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The Old Kingdom series is a fantasy series of novels and novellas written by Garth Nix. The first book, Sabriel, was published in 1995, with the main sequels Lirael and Abhorsen released after the turn of the century.

First trilogy

Japanese cover art of the so-called "trilogy": Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen. Other books are considered ancillary.

Books[]

The following books and stories make up the series, in publication order.

Accolades & Acclaim[]

Awards[]

Sabriel won Aurealis Awards in both the Best Fantasy Novel and Best YA Novel categories.

Lirael won Australia’s 2002 Adelaide Festival Award for Children’s Literature, along with a Ditmar Award.[1]

Abhorsen won another Aurealis Award[2] while "To Hold the Bridge" earned another Ditmar Award. Books in the series have been finalists for mainstream book awards over twenty times.[3]

Critical psychosocial accolades[]

The series has been applauded as possibly unique among fantasy, especially in recent years as its first readers are becoming literary critics, as being beyond feminist or even post-feminist: the Old Kingdom is a place where gender roles do not exist.[4][5][6] Sabriel had been lauded for "slaying gender stereotypes," but the extent to which Nix's worldbuilding would take this was perhaps not seen until recently in "To Hold the Bridge" and Clariel, where gender parity is shown to have existed even centuries ago.

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