Sabriel by Garth Nix
Paperback List Price: $7.99
Pages: 496 ISBN: 978-0064471831
Publisher: Eos
Available for the Kindle?: Yes ($4.76)
Available for the Sony E-Reader?: Yes ($5.65)
Amazon Description: 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.
My Thoughts: I finally got around to picking up Sabriel, which has sat on my shelf for three years now. I’ve always loved the covers of these first printings. For their time they were unique, being so simple and sparse in design (particularly for YA titles). The Twilight covers capture that same sleekness that I find just wonderful.
I don’t have much to say about the book. It was a quick read, a very quick read, but good none-the-less. I instantly raced over to my shelves to pick up Lirael as soon as I turned the last page of Sabriel. I felt the book was a good opening for a trilogy. I liked too that Sabriel and Touchstone weren’t overly blessed with extraordinary powers. That their blood binds the Greater Charters together seems simply an accident by right of being born into their families. It does not endow them with any super-human reserves to conveniently draw upon in “the most desperate hour”. They were both very real, and it was clear that the success of their mission was only accomplished by the sacrifices of the supporting secondary characters. There was no any one hero at the end of the day.
I can’t convey how excited I am that the second book delves deeper into the Clayr.
I realize that this series is probably old news to most of you, but humor me will you? ^_^
ahah! i see you finally read them! very nice.
i’m glad you enjoyed them so far.
i completely agree about how Sabriel and Touchstone don’t have any extra powers. that would have ruined the whole thing for me if it was just “oh! all of a sudden i can fly and shoot lasers at my enemies through my eyes! well thats convenient!”. i’ve read books like that, and they irritate me, haha.
remember: have Abhorson on hand!
ah, a twilight fan i see? very nice.
i just started The Host, also by Stephanie Meyer. so we’ll see how that ends up.
I’ve only actually begun to read the Twilight books. (I know, I”m so behind the times, but I am a long time fan of the covers.