Sabriel

Sabriel is a fantasy novel by the Australian writer Garth Nix, first published in 1995 and the opening book of his Old Kingdom series. It is set in two neighbouring countries: Ancelstierre in the south, which has schools and motorcars, and the Old Kingdom in the north, where free magic and the dead operate under their own rules.

Sabriel has grown up on the wrong side of the wall, at a girls' school, and she knows about her father's work only from his letters and visits. When he disappears into death and she is sent his bells and his sword, she crosses into the Old Kingdom, where the ordinary protections of her schooling do not hold, and goes looking for him.

Nix writes the book as a quest with a small cast and a clear system of magic, in which the Abhorsen's calling is to send the dead back rather than to destroy them. It was followed by Lirael, Abhorsen and further volumes, and it remains the entry point to the series.