You were the best Mogget!

Any two cents that can be offered about tonality, pacing, or general notes on what I've done so far for character choices would be Very Helpful. Here's this if anyone would like to check it out-

"I Get Paid to Record Things, and today I'm reading "Sabriel" by Garth Nix- Prologue🔔"

https://www.twitch.tv/araix78?sr=a

I’ve been rereading The Seventh Tower series by Garth Nix lately and it reminded me how perfectly it would translate into a Disney+ series. The world of the Castle, the color hierarchy, spiritshadows, the ice outside, the whole mystery around the Veil… it already feels structured like a fantasy show waiting to happen.

So I decided to start a Facebook group for fans who’d like to see The Seventh Tower adapted into a Disney+ series someday. The idea is just to gather fans in one place, share art, talk about the books, and hopefully build enough interest that it might get noticed by the right people over time. I know adaptations are a long shot, but plenty of shows have started because a fan community kept the idea alive.

If anyone here is interested in joining the group or helping build a little fan movement around the idea, I’d love to have you.

https://facebook.com/groups/2337416320101867/

Also curious what people think about a TV adaptation in general. Who would you cast? Animated or live action?

(Mods please remove if this kind of post isn’t allowed.)

Hello everyone, im just searching for a collection of the keys to the kingdom series hardcover, im having trouble finding any places that sell a hardcover set, if theres any made.

Any help would be appreciated

I just want to check with other people, because I keep hearing the audiobook narrator slightly lisping... It's very subtle (or she may be doing it for only specific characters), but I don't know whether I'm going crazy or whether there's been a problem with the conversion from Audible to my library's copy. Did anybody else notice this?

I have just read the short story Over The River by P. Schuyler Miller, which describes a revenant in similar ways to how the dead are portrayed in the Abhorsen books.

I wasn't able to find any mention of this story as an inspiration for Nix, but it was really enjoyable to read something similar. Has this been mentioned as a possible inspiration before, or is it just a coincidence?

https://www.oocities.org/fallenangel_pjbx/overtheriver.htm

There are lots of street names and place names in the Troubletwisters books, but I can't figure out which Portland that it's set in. My money is on the Portland of the south coast of Australia, but I'm willing to hear more speculation. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much discussion of this wonderful series.

Keen to hear opinions :)

Hi, im rereading the old kingdom series after like 12-13 years, and I noticed towards the end of the first book that when they are preparing to open kerrigors casket, Sabriel is standing outside the school, watching.

"Six bells, now-all probably ineffective against the awful might of Kerrigor. And an unfamiliar sword, strange to her touch, even if it was forged by the Wallmaker."

Where did she get the sword? I know she gave her fathers sword back to him, and i think he kept it when he officially died, so where did she get this one? Ive looked back and I can't seem to find the page where it says it.

Hey! I just finished reading Confusion of Princes for the third time and am hoping to get some suggestions on what I should read next! I really really liked Confusion of Princes and want to find something very similar that he has written to try. Any ideas? (Seriously, Confusion of Princes might be my favorite book of all time). I haven't read anything else he's written so I'm hoping for something that is as good or better! Also I should mention that I listened to it as an audiobook, so if there are any good ones that have also been recorded as audiobooks that would be perfect! Thanks!

Hey everyone, I read both The Left-Handed Booksellers of London and The Sinister Booksellers of Bath last year and immediately fell in love, but sadly seem to be in the minority of fans seeking out or creating content about these books on the internet. With that in mind, I wanted to share some of my favourite easter eggs? References? Allusions? to Arthuriana/Folklore/Poetry I've come across in the series, in hopes that someone else with more knowledge than me can add what they've found. This post was inspired by the L-Space wiki and their Annotated Pratchett Files compiling references in the various Discworld books. I'm sure it goes without saying, but spoilers abound here!

The nature of the St. Jacques clan:

I recently came across a line from an 18th century version of The Ballad of Tam Lin which rang several bells. In the ballad, for those not familiar, a young woman called Janet ignores warnings not to go into the forest of Carterhaugh and promptly encounters an otherworldly knight called Tam Lin. She learns he was once a mortal man who fell from his horse in the woods and was caught by the queen of the faeries, but might be made human again. To let his love know how she might recognise him when the faerie queen's host next rides through the wood, Tam Lin tells Janet:

"My right hand will be gloved, lady,
My left hand will be bare,
Cockt up shall my bonnet be,
And kaimed down shall my hair,
And thae's the takens I gie thee,
Nae doubt I will be there." (Source.)

...Which very much makes me wonder if Garth Nix had this in mind when he thought up the common sartorial quirk of the booksellers, aligning them with elves and faerie, but also apart from them (Tam Lin being not an elf but the shade of a mortal).

The booksellers are explicitly some kind of demi-mortal/more-than-human, but at the same time, according to them, they are in a different category from the supernatural forces (such as the Ancient Sovereigns) they were appointed to keep an eye on. They are magical, but much of their power seems to come from their knowledge, long memory, and the collective structure of their network. A single bookseller in terms of raw physical or magical power seems to be no match for many of the creatures or beings they encounter. They take up a very interesting, in-between space mythologically speaking. As Sulis Minerva notes in the second book, the St. Jacques clan are seemingly closer to Susan than to creatures like the Mayfair goblins or the Raud Alfar, being part mortal. I hope that in any future installments we get a bit more of a glimpse into the history of the St. Jacques and their place in the cosmology of their world.

Sidenote: The matter of their last name is a confusing one. In Left-Handed Booksellers Merlin tells Susan that their name is based on a misunderstanding originating with Elisabeth I., but doesn't elaborate. Regardless of the in-world reason, I went looking for possible real-life inspirations for the name. Saint Jacques is the French name for Saint James, and there are several saints with this name, but to me the most likely namesake seems to be James, brother of Jesus/James the Just, who is often depicted holding a book.

An incomplete list of references to Arthurian legends:

1. Susan herself seems to me to embody many of the beats of stories of Arthur-like heroes: She is a bastard child of a mortal and a supernatural being, exhibits great power including bending other beings to her will with only her voice or her blood, she wields one of King Arthur's swords and his bracer (given to her by Sulis Minerva), meets three different ladies of the lake/river/roman baths, and after a fight with a monstrous being and her apparent death she reappears on an island (yes, Avalon is commonly in a lake, not a small brook, but close enough). Even her birthplace (near Glastonbury if I recall correctly) is linked to Arthur (Glastonbury Abbey is one of the contestants for the site of Avalon, i.e. Arthur's burial place), and Somerset in general has many sites related to Arthurian legend (although the stories are originally Welsh). Susan's birthday is given in the very first chapter of Left-Handed Booksellers as May 1st, or May Day, an important holiday to many pagan and Celtic cultures (and the workers of the world), which is still celebrated today and often marks the beginning of summer. There is also a possibly relevant ballad set on "the first morning in May" called Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight. In it, a young lady elopes into the woods with her elf-knight love, who then attempts to murder her but is lulled to sleep and slain by Isabel instead. The bookseller's elf-adjacent nature is interesting here, but I think this is probably just a fun coincidence. That said, the first meeting between Susan and Merlin does involve them fleeing into the forest.

Edit: I fully forgot about this when I wrote this post, but May Day is significant to Arthuriana in particular as the birthday (at least in Post-Vulgate texts) of Mordred. Merlin had prophesied that a child born on that day would be Arthur's doom, and so Arthur ordered all May Day children of that year either to be executed or possibly to be shipped off to a distant land, with the ship sinking en route, an episode sometimes called the May Day massacre.

On another tenuous note, I wonder if Susan is possibly named for author Susan Cooper, who wrote The Dark Is Rising sequence, the first book of which was released in 1965 (the year Susan Arkshaw was born), and which are also centered on young heroes coming into their power to fight in Arthuriana-inspired battles between good and evil.

1. Merlin and Vivian's names are of course both important to Arthuriana, with Vivian being quite an interesting choice: She seems to be named for the Lady of the Lake, who variously raised Lancelot, gave Excalibur to Arthur, helped heal/bury Arthur in Avalon, and killed/imprisoned Merlin. She is also known as Nimue, and sometimes her roles are split between two characters, with Nimue being the good one, while Vivian is often evil. There is also an interesting direction of thought which posits a link to Morgan le Fay, or possibly even an earlier character that was a combination of Vivian and Morgan:

"Obviously the Lady has been retailored to represent the (mostly) nurturing side of the split mother-image, as Morgan has become the (mostly) devouring side. A combination of these split images appears in the figure of Nimue (also called Niniane and Viviane), who first serves as a devourer and then as a restorer of Arthurian males. Like her [Excalibur giver] sister-avatar, she is called the Lady of the Lake. In a borrowing from Morgan's career, she has the besotted Merlin teach her his magic, but without yielding to him sexually. Shutting Merlin away in a cave, she deprives the male Arthurians of their counselor and reveals her own cunning ambition. But Nimue then becomes the devoted and influential friend of Arthurian society: she saves the King and his knights from Morgan's death-dealing [...] and emerges as one of the three (or more, depending on the work) queens who bear the King away to Avalon. This last function allies her, of course, with her original—Morgan le Fay." (Source.)

In light of this, I think it's noteworthy that Vivian is the one who teaches Susan one of her first conscious acts of magic, the binding of another's will to hers with blood and salt, and gives her the tools for it, and although Susan hates using this power, it saves her life at least once.

Edit: In Left-Handed Booksellers when Susan, Vivian, and Merlin go to visit Grandmother, Vivian and Merlin recite their line of bookseller ancestors, going back to "the fifth Guinevere, the first to use the name St. Jacques, in the true line all the way back to the beginning," so apparently Arthurian names do run in the family. Also in that list is the reveal of Merlin and Vivian's mother's name, which is Antigone (daughter *by his own mother* of the ancient greek king Oedipus (of "-complex" fame), who hangs herself after being sentenced to death for burying and mourning her dead brother). Perhaps that branch of the family has a particular affinity for giving their kids very foreboding names....

1. King Arthur himself is referenced explicitly quite a few times. He is credited with founding/creating/appointing the St. Jacques as protectors of the balance between the magical and the mundane worlds, and artefacts created for him abound. I seem to recall that even the cauldrons either originate or are linked in some way with Arthur, one of which is used to "activate" the St. Jacques' powers. Ancient Sovereigns like The Old Man of Coniston sleeping in cairns for long periods of time also echoes the sleeping kings of legend, the most famous of which is arguably Arthur.

So, in conclusion, these are some of the places that come to mind as intentional or unintentional references to various aspects of British/Celtic folklore and myth. I don't necessarily think any of these mean anything beyond being fun and interesting parallels, but this kind of thing is very interesting to me as a fairy tale/folklore nerd. I would love for people to add their own observations in the comments, and I am sure I will think of further additions myself as time goes by.

Rescued a tomcat, but always wanted to name a pet after the Disreputable Dog. Didn't want a dog—so here's the handsome boy, Kibeth

So as stated. Just bought one. I want to try and add some bits here and there to make it Abhorsen themed. I also intend to include some themes from another the Discworld series by GNU Sir Terry Pratchett

For example I intend to try and find a scythe pendulum for the discworld side along with characters called Death of Rats and Quoth, the Raven. But id like to give it the bells and silver keys theme to it somehow too. Along woth some dark blue too. Prehaps find a way to include Mogget.

Note: I'm not artsy at all so it will all be stuff I can buy and POSSIBLY commission. I may paint it and touch up some details.

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

So I was thinking of doing a Grim Tuesday cosplay, but I'm not sure where to start. Is there some kind of reference outside the books or even just some recommendations?

I was just wondering if deaf people would be affected by the bells. Super random but yeah.

I was behind the last 2 posts to this sub. They were legitimate questions, but mostly I just want to chat with other Nix fans about his work. Unfortunately, this sub doesnt see much action. The man publishes something new just about every year, often several new works a year, so it surprises me that there's not more activity here. So, what's on your mind regarding the works of Garth Nix? Any questions yet unasked? Edit: sorry I misrepresented myself, I was behind 2 of the last 3 posts.

Hey Team

Anyone aware of copies of these two being sold or are willing to sell them? DM me please if you do.

Thanks

He's written so many and really excels at the form. Personally, I love his 'Creature in the Case' novella, and the other short stories in that volume. His story, 'The Unexpected Excursion of the Murder Mystery Writing Witches', from 'The Book of Witches' was one of the most entertaining things I've read in a long time. His 'Sir Hereward and Mr. Fitz' stories are pretty great too. What else is worth tracking down?