September 2019 Book Club: Sabriel

I haven't been posting much about book club lately or the creative ideas we've all had for refreshments, but I'm going to try to start remembering to do that. I almost always forget to take pictures, but his time I remembered after we had eaten half of the dessert! Our book this month was Sabriel by Garth Nix and there is a lot of death and necromancy on it, so we decided to make our brownies into a graveyard. It helped greatly that it's the end of September and there are loads of Halloween decorations to choose from.

 And now for my review of the book:


Sabriel by Garth Nix

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: One character overhears people having sex in the next room.



Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the random power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Charter-Mage Abhorsen, is missing, and to find him Sabriel must cross back into that world. With Mogget, whose feline form hides a powerful, perhaps malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage, Sabriel travels deep into the Old Kingdom. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life--and comes face-to-face with her own hidden destiny.


Sabriel was our book club book for September. I've known about this book for some time. One of my daughters loved it as a teen and had recommended it, but I never got around to reading it. While I can see why she liked it, especially as a young teen, I did feel like there were some things missing for me. The book started off slow, and the story didn't pick up for me until after Mogget was introduced. Mogget easily became my favorite character, because talking cats are awesome! With the exception of Mogget, the characters were a little dull in general, and lacked depth, and the romance that blossoms between two of them was kind of blah and not well developed.

As for the world, I thought it was interesting, but the world building wasn't as well thought out as I would have liked. I had trouble figuring out what sort of time period the book was set in at first, and the addition of a few real world things was a little confusing to me, as this was supposed to be a fantasy world. What I really liked about this book was the magic. The bells were interesting and different, and the fact that the book included necromancers made it unique from most things I've read. I also liked that necromancy itself wasn't evil, but it was what the user chose to do with the ability that was good or evil.

“Death and what came after death was no great mystery to Sabriel. She just wished it was.”

This book deals with a lot of death and that can be pretty dark, but the way it was handled in the book it didn't feel nearly as dark as it could have been. Despite the dark content the writing felt very young adult, almost middle grade to me, and I think that's the real problem I have with the book. The writing style is a little too young for some of the content, which would be more suitable for older teens, and that, in turn causes the book to lack the depth I was expecting. That being said, if you are a fan of YA fantasy and want something that doesn't include a lot of romance you might really enjoy this book. I would recommend at least giving it a try.