Gen Fiction Battle

For the first chunk of this book, it was like, "I'm mostly enjoying the worldbuilding, this is fun. The review might be a lot of nitpicks that comes off as more critical than my overall impression of the book, but oh well, that happens sometimes." Then the later chapters it was like...I'm probably not the right target audience for the book, the review might be critical and my overall impression might be critical.

Nix mentions in an afterword (I read the 25th anniversary edition) that he was inspired by a visit to Hadrian's Wall--where it seemed like it was different seasons on either side of the wall--to write a book about a fantasy world where a wall divided two countries, one with magic, one with technology. Sabriel spends most of her life at a magical school in Ancelstierre; her father, Abhorsen, is a benevolent necromancer who makes sure the dead stay dead, and spends most of his time on the other side of the Wall, in the "Old Kingdom." One day Abhorsen sends her his magical sword and handbells instead of appearing for a scheduled meeting, and she realizes that he's trapped in Death, and she needs to go free him.

So some of the adventure involves Sabriel (and Abhorsen, in the prologue) stepping into Death to confront magical enemies. Death is a river divided into nine Precincts (shades of Dante) with Gates in between them. The worldbuilding of "different Precincts have different dangers, experienced necromancers know what different kinds of perils the river holds" was fun.

And then subduing these monsters often involves ringing handbells. The infodump early on of which bells do what felt like it was setting up for something more "hard fantasy," where a fulfilling climax would have involved the reader just barely being able to puzzle out how to combine the bells. It turns out what I really wanted was not this book but like, Brandon Sanderson writing a book about a handbell-based magic system where you nerd out about combining...wait, that's just Anathem.

Another nice worldbuilding touch from the backstory: Abhorsen teaches Sabriel how to summon a "sending" or spirit that's some kind of magical imprint of her mother. There are strict rules about this, it can only be done three times in seven years, so high-stakes situations only. Sabriel gets her period before any of her friends and the boarding school hasn't taught her about sex ed yet, so emergency situation triggered.

Ancelstierre is mostly technology-based; the image of guards in a society that has guns and tanks awkwardly patrolling the high-security border area but feeling more confident in their steel bayonets was funny. However, for a secondary-world story, I felt there were several this-world isms ("November," "St. Andrew's Cross," three stars representing the belt of a constellation figure) that threw me out of the narrative. Everyone has a different threshold for this.

Really not a fan of the "young ladies being forcibly bathed under protest" trope. Nobody needs a manicure to go on a quest to fight evil.

The prologue happens when Sabriel is a newborn, and it's in Abhorsen's POV, that makes sense. Most of the rest of the book is in Sabriel's POV. But there's occasional head-hopping, and I don't feel like these digressions added much. Early on we meet a creature that calls itself Thralk in its own POV. Later, Sabriel thinks back to when she was fighting Thralk. Which is not a name she'd have any occasion to know.