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Lirael (Abhorsen, #2)

Garth Nix

Start date: March 1, 2019

Finish date: March 31, 2019

Discussion: Book of the Month

Why we're reading this: Goodreads Book of the Month, March 2019
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What Members Thought

Jul 31, 2021 Caitlin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audience-young-adult, owned-bookshelf, fic-fantasy, owned-audible

Lirael returns to Garth Nix's fantastical and somewhat bleak world of the Old Kingdom, picking up a around 14 years after the events of Sabriel. Sabriel is now the Abhorsen, constantly moving about the country dealing with the dead and necromancers while her husband, Touchstone, deals with running the country. The story begins however, with a young daughter of the Clayr, Lirael, in the glacier that the Clayr call home. Lirael is not like the other Clayr who have a well-deserved reputation as bei Lirael returns to Garth Nix's fantastical and somewhat bleak world of the Old Kingdom, picking up a around 14 years after the events of Sabriel. Sabriel is now the Abhorsen, constantly moving about the country dealing with the dead and necromancers while her husband, Touchstone, deals with running the country. The story begins however, with a young daughter of the Clayr, Lirael, in the glacier that the Clayr call home. Lirael is not like the other Clayr who have a well-deserved reputation as being able to glimpse the future, she physically looks different from the others and while other teenaged Clayr are receiving the gift of Sight and joining the adults, Lirael remains Sightless and stuck in the garments and role of a child. On her 18th birthday however, she is the Clayr chosen to undertake a desperate mission that will bring her into contact with the young Prince Sameth, Abhorsen-in-Waiting and as lost in his place in the world as Lirael. Between the two of them, Lirael and Sam must discover a way to prevent a dire threat to the Old Kingdom while Sabriel and Touchstone are off fighting other battles.

Unlike Sabriel, Lirael is one of those young adult fantasy stories that I wish I had read when I was much younger. I think teenaged me would have loved this story and identified with Lirael in particular but adult me really struggled. The first half of the story is spent following Lirael as she grows from 14 to 18, and it provides a much more involved look at Clayr society than readers got in Sabriel so in a world-building sense it's great, but it makes for pretty slow pacing. The second half is a much faster pace, as it builds to Lirael and Sam finally meeting in the last quarter of the book and the fight with the dead and the necromancers building to something menacing.

The biggest struggle for me was in losing patience with the characters. It's not that Lirael or even Sam are poorly written. They're just very wrapped up in the teenaged struggle of finding themselves and their place in the world and as such, are self-pitying more often than I really had the patience for. Only the appearance of two animal companions who bullied their teenaged charges into not feeling sorry for themselves so often made me feel less annoyed. The character arcs for Lirael and Sam do pay off towards the end of the story as the two of them find their footing and prepare for the battle ahead.

It feels weird to say that this book has middle book syndrome, because it feels like it hits some of the downfalls of both first and second books. Sabriel felt like a contained story, even with the slightly rushed ending. Lirael spends so much of its time establishing the context for the two new main characters that the pacing suffers and even by the end, it feels like it spent a lot of time setting things up for the final book in the trilogy. It does however expand the world-building of the Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre very well, and I very much enjoyed getting to see more of this world.

Overall, I enjoyed Lirael. If you read Sabriel and enjoyed it, it's well worth picking up Lirael to see both an older version of the original characters and a greater scope of the world. I enjoyed it less than Sabriel and I think it requires more patience from an adult reader for the kind of drama we all felt as teens and a much slower pace than Sabriel. I'll be very curious to finally get to Abhorsen and see the payoff built in Lirael and the final clash with the dark forces introduced here.

CAWPILE Rating
-----------------
Characters: 7/10
Atmosphere: 9/10
Writing: 8/10
Plot: 7/10
Intrigue: 7/10
Logic: 8/10
Enjoyment: 7/10
Overall: 7.6/10 ...more

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