He stopped there to get his breath, and looked down the Red Tower, down to the twinkling lights that outlined the main buildings of the Castle. Tal stretched out his hand and pulled himself up onto the next out-thrust spike of the Tower. ' the coolest read in the playground.' Amanda Craig Containing elements of The Golden Compass and the Harry Potter books, The Seventh Tower is an epic fantasy not to be missed. Packed with excitement and wonderfully weird creatures like the living sea of Selski and the hungry, one-horned Merwin, Nix's latest tale will enchant readers. But his attempts fail, and in his final act of thievery, Tal is thrown off the Castle of Seven Towers by a powerful Shadowspirit Keeper and into an adventure beyond his imagining.Īustralian fantasy author Garth Nix (well known for his novels Sabriel and Shade's Children, both ALA list picks) has joined with Lucasfilm to launch a six-book fantasy series about Tal's world, of which The Fall is the first installment.

Tal tries to beg, borrow, and even steal a Sunstone. And without a Shadowspirit, Tal will lose both his Chosen status and any hope of finding a cure for his mother's mysterious wasting illness, a cure that can only come from Aenir. Without it, he cannot enter Aenir and bind himself to a Shadowspirit-a kind of guardian being that serves as a friend and protector to the person it is bound to. Just when he is getting ready for the Day of Ascension-a day when all the 13-year-old Chosen from the Castle of Seven Towers enter the spirit world of Aenir-his father disappears with the family's only primary Sunstone, which Tal needs for the ascension. Tal, a Chosen of the Orange Order, is having the worst luck lately.

The fall garth nix