Am very much not loyal to one book, will read multiple books at a time, hence why I have 4 other bookmarked books alongside The Raven Boys, it was 5 but I finished one today.
The book is called Sabriel by Garth Nix.
It is great. The main character (who funnily enough is called Sabriel) is an absolute disaster of a person.
Within this world there are these people called Charter Mages who practise Charter spells which is basically just magic, and as most worlds with magic do they have necromancy magic. However for quite a time in this world there has existed a generational title of Abhorsen which sounds similar to abortion, and given the nature of the Abhorsen it just turns their duty of keeping the dead, dead funnier. And Abhorsenās purpose is essentially just making sure that the dead donāt return to life, as they are extremely dangerous.
Sabriel is the newest Abhorsen and also the most unaware, she was kept in the modern side of the world instead of the old kingdom where an Abhorsenās duty typically lies. So when it comes time for her to venture their and take on the title of Abhorsen temporarily, she knows nothing, well thatās a lie, she knows the basics, and thank god she has common sense.
From the moment she steps foot into the old kingdom til the end of the book she is a complete disaster, doesnāt really know much about the previous Abhorsenās and the only person capable of telling her anything, is a weird sassy free spirit cat who enjoys toying with her. His name is Mogget and I love him, not just because he takes on the form of a cat most of the time.
She barely sleeps, when she first enters the old kingdom she has to find Abhorsenās house which she wasnāt really told how to do so she has to summon a dead spirit to give her directions, which attracts the attention of a really dangerous dead being who spends the rest of the book hunting her down. When she gets to the house she gets one night of rest before setting off again in a weird plane thing controlled by your own wind magic. She crashes it into some sort of ancient āgraveā sight, almost gets killed by Mogget for reasons I will not explain because spoilers, and then brings someone back from the dead who had been turned into a ships figurehead. His name is Touchstone and unfortunately, no one makes use of the pun potential of that name.
Then she travels to a village ravaged by dead where she is almost killed again by the living residents. She gets a decent break through a 5 day journey at sea and a nice hotel room to stay in at their destination once they reach it. The following day however.
Breaks into a 200 year old ruin to rescue someone, gets noticed by the big bad of the book who uses his dead minions to give himself a grand entrance because why not. After spoiler events happen she and Touchstone bolt it out of the ruin, almost dying. Sabriel gets shot with an arrow. Is given another magic plane to fly which she doesnāt crash this time. Goes back to her home and essentially convinces people that she needs to dig up a coffin to destroy a body. I will not explain what happens after, go read the book.
I will say that towards the end of the book I was kind of expecting the author to start referring to Sabriel as Abhorsen, throughout the book sheās very much like, Abhorsen is not my title, call me Sabriel, and almost everyone calls her Abhorsen. But towards the end she starts accepting the title and was kinda expecting the author to just start using the title instead of her name, but who knows, maybe thatāll happen in the next book. There was a nice little moment between Mogget and Sabriel where he actually used her name, despite constantly telling Mogget to call her Sabriel, he doesnāt and uses Abhorsen except for that one time, which to me felt like a mini moment of Mogget showing respect to her.
Anyways, thatās Sabriel, go read the book, itās beautiful.
Also Sabrielās hot, am very gay for her.
