I have so much thoughts right now. So I will ask myself questions and then answer them. (This is a good way to trick yourself into writing things when you don’t know what to write about.) First, is this a worthy successor to the original Abhorsen trilogy (which is one of my favorite fantasy series)? Yes. Is it everything I wanted from a sequel? No. Did I even know what I wanted from it? Weeeeelll, yes and no. Is it a perfect book? No. Ultimately, […]
And Then I Started Unnecessarily Going Off About Unnecessary Romantic Sub-Plots
Let’s be real, I had no idea what this book was about before I started reading it. I wasn’t even aware that it was the beginning of a series! I just noticed the title when I was at the used book store, picking up some mysteries for my mum. And then I took a peek at the cover and thought, “why not!?” It looked like a medieval-ish adventure tale, and that is exactly what I got! And it was slightly confusing at times, perhaps due […]
Slightly disappointing prequel to a series I love.
This is a prequel, and prequels can be dicey, so let me just start by saying: this could have been much, much, much worse. Clariel is the story–not of how young Clariel becomes Chlorr of the Mask from the original series like I was expecting it to be–but of how the foundations for that eventual change are laid. Seventeen year old Clariel moves with her family to the city of Belisaere. Clariel’s a girl of the forest, so right away this makes her unhappy, but the city […]
Like an old familiar nightmare you’d forgotten you used to have.
I think probably the best way to describe what it’s like to read the Abhorsen trilogy is to compare it to a snowball rolling down a very, very large hill. We are all familiar with this metaphor–it basically implies that the thing being compared metaphorically moves faster and becomes MORE on the way down, whether that thing is the plot or your emotions as a reader, or both. Abhorsen is like this, but also THE SNOWBALL IS ON FIRE. Sabriel introduced the world, the characters (most of them), […]