Sabriel (1995)

Recensione in italiano qui: http://thereadingpal.blogspot.it/2016/11/recensione-34-sabriel.html

Silence came at last. Gingerly, they let each other go.
Touchstone shakily groped around for his sword, but Sabriel lit
a candle before he could cut his fingers in the dark. They
looked at each other in the flickering light. Sabriel's eyes were
wet. Touchstone's mouth bloody.
"What was that?" Touchstone asked huskily.
"Astarael," replied Sabriel. "The final bell. It calls everyone
who hears it into Death."


Sabriel is the first book in a series written by Garth Nix. Sabriel, because of her father's death, becomes the new Abhorsen. And to be the Abhorsen means to leave behind your own life, to leave your relationships and your interests, to fight the Death that try to run away from their own place and come back to the living. The Abhorsen uses some bells that, with different sounds, get different effects on the Dead and, also thanks to Charter Magic, she manages to send them back to Death.
But Sabriel is not like the other Abhorsen: she knows nothing of her duty and the Ancient Kingdom from which she herself is from. And she doesn't know that one fo the Great Dead is coming back to conquer both Kingdoms separated by the Wall. And she is the only one who could beat him.
Sabriel, even if the first in a series, can be read on its own as the story of this period ends in this book. Lirael, the second book, is set 14 years later.

Garth Nix has got a particular writing stule that I like and, together with the story, made me go on with it. The world created by Garth Nix is full of original creatures, creatures of Free Magic and quite ancient, but also beings that came back from Death.
And thanks to Sabriel, who, being the Abhorsen, also walks in Death, we can see the structure of this realm, divided in 9 parts.

Sabriel is a great character. Even if thrown in a world completely unknown to her, she almost doesn't whine and she goes on to complete her duty.
Mogget is an ambigous character, imprisoned but the Abhorsen to help the latter, he'd like revenge, but helps Sabriel anyway for a period of time.
Touchstone is an interesting character too, linked with a tight knot to Kerrigor, the deceased evil prince that tries to conquer the two Kingdoms.

The book was way up my expectations and I hope to read the next book soon! ( )

Sabriel is a professionally assembled and competently constructed commercial product of contemporary fantasy that strictly adheres to all accepted writing conventions. ( )

The audio version is read by Tim Curry. 'nough said. I didn't expect to like a book about a necromancer, and aside from the constant thoughts about the Dead (you can hear the capitals in his voice), it was an excellent story. Harry Potter fans might enjoy this. The characters are good, and the setting intriguing. ( )

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Tim Curry. I thought his character voicing was a little inconsistent at times, and I’m not sure a male narrator makes the most sense for a book where the main POV character is a female (or vice versa), but for the most part I thought his narration was fine.

Story
The main character is Sabriel, the daughter of Abhorsen, a necromancer. He’s not your normal raising-the-dead-and-causing-mayhem necromancer, though. The main way he exercises his power over the dead is by binding dangerous dead things to protect humanity. Sabriel shares his abilities, but she is inexperienced. When Abhorsen disappears, Sabriel tries to find him, and has to deal with a lot of things that she wasn’t prepared for along the way.

The story was moderately interesting, and I liked Sabriel pretty well, but I also had a lot of complaints. My first main frustration was how, despite having regular contact and a good relationship with her father, Sabriel was ignorant of too many things about the world and Abhorsen’s role that her father should have considered a priority to teach her. It felt contrived to keep the reader in suspense by keeping the character ignorant of things she really should have known. I was also frustrated by the instalove, but it didn’t dominate the story so it only annoyed me the few times it came up.

I think my biggest frustration was how many times problems were resolved via coincidence or Deus ex machina. Maybe not always Deus ex machina in the strictest sense, but in the “known thing doing heretofore unexpected and unknown and not terribly logical things” sense. Additionally, the magic system seemed to have rules, but they weren’t all that clear to me and sometimes it seemed like the rules were just there for the author’s convenience to wrestle the plot where he wanted it to go.

One spoilery comment: It made no sense to me that Mogget’s ring, which was presumably intended to bind Mogget in particular, could be used to bind an entirely different creature which would then generate its own separate ring. If the ring worked that way, Sabriel could have gone around throwing it over the head of everything that got in her way. I guess one could say it only worked this way because Mogget was inside of what’s-his-face, but I’m still not buying it. It generated a new ring for him! It makes no sense. :p

I’m marking this as a “probably not” for following up on it in print someday. Even though it’s part of a series, this book does stand alone well, and it’s a pretty quick read (or listen). ( )

In form this is a classic fantasy novel. A young woman heads across the Wall to her country of origin to find her Father. Her Father was the Abhorsen, a mage who specialized in returning undead to being dead. He's missing and things are a mess in the Old Kingdom. I liked the world, the writing and the characters, though there really are only two of them. The magic system has a great magical feel to it without being the usual super-powered mess and Nix's take on death is interesting. ( )