Sabriël (1995)

The audio version is read by Tim Curry. 'nough said. I didn't expect to like a book about a necromancer, and aside from the constant thoughts about the Dead (you can hear the capitals in his voice), it was an excellent story. Harry Potter fans might enjoy this. The characters are good, and the setting intriguing. ( )

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Tim Curry. I thought his character voicing was a little inconsistent at times, and I’m not sure a male narrator makes the most sense for a book where the main POV character is a female (or vice versa), but for the most part I thought his narration was fine.

Story
The main character is Sabriel, the daughter of Abhorsen, a necromancer. He’s not your normal raising-the-dead-and-causing-mayhem necromancer, though. The main way he exercises his power over the dead is by binding dangerous dead things to protect humanity. Sabriel shares his abilities, but she is inexperienced. When Abhorsen disappears, Sabriel tries to find him, and has to deal with a lot of things that she wasn’t prepared for along the way.

The story was moderately interesting, and I liked Sabriel pretty well, but I also had a lot of complaints. My first main frustration was how, despite having regular contact and a good relationship with her father, Sabriel was ignorant of too many things about the world and Abhorsen’s role that her father should have considered a priority to teach her. It felt contrived to keep the reader in suspense by keeping the character ignorant of things she really should have known. I was also frustrated by the instalove, but it didn’t dominate the story so it only annoyed me the few times it came up.

I think my biggest frustration was how many times problems were resolved via coincidence or Deus ex machina. Maybe not always Deus ex machina in the strictest sense, but in the “known thing doing heretofore unexpected and unknown and not terribly logical things” sense. Additionally, the magic system seemed to have rules, but they weren’t all that clear to me and sometimes it seemed like the rules were just there for the author’s convenience to wrestle the plot where he wanted it to go.

One spoilery comment: It made no sense to me that Mogget’s ring, which was presumably intended to bind Mogget in particular, could be used to bind an entirely different creature which would then generate its own separate ring. If the ring worked that way, Sabriel could have gone around throwing it over the head of everything that got in her way. I guess one could say it only worked this way because Mogget was inside of what’s-his-face, but I’m still not buying it. It generated a new ring for him! It makes no sense. :p

I’m marking this as a “probably not” for following up on it in print someday. Even though it’s part of a series, this book does stand alone well, and it’s a pretty quick read (or listen). ( )

In form this is a classic fantasy novel. A young woman heads across the Wall to her country of origin to find her Father. Her Father was the Abhorsen, a mage who specialized in returning undead to being dead. He's missing and things are a mess in the Old Kingdom. I liked the world, the writing and the characters, though there really are only two of them. The magic system has a great magical feel to it without being the usual super-powered mess and Nix's take on death is interesting. ( )

I read this when I was younger but remembered almost nothing so Im rereading and then reading the rest of the series (which I have not read before) just cause I guess. Good fantasy story but a bit dense to get through, especially at first. Hands are gross. ( )

Sabriel is the daughter of the necromancer, Abhorsen. He has placed her in a school outside the Old Kingdom, but she must return there to rescue her father, who is close to death. I did not care for Sabriel, who I found boring and without much mettle, except the need to save her father. On the other hand, I liked Touchstone, who seems to have more personality, perhaps from his earlier life, and whose character developed as the book progressed. I also liked the author's thin line between life and death, allowing characters to cross back and forth. Not sure if I will read more, despite niece Catherine's endorsement. ( )