"A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don't feel young any more," Sabriel says to Colonel Horyse when they meet for the first time at the border.

The title character is tall and slender with ghostly pale skin and raven-black hair. She has been fighting undead creatures since childhood, and her eighteen years weigh heavily on her shoulders. Her burden grows heavier when her father disappears and she realizes his name, "Abhorsen," is a title that has been passed along to her.

Like her father, Sabriel is "an uncommon necromancer": she sends the Dead back to Death rather than calling them forth to serve her as most necromancers do. Her journey to find her father shows her curious blend of wisdom and innocence as she takes the prodigious amounts of book learning she has amassed over...