Hi everyone. I'm Catriona and today I'm
going to be doing a spoiler free review
of Sabriel by Garth Nix, which is the
first book in the Old Kingdom or
Abhorsen series, depending on where you 're from.
This follows a young woman named Sabriel
who lives below the wall in Ancelstierre
and she hears that her father has disappeared.
Her father is the Abhorsen of the Old Kingdom,
which is the realm north of the wall,
and this is where free magic
and charter magic rule and the
dead refuse to stay dead.
The Abhorsen is a necromancer who instead of
raising the dead, ensures that they are
laid to rest and stay dead.
So Sabriel embarks on a journey to the Old Kingdom
in order to find her father.
One of the first things
that I noticed when I started this book
was the kind of blend with a more modern
setting in Ancelstierre where there's
cars and electricity and modern weapons
with what feels like a really high
fantasy world where free magic and charter
magic are really abundant.
So I really enjoyed seeing that contrast
between the realms above and below the wall with
like, all of the magic and the sorcery
and more modern technologies.
And in terms of the world building particularly with
the magic system that we're introduced
to in this book I think it was done so so well.
It was also really helpful that
we discover a lot about the Old Kingdom
as Sabriel discovers it because she's
lived below the wall for pretty much all of her life.
She doesn't have much knowledge
about what exists up there and what
happened up there, the history of the Old Kingdom.
She doesn't know much about it
so when she learns about it we learn about it.
And there is a lot that we do learn,
so I found that reading this book
slowly was definitely the best way to do it.
I originally started reading this for
a readathon where you just kind of try and fly
through books but I soon discovered that
that's not really the best approach for
this one, at least not for me anyway
where I was kind of rereading a lot of
passages to really wrap my head around
the really unique world and the magic system.
I really kind of wanted to savor it.
The magic is also possibly one of the
most original that I've ever come across
and I really really enjoyed it.
I was able to really grasp the logic behind
the magic system. The thing I liked the
most in particular was how it kind of
evoked different senses, particularly sound.
I just love that I was almost able
to hear or at least imagine hearing
a lot of the magic, just the way in which
those distinct ringing sounds of the
bells were described as well as the
actual just descriptions of the world as a whole.
I found it really stunning and quite colorful,
even with the Old Kingdom seeming quite bleak
and dangerous. My favorite character of
this book was Mogget who is a white cat
and he's kind of a mentor and a
companion to Sabriel and amidst all of the
danger and the weight of the situation
that Sabriel finds herself in, he was
just such a lightness to it all.
He provided a lot of humor with his snark
and I found it absolutely hilarious as
well even though he was kind of a mentor
in that he was teaching Sabriel a lot
about the world that she didn't know,
at sometimes he was very obviously
unhelpful and you could tell that he was
really enjoying himself when he was
withholding information or just
generally being really cryptic.
I just really enjoyed those moments when you knew
he was being really tricky and it was hilarious.
I also did really love Sabriel as a character.
She definitely showed a lot of strength through it all.
She's embarking on this journey where she
goes into a completely unknown land for her,
that is so dangerous and she knows
it's so dangerous but she does it anyway
because she has so much love and loyalty
for her father, and I found that really
really admirable like she was just such
a strong heroic kind of figure through it all.
We do meet some other characters
along the way and I just want
to kind of touch upon the romance in
this one because while I enjoyed it and
from the start when we do meet the
romantic interest, I knew that it was
gonna happen and I wanted it to
because I wanted to see the two of them
developing with that romance.
But at the same time I feel like they kind of
fell in love a little too fast. They did spend quite a
fair bit of time together throughout the book,
but there wasn't enough of a
progression from the beginning where
they first meet and we get a hint that
they find each other attractive to the
point in the book where they're all of a
sudden proclaiming that they love each other.
It just kind of jumped ahead
without enough development to really
ground those feelings as being believable.
But like I said I did really like
those two characters together I just
kind of wish we got to see a little bit
more of that romance progressing.
I went into this book not really knowing too
much about the world or the magic or
anything and I just found myself
pleasantly surprised over and over again.
I really really enjoyed learning about
this world learning about the Old
Kingdom and the way that the magic worked.
I also really enjoyed all of the action
and those fighting scenes could
get pretty intense. It was just such such
an enjoyable read, and I found it really
satisfying diving into this new fantasy
world and learning all about it.
It was just a really satisfying experience.
So overall I gave this book four and a half
out of five stars. Very much enjoyed it.
Would definitely recommend and I'm so
excited to pick up the next book in the series.
So those are my thoughts on Sabriel by Garth Nix.
I hope you enjoyed this review and if you guys have
read the book I would love to know what
you thought about it, but in particular what
is your favorite book of the series?
Especially since with the books in this
series that kind of jump around in terms
of time following different characters,
so I'd love to hear about which one was your favorite.
But that is all that I have for now.
Thank you so much for watching,
and l will see you tomorrow with a new video. Bye!
