In My Mailbox (6): Sabriel and Tithe

Sabriel by Garth Nix

After receiving a cryptic message from her father, Abhorsen, a necromancer trapped in Death, 18-year-old Sabriel sets off into the Old Kingdom. Fraught with peril and deadly trickery, her journey takes her to a world filled with parasitical spirits, Mordicants, and Shadow Hands. Unlike other necromancers, who raise the dead, Abhorsen lays the disturbed dead back to rest. This obliges him--and now Sabriel, who has taken on her father's title and duties--to slip over the border into the icy river of Death, sometimes battling the evil forces that lurk there, waiting for an opportunity to escape into the realm of the living. Desperate to find her father, and grimly determined to help save the Old Kingdom from destruction by the horrible forces of the evil undead, Sabriel endures almost impossible exhaustion, violent confrontations, and terrifying challenges to her supernatural abilities--and her destiny.

I'm reading this one for the fantasy/sci-fi book club at my university. I hear Garth Nix writes wonderful female characters so I'm excited about that.

Tithe by Holly Black

Sixteen-year-old Kaye Fierch is not human, but she doesn't know it. Sure, she knows she's interacted with faeries since she was little--but she never imagined she was one of them, her blond Asian human appearance only a magically crafted cover-up for her true, green-skinned pixie self.

Holly Black will be appearing at Sirens 2010, a conference dedicated to women in fantasy literature, where the 2010 theme will be faeries. I absolutely adore the Spiderwick Chronicles so I am psyched to start this series. I hope it makes a faerie fiction fanatic out of me.

I actually asked my parents to get me the entire modern faerie series for Christmas, but I can't wait until then to read Tithe.

What's in your mailbox this week?