The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

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Garth Nix

3 universes Last reviewed 2026-08-20

Garth Nix was born July 19, 1963, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and was raised in Canberra, attending Turner Primary School, Lyneham High School, and Dickson College, where he also joined the Australian Army Reserve. After working for the Australian government and traveling in Europe, he earned a BA in professional writing from the University of Canberra. He worked at a Canberra bookshop before relocating to Sydney in 1987, where his publishing career included roles as a sales representative, publicist, and senior editor at HarperCollins. From 1993 to 1999 he traveled extensively and founded his own marketing consultancy, Gotley Nix Evans Pty Ltd, before working as a literary agent with Curtis Brown Australia from 1999 to 2002, after which he became a full-time author. Nix is best known for the Old Kingdom series, comprising Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen, Clariel, Goldenhand, and Terciel and Elinor, a richly imagined fantasy sequence centered on necromancy, magic bells, and the boundary between life and death. He has also written The Seventh Tower and Keys to the Kingdom series, plus standalone novels including The Ragwitch, Shade's Children, A Confusion of Princes, and Frogkisser!, and has written roleplaying scenarios for Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller. In the 2025 King's Birthday Honours he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. He lives in Sydney with his wife, publisher Anna McFarlane, and their two sons.

Universe(s)

The Old Kingdom

  • Core Canon books: 6
  • Current rank: #117 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 4.20
  • Award recognitions: 7 won, 2 finalist mention, 8 nomination

The Keys to the Kingdom

  • Core Canon books: 7
  • Current rank: #581 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.90
  • Award recognitions: 2 won, 3 finalist mention, 2 nomination

The Seventh Tower

  • Core Canon books: 6
  • Current rank: #553 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.91
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Books

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

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