THE ABHORSEN TRILOGY
*Sabriel*
This is my absolute favorite of his books. Sabriel's father has disappeared, leaving her his bells and sword-- the tools of the Abhorsen, or uncommon necromancer who puts the dead to rest. She reluctantly takes these up to journey across the vaguely 1940s New World into the magic-ridden Old World. There, she finds that nothing is well. The dead are rising, Charter stones are being broken, and one of the Greater Dead has risen from the cold river to challenge the new Abhorsen. Her only companions: a young man without a name and a restless spirit trapped in the form of a cat.
By the way, there's an executioner in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure called Abhorson. Any connection, I wonder?
*Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr*
Although a bit of a let down from the first, Lirael is still an excellent fantasy with more world-building. Being a bookworm, I particularly loved the part with the library. I want that library. Lirael and Sam are not as self-reliant and, well, cool as Sabriel was, but they're not bad. The end is extremely abrupt-- now I have to wait until Abhorsen comes out to see what happens!
SHADE'S CHILDREN
This is a science fiction story set far into the future, after the Change when all adults over 14 suddenly disappeared. Children, upon turning 14, are harvested for their brains, or muscles, to become efficient killing machines of the children that do survive. The surviving children are under the leadership of a mysterious entity named Shade. He has managed to program his personality into a computer, thus evading capture after the Change. His goal is to destroy the Overlords who wrought the Change-- using the children he saves. Can he be trusted? But if not, who can the children trust?
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