Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1) in YA and Beyond

Sep 25, 2012 Harold Ogle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, faeries, low-fantasy, undead, magic, orphan, supernatural

I really enjoyed this book, which was really a pleasant surprise. I'd approached it with considerable trepidation, since I found Nix's Keys to the Kingdom YA book so pathetically rote. But I realized recently that I shouldn't dismiss an author and his entire output just because of one lousy book. Here on GoodReads I'd heard a lot of positive stuff about the Abhorsen series, so I figured this was my chance to test this idea that one really, really mediocre book doesn't mean that everything the au I really enjoyed this book, which was really a pleasant surprise. I'd approached it with considerable trepidation, since I found Nix's Keys to the Kingdom YA book so pathetically rote. But I realized recently that I shouldn't dismiss an author and his entire output just because of one lousy book. Here on GoodReads I'd heard a lot of positive stuff about the Abhorsen series, so I figured this was my chance to test this idea that one really, really mediocre book doesn't mean that everything the author has done should be dismissed out of hand. Thankfully, this book has proven the hypothesis for me.

An aside: I shudder to think that, if I'm going to stick to this new conviction, I may someday feel obliged to read some more Charles Sheffield or Richard Paul Russo. Yikes!

First of all, Sabriel is not a YA novel, though you may find it cataloged as such at your local library or used book store. Instead I would lump it in with various other impressive works having to do with the intersection of the mundane world with the supernatural one (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Starlight, The Stress of Her Regard, and so on), most of which are not really aimed at teens, even if the protagonist is, as here, eighteen. In Sabriel, Nix has done some really interesting world-building around a story that involves a neophyte being forced into a role she doesn't fully understand and never expected to play. Sabriel is born to a dying mother in the Old Kingdom - which you can read as Faerie or its analog - and promptly also dies from exposure in the harsh winter. The pale-skinned necromancer Abhorsen - can't help thinking he looks like one of Martin's Others - appears and enters the Land of Death to return the infant Sabriel's spirit to her body. He then claims the baby as his own and whisks her off to the mundane world, Ancelstierre, which is roughly Edwardian England. The two worlds are separated by a vast Wall built to maintain the boundary between the two dimensions, but in the years that Sabriel grows into adulthood, more and more of the magic bleeds across the Wall from the Old Kingdom into Ancelstierre. So people in the Border Region come to grow accustomed to Weird Things happening, though people in the rest of the world dismiss talk of magic as superstitious bosh. Near the border, the boarding school where Sabriel is raised holds courses in practical magic as well as fencing, comportment, maths, and all the other proper subjects for a young woman of quality. So she learns a lot about magic from her tutors as well as from her father's infrequent visits. Magicians are humans who have learned to wield the Charter: a vast alphabet of runes crafted eons before to bring order out of the chaos of Free Magic. Necromancers, in this setting, are magicians who can interact with the Realm of the Dead, which is a river flowing from life through a series of zones bounded by nine gates all the way to Final Death - from which there is no return - beyond the Ninth Gate. Not only can necromancers traverse the Realm of Death, but they can - as Abhorsen demonstrates in the prologue - retrieve beings that have crossed over into that Realm. Most, however, do it in the traditional necromantic way: raising dead spirits as slaves, minions, brutes and enforcers. So the job of Sabriel's father Abhorsen is to contain and, hopefully, return such Dead to the Realm, and ensure that they pass the Ninth Gate. He's very busy with this job, and so hasn't had time to spare for his adopted daughter Sabriel outside of one or two visits a year. Still, she's a quick study, and so she has a lot of knowledge about how the Charter works, and also skill with necromancy. All this is put to the test when her father disappears, and she must go into the Old Kingdom to find him.

That's the set-up of the book, and the book is dense with lore and wonderful little details: both about the Old Kingdom and how Edwardian England would have adapted to accommodate magic on its northern borders.

I've been reading so much YA fiction lately that reading a good dense novel for adults like this was difficult at first. There's so much characterization! There's so much internal soliloquy! But I quickly grew absorbed and by the middle I was flying through the pages, reluctant to put it down even for a few minutes. ...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Brigid ✩ marked it as to-read · review of another edition

I tried to read this a long time ago and never finished it. So, I'm going to attempt to read it again. Yay! :D ...more

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Apr 13, 2009 Cassi aka Snow White Haggard rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fantasy, re-read, read-in-2014

Just re-read one of my favorite books. Not sure it's possible to review a book I first fell in love with during high school and have read numerous times (I put 3 on Goodreads but only because I don't actually know how many but it's at least that). I was probably....fifteen when I first read the book. So that was what, 14 years ago (I am 29). Part of me wants to review it but I feel almost too close since I've spent almost half of my life with this story. It's more like an old friend than anythin ...more

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Mar 01, 2010 Heidi added it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2010, ho-hum-books-everyone-loved-but-me

I am not going to rate this one because I did not even get close to finishing it. I tried (and failed) on three occasions to read it and each time I fell asleep, even though I was not tired on any of those occasions. Something about the authors writing style made it very difficult for me to follow along. I could not get thorough even one page without having to re-read it. I was going to try to come back to it later, but the more I think about it the more I dread it, so I decided to just let it g ...more

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