, a 16-year-old girl (which gives you an idea of the audience, as sometimes is the case in YA novels), lives in a future Appalaichian mountain state, subsidiary of the powerful Capital, in the Rocky Mountains. Every year, two teenagers from each of the 12 districts, one male and one female, are sent to the capital for a gladiatorial battle-to-the-death. Katniss’ younger sister is chosen, in a lottery very like Shirley Jackson’s famous short story (“The Lottery”), and Katniss volunteers to go in her place. The rest of the story is about her struggle to make it out alive.
What’s wonderful about the book is that while the plot is decidedly fast-paced, holding your attention with ease (I read it in less than a day, starting at night and finishing the next morning), there’s still some thoughtful moments. Battle Royale, which has a very similar plot, is distinguished here in large part because we don’t get to see what the characters are really thinking. We get to see everything Katniss thinks. We get to see her struggles. And that’s really enjoyable, really interesting, and rather thought-provoking. It’s this that made me like The Hunger Games, made me think that it won’t just go away in the next few years, but might hold on for a while. We are obsessed with dystopia, we are fascinated by what could go wrong, what people will put other people through. So I’d recommend it, and not just for children.