Sabriel

I haven’t read Garth Nix since I was Seven. I kid you not. Which is funny because I loved um… I think it was The Seventh Tower? at the time. I heard he was writing the Keys to the Kingdom but never really got around to reading it. So I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up this book and saw that it was, in fact, a Garth Nix. Unfortunately, although I liked the plot, the setting, and all the surrounding characters, I found the main character,  Sabriel, to be a little cold. Not enough to make me dislike the book too much, but if you read it, you’ll see what I mean.

The book begins with the birth of Sabriel but it is not another book that follows her life, in fact, after Sabriel is born the book skips 18 years. At eighteen, Sabriel’s father, Abhorson (I think it’s spelled that way…) disappears and what starts out as a simple rescue quest, turns into a full out battle for the Old Kingdom against the Undead.  So very cool. The setting is similar to Thirteenth Child (for the majority of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, that means a cross between modern and fantasy) and more believable than the main character.