#sorry lireal and abhorson im being kind of a hater. but sabriel was so good idk how anything was gonna

[cafffine]

I finished Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy*, and I enjoyed books 2&3: Lireal and Abhorsen, I did! But Sabriel cut to the bone, and even two books later it was all I could think about. (TO ME!) It was the best by a massive margin.

*I know there are more!!

Lireal and Abhorsen tell this grand and exciting story of identity, depression, fear, saving the world, and I loved that, but Sabriel was a coming of age story about parental death. Sabriel said that death is something to be managed, respected, but never mastered. It said that even if you can put your fist around death, it’s going to take from you and it’s going to be permanent - because what comes back is never what you lost.

It was so painful to watch Sabriel’s quest to save her father fail, because that’s what happens, your parents die, and you can’t go with them - not right now, anyway. Death waits for you, and you can even look in on it sometimes, but you can’t stay, and if you try to you’ll freeze, or drown. You just live, and mourn, and remember, and find new people to hold onto. You grow into your father’s old coat, you adopt his cat, and you take care of his house because he took care of you, and he loved you.