This has taken a while to get up, I realise. I’m sorry for that... a lot has happened since my last entry (which I noticed was on my 18th – go me!). Nothing terrible – just laziness, coursework and distractions *cough*games*cough*. Well, here’s my Sabriel review. Leave comments if you have any tips on how this can be improved. Go easy – first time and all that. ;)
Sabriel, despite being a pretty teenage book, has been one of my favourite books since I first started reading it when I was in roughly Year 8 or 9 (I was around thirteen/fourteen years of age). My mother bought me a copy of Sabriel when it first came out in 2003 on paperback, but I could never get into it; I’d read the first few chapters (read: I got halfway through the second chapter), and entirely give up on it. It does feel as if something is missing from the start of the story to explain things properly, which is a little off putting. I put the book back on my shelf, and picked up the Harry Potter books my brother had got me into.
As fate would have it, on my next birthday my aunt bought me the full Old Kingdom trilogy, leaving me with two copies of Sabriel. Then I realised that maybe something was telling me to just read it. I brought Sabriel in with me one reading lesson at school, and forced myself to read it and understand it. I must have, because once I got going, I wouldn’t stop.
Below will be an odd spoiler. As much as I’ll try not to reveal too much, this is the outline of the story.
The story is about a girl called Sabriel (in case you hadn’t guessed already) who is brought up in a boarding school in a place called Ancelstierre, which is on the South side of The Wall where magic is almost non-existent and very difficult to cast. The dead can’t journey here, mainly because of the defences at The Wall, stopping anything from coming in and out of Ancelstierre. One evening, she is visited by a spirit in death, which brings with it her father’s belongings... the fabled bells of the Abhorsen and his sword.
Fearing for his life, she makes the journey into the Old Kingdom on the North side of the wall to his house to find a clue of his whereabouts. His house is a place she hadn’t visited since she was four years old, so how she was able to find it is beyond me. There she is met by a talking cat called Mogget, who she assumes is her father’s pet. He is in fact a magical creature, bound by the miniature Ranna bell (the Sleeper) attached to his collar. He tells her of his suspicions of where her father is, and so they take an aircraft called a Paperwing to the skies.
Not very far into the journey, they’re attacked and crash land down the bottom of a huge sinkhole. It is Mogget who saves them from the fall by having Sabriel release his bounds, making him turn into his original form and stopping them from hitting the ground... so hard. Once he is back in his bindings, they rest a little and explore the caves and find a crypt full of ships. She senses something about the naked male figurehead of one of them, which looks real, as if it shouldn’t be there. It turns out it didn’t, and she releases the figurehead from its wooden state of two-hundred years. His name - so he says – is Touchstone.
They then journey to the city Belisaere, to the North of the Old Kingdom by boat. Here they rest for a while, have a much needed bath, some food and some beers before heading to the Great Charter Stones, which rest under the City. Here they find Abhorsen frozen in death, to which Sabriel enters death to find him, while Touchstone and Mogget guard her body. She finds him, and frees him from death very temporarily, as the antagonist Kerrigor comes into the cave to ambush them. Abhorsen asks Sabriel for the bell Astarael (the Sorrowful, which sends all those who hear it into death), and tells her and Touchstone to run and meet the Clayr atop a hill nearby. On the way, they hear the call from the bell, and Sabriel kisses Touchstone to keep him in life as she can feel him slipping into the will of the bell.
With her father gone and Mogget pulling a disappearing act after his bounds being broken again, they make their way to the top of the hill, meet the Clayr who give them directions to killer Kerrigor, whose body lies back in Ancelstierre and another Paperwing. They fly there very quickly, and make their way into Ancelstierre to find his body. They find his sarcophagus, but don’t have the power to open it, so have it taken by horse and cart to her boarding school, where there are some mages who can help them. Many die there in the process of destroying Kerrigor who consumes Mogget, who then is bound again... but this time as two cats; one Kerrigor as a black cat and Mogget back to his bound form as a white cat.
I’ve probably confused you a lot about the story - it really does feel as if something is missing from the start of the story to explain things properly. It crossed my mind that Garth Nix was probably trying to be clever in that aspect in regards to Sabriel being tossed into a world which she was sheltered from all her life, and not knowing what’s happened, but I still maintain that perhaps Mr Nix just didn’t know how to introduce the audience to the story.
There’s a lot of missing time in the book. Parts should have chapters labelled as “Two weeks later” or similar. I don’t expect to read about every single day of the journey, but so much more depth could have been applied in certain areas; something could have happened whilst Sariel and Touchstone were at sea, such as a storm, or even a conversation which lead into their friendship/relationship. They spent an awful lot of time together, yet the development of their relationship seemed to come down to Sabriel kissing him to keep him alive – for the majority of the time before that, she was impatient and a bit of a bitch to him.
It has its faults, this book, and lot more could have been put into it (Garth Nix proved it by making Lirael and Abhorsen almost twice the size of Sabriel). However, it is a very good book. Want magic, mystical creatures, sprits, romance, and DON’T want to pick up Twilight? This is the book for you.
Again, apologies for this taking so long to get up. I’m currently reading Lirael and playing Final Fantasy XIII, AND doing coursework. Reviews for Lirael, FFXIII and Heavy Rain will be up shortly.
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