Sabriel must learn to battle the unknown evils that continue to stack against her, in the place of her missing father, who is, or was, the Abhorsen:  a powerful magic wielding necromancer who fights...

Rarely do works of speculative fiction involve such world building, round character creation and invoke an utterly riveting story in an artistic combination of intriguing depth; such is the case with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which is why, for a genre, he has often been named the Godfather, as few live up to his magic, or writing prowess. 

Garth Nix has succeeded in doing this with his speculative work Sabriel (the first in the Abhorsen Trilogy), and though he is not Tolkien, by any stretch, he is certainly a talented, innovative and incredible writer who has made such a world in his book that it should be considered a "must read" and a classic.

The stark language and the thrilling story keep the reader in such a state of involved suspense that this world and the world that contains the Old Kingdom could be misconstrued.  The protagonist, an 18 year old woman named Sabriel, is truly unique and displayed with the uttermost care by the author; she is an amazing character! 

The world involves the constant threat of the Dead to rise from beyond the Gates of Death into the world of Life.  Sabriel must learn to battle the unknown evils that continue to stack against her, in the place of her missing father, who is, or was, the Abhorsen:  a powerful magic wielding necromancer who fights to ensure that the Dead stay that way.

The book builds in suspense until the pages fly to the climax and beyond...into the next novel of the series.

Happy 1/11/11! 

This is a W2P Special Report:  Free Speech is to be viable at all times, even when the twisted words of hatred (and politics) that are being stated are not pleasant to behold.  But that is not to say that we have to continue to tune in and listen to the Talking Rhetoric-Spewing Heads that infuse their viewers/listeners with spouts of extremist right wing anti-government madness.

But wait, that sounds awfully one-sided.  The reason for this folks is because we're talking about a one-sided argument.  The most extremist left wing liberal does not go on to belch displays of fear/hate/war mongering shock jocking as does the Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly types.  These loud-mouths spout insane ramblings, which are at times intertwined with confusing twists on half-truths, in order to shock and stir up more and more anger in their listeners to the point of overriding the rational portions of their (potentially already irrational) viewers/listeners' brains.  Look up shock jocking and the psychology behind it.  These madmen and madwomen are focusing hatred to make money off of their public and to warp these people to their narrow minded political views/agendas; the kicker here is that they constantly complain/attack the US system that allows for politics to play out politically and not violently, because they say it does not work (it worked for 8 years when Bush and the boys ran things). 

The shock jocks do not incite violence, in most cases, directly.  However, they work hard to undermine everything that is not 100% in agreement with their extremist views, and they leave the infuriated listeners to put together their own plans of violence to help a "broken" political system that cannot be fought against peacefully. 

After the shooting of Giffords in Arizona, I have felt the need to speak out.  It was not the words of the extremists, such as Beck, that caused a madman to shoot and kill innocent people at a political meeting; it was the work of a nut, plain and simple.  But that nut clearly lived in an insane world where many other nuts are spouting such rhetoric of hate/violence that it is no wonder that the man used violence.  There could have been a disgruntled nut job who sat in on the meeting naked, or went there with thousands of "No Health Care Plan" balloons to peacefully make a stink at a friendly meeting held by Giffords. 

But we live in a world, according to the extremist Beck-types, where "nothing is fixable" when the right wing people are out of office; when there is no solution and you've convinced members of the public of this, what more can they do?  Will they act out violently in frustration?  Has their been any disgruntled nut jobs that have turned to violence lately?

Peaceful protests did not happen.  We live in a televised world where the extremist nuts are the ones with millions of fans and followers, like Beck and Palin.  They have the right to free speech, just as I do.  So I suggest that we collectively shun the Evil Rhetoric and the Ones who speak/write such extremist hate-stirring words.