SABRIEL by Garth NixBOOK REVIEW

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!.