Garth Nix: Sabriel (2021, Hot Key Books)
480 pages
English language
Published June 30, 2021 by Hot Key Books.
A very much enjoyed this YA fantasy book. I'm getting the rest of the series. Necromancer magic is cool as hell, the monsters are bloody and creepy, and a talking cat character is just so very cool.
The cover of this book was what initially caught my attention when Virginia picked it up from the library. I’d never heard of it before, and the description on the back seemed interesting. Unfortunately I stuck it in the mental pile of Things That Would Be Cool To Read If I Had More Time, and moved on. Virginia finished it, and loved it, and then told me there was an audio version! At the library we discover that it’s read by none other than Tim Curry!
In some ways this is a fairly typical YA fantasy novel. Young heroine forced to take on a burden before she’s really quite ready, and face down the big bad guy. Along the way she picks up the obligatory side-kick and friend, neither of whom are what they appear to be.
Where Sabriel takes things in a new direction is the setting. The introduction …
The cover of this book was what initially caught my attention when Virginia picked it up from the library. I’d never heard of it before, and the description on the back seemed interesting. Unfortunately I stuck it in the mental pile of Things That Would Be Cool To Read If I Had More Time, and moved on. Virginia finished it, and loved it, and then told me there was an audio version! At the library we discover that it’s read by none other than Tim Curry!
In some ways this is a fairly typical YA fantasy novel. Young heroine forced to take on a burden before she’s really quite ready, and face down the big bad guy. Along the way she picks up the obligatory side-kick and friend, neither of whom are what they appear to be.
Where Sabriel takes things in a new direction is the setting. The introduction of which is surprisingly slow, however the fact that it is slow allows the reader to really discover it, rather than just having it handed to you in one big lump.
Sabriel is a holy necromancer, tasked to aid the dead through the transition from life to death. It turns out that dying isn’t as easy as you might have thought. There are 7 gates a soul has to travel through, otherwise it may return to cause mischief! Just such an undead thing has dragged Sabriel’s father into the realm of death, forcing Sabriel to take her fathers tools and quest to rescue him from the BBEG.
Tim Curry did a wonderful job bringing this book to life, and I’m really looking forward to listening to the second book in the series!
Started out a little slow, but once it got going was very enjoyable.
Sabriel is a very likable main character and the secondary characters are almost equally enjoyable, which is extremely important when you have a book with a cast as small as this one.
The romance seemed somewhat obligatory, but I liked it anyway. A certain suspension of disbelief is required to buy it due to the lack of in-depth exploration, but if you choose to let it in, it's cute as hell. Though, due to the relative lack of focus, you can not care about it and still enjoy the book.
4 stars. Would reread.
