12 spellbinding new science fiction and fantasy books to read this November
By Lacy Baugher
November 2021 release: Terciel and Elinor – Garth Nix
Bestselling author Gareth Nix returns to the world of his Old Kingdom series for a prequel centered on the love story of Sabriel’s parents. In Terciel and Elinor we’ll learn more about the magic that brought them together – and ultimately threatened to tear them apart.
In this story, we meet Terciel (who will become Sabriel’s father) after he has been elevated from a life of hunger and poverty to an apprenticeship that will ultimately make him the successor to Abhorsen Tizanael. Across the wall in magic-less Ancelstierre, Sabriel’s future mother Elinor has grown up isolated but dreams of a future on the stage.
When a deadly attack means Terciel and Elinor’s paths cross, she’ll learn about her Old Kingdom heritage, including that she is descended from a sisterhood of seeresses and destined to play a vital part in the fight against a powerful Dead creature.
The official describes the story in much greater detail.
"In the Old Kingdom, a land of ancient and often terrible magics, eighteen-year-old orphan Terciel learns the art of necromancy from his great-aunt Tizanael. But not to raise the Dead, rather to lay them to rest. He is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and Tizanael is the Abhorsen, the latest in a long line of people whose task it is to make sure the Dead do not return to Life. Across the Wall in Ancelstierre, a steam-age country where magic usually does not work, nineteen year-old Elinor lives a secluded life. Her only friends an old governess and an even older groom who was once a famous circus performer. Her mother is a tyrant, who is feared by all despite her sickness and impending death . . . but perhaps there is even more to fear from that. Elinor does not know she is deeply connected to the Old Kingdom, nor that magic can sometimes come across the Wall, until a plot by an ancient enemy of the Abhorsens brings Terciel and Tizanael to Ancelstierre. In a single day of fire and death and loss, Elinor finds herself set on a path which will take her into the Old Kingdom, into Terciel’s life, and will embroil her in the struggle of the Abhorsens against the Dead who will not stay dead"
Terciel and Elinor is available on November 2.