Sabriel by Garth Nix

This one is for you, Rick.

Okay, once more, Sherman (and I'm getting depressed no one knows this!  Free book!), to the Way Back Machine.

Sabriel by Garth Nix:

Sabriel In the first scene, we realize Sabriel, an 18-year-old girl school in the country of Ancelstierre, just graduated her rather old fashioned boarding school for young women.  Not old fashioned for Sabriel, however, as Ancelstierre appears to be set in a slightly rearranged version of the twenties or early thirties in geography we don't know.

Oh.  And we know she is a necromancer.

In Ancelstierre, no one much believes in magic, nor does it work much beyond the Wall that shuts the Old Kingdom and its Charter Magic, within the world and order, necromancy, and Free Magic, outside the Charter and corrupting all exist and the people live in a more medieval setting.  Just with no government.

Sabriel was born in the Old Kingdom, but her father brought her here at five.  He is Abhorsen--the necromancer against necromancers.  A Charter mage and necromancer both, it is his job to make sure the Dead pass all nine gates of death, and stay dead.  Which they don't like to do in the Old Kingdom, especially lately.

Only scant pages after Sabriel shows her hidden necromancy, a sending brings Sabriel her father's Charter Magic imbued sword, and his bells--the tools of Abhorsen.  He may only be dead, or trapped in death.

Sabriel walks away from all she has known in thirteen years and goes to the Old Kingdom in search of her father.  Already, those who don't know her call her her father's title, Abhorsen, and that title means her father is assumed dead.

The problem is, she has no idea where he is.  In finding out how, she attracts the attention of a Mordicant, a free magic creature made of peat moss and flames with a Dead's spirit stuffed inside.  She has to make a mad run to find her father's house.  At her father's house, she meets Mogget, a white talking cat, who is most likely far more than just that.  Mogget travels with her in search of her father.  The Dead trail them at all times.  They come to believe a Greater Dead, Kerrigor, a powerful Dead creature who was also a free magic adept tracks them down, as he tries to free himself from Death once more.  All over, they find broken Charter stones--stones that hold the kingdom together with charter magic and keep the Dead down.  The corrupted, broken stones make it all the easier for the Dead to roam.

Along the way to Belisaere, which was the capital until twenty years ago--now overrun with Dead, and where Mogget and Sabriel guess her father's body is--Sabriel gets to discover a little more about Mogget, and discover Touchstone, a fool's name but he will give no other.  Touchstone last lived two hundred years ago.  He says he remembers little, but it is possible he remembers more, and is no more what he says than Mogget.

Eventually the small group makes it to the palace, but all does not go as planned.  The book takes a further magical twist as Sabriel and Touchstone must make it back to where Kerrigor has hidden his ace in the hole--his physical body.

Sabriel is one of those books I could just read over and over.  While it is aimed at a YA audience, it is meant for a mature audience in that Nix does not talk down to his customers and, more than that, perhaps, this book is a fantasy/horror fusion.  It would be hard for it to be much else.  The main character is either walking around in Death or fighting disgusting, scary dead creatures a fair percentage of the book.  Nix creates fear of the creatures, especially the Mordicant, dogging her trail, with an artful suspense.  The where, when you are reading, you keep looking over your shoulder.

Nix's world building is superb.  Ancelstierre feels more based on a version of human history.  However, the Old Kingdom is a complex work of art.  As one of the great puzzles of the book, which you must delight in either discovering or guessing, is how exactly the world works and why exactly everything has been going wrong the past two hundred years and the past twenty esp.  So I'm not going to tell you.  I will tell you that once you have learned all the secrets, the book falls together beautifully.  Rather than ending up with many convolutions in order to keep us guessing, every card that Nix lays eventually lines up into a stunning hand.

Characterwise--I actually rescinded my ban on talking cats because of sardonic, not quite to be trusted, sideways Mogget.

Sabriel was drawn well as a girl who has known more about Death than most of us ever will by the beginning of the book.  However, her father did not prepare her for who she truly was, or what it meant to be an Abhorsen in the Old Kingdom.  She shows bravery that is highlighted and made believable by her moments of terror, of wanting to run away from it all, from feeling she wasn't meant to cope with any of this, for her exhaustion and pain and putting up with wearing dirty, stinking armor.  Because of all these details, we understand her full courage as well as her fragility.

Touchstone is a man of secrets that weigh on him, even after all those dormant years.  However, he has a graceful curve from the servility to he treats Sabriel, the Abhorsen, when they first meet, to his expertise and skills breaking through to show confidence, to his and Sabriel's growing camraderie, to, of course, becoming the love interest.

Believe me.  I didn't just give anything away on that one.  From the moment he appears on the screen, you are nodding your head--okay.  Cue love interest.  Not that that is all the character is for.  Touchstone makes a great companion, someone Sabriel can actually talk to (Mogget can be a pain), someone who works beside her.  Then he gets love-interesty.  And here I feel Nix does fall down on the job.  I know it is YA, but I expect some sort of build in romance.  I expect catching the person out of the corner of the eye.  Wondering about him/her.  Knowing you're smiling too much or that the other person is.  One of my least favorite convenient writing phrases is, "it was if he was seeing her for the first time," or "he had never noticed before how . . . ."  Falling in love is a million microseconds of falling downhill.  You may not know or accept consciously what is going on, but you feel it.  It's cheap to use "He never noticed. . . " right at the end of the book because here is where it is convenient for you to stuff it in.  Also, after deciding he is in love, Touchstone's character does go downhill rather.  He's being soppy, protective, or grimly fighting.

Let's talk about that grimly fighting.  While the first half of the book wasn't hysterical laughter, it had its moments.  Towards the end, it is grim after grim.  It gets a little old.   There isn't even any gallows humor.

So finally, let's talk about the grim after grim effect.  Nix creates a crazy, terrifying, emotionally explosive end.  Only it isn't the end.  The book ends.  And then it goes into a frenzy of action and ends all over again.  And without near the emotional effect, I felt.  I realize what Nix was attempting to do, bringing some of the emotional impact full circle.  However, I felt he did an amazing job of this with the first ending, and that if he needed them (since there are sequels), some of the more important ending elements could be moved in as elements to the same ending.  It would change a little, sure.  But it would, I believe, hold together a little more thoroughly.

Either that--if you all think I am talking out of my ass--he needed to work on the pacing.  I got done with the first ending and I was done.  I was emotionally drained.  To me, the book was finished.  Then I had to keep reading.  I kept reading, but I never got my adreneline rush back.  The book had peaked for me.  I'd blown my wad.  I wasn't getting it back to feel very invested in the rest of the book.

Also, one of the stupidest last paragraphs ever.

Having gone through my nitpicks, though, this is still a book that I return to over and over.  Sabriel is well executed with some of the most vivid world building I've seen.  The characters, if occasionally wooden, are by the whole people I would love to hang out with.

If you are thinking of continuing with the series, my two cents:  Lireal is totally worth buying the book for that first section of creating a world and characters and Disreputable Dog, but skip anything that doesn't have to do with Lireal and consider just putting the book down after Lireal leaves the mountain.  Abhorsen:  I love you, Garth, but I still have to say to your readers, you'd be better off going back and reading Sabriel again.

Okay--I'm still waiting for someone to answer where the Sherman/Way Back Machine references come from.  A copy of Rebirth hangs in the balance.    

Fifth Quarter by Tanya Huff

Once more into the way back machine, Sherman!!  And yes, I'm still offering a free copy of Rebirth for whoever can tell me what I'm referencing.

Fifth Quarter by Tanya Huff

Summary:  I was going to write down the book blurb but it is stupid so you get my version instead.  The first thing you should know is that this is the second in a series.  The end is definitely a set up for No Quarter, but the first book need not be read in order to read this one.  I thought about starting with Sing the Four Quarters, which was a good enough book on the caliber of take it on vacation and read it when the day is rainy.  A good enough book so that I thought, eh.  I'll get the sequel.  The sequel blew the first book out of the water.  Besides the fact that having just read a series religiously, and I don't feel like doing that again, I am focusing on Fifth Quarter and perhaps No Quarter  because especially Fifth Quarter is what makes Tanya Huff so very Tanya Huff.  More importantly, Fifth Quarter is a beautiful fusion fantasy book of fantasy and horror with Huff's trademark complications in romance and attraction.  However, even though I believe you can skip the first book, I'll give a few pointers you learn in the first book.

In Shkoder, Bards hold powerful positions, either stationed or wandering.  They sing the kigh--approximately the souls or the spirits--of the four quarters, or elements.  When doing so they can ask the kigh to perform certain ways--rising up or settling down.  While they live by a strict code, they may also sing to perform tasks like becoming invisible or compelling truth.  Magic, yes.  Good at math, no, as when they discover that humans have kigh--a soul or spirit--that they may be able to learn to sing to--they call this the "fifth quarter."  In Sing the Four Quarters, the fifth quarter is theory, and not much discussed.

Now, Fifth Quarter, as the title suggests, is all about the fifth quarter.  Vree, 21, and Bannon, 20, are sister and brother born and raised in the Havalkeen Imperial Army.  Vree has always cared for Bannon.  When their soldier mother died when she was seven, it was her job to tell Bannon.  As orphans, they had the chance to become assassins--the best of the best.  They become the best of the best assassins, trained as a team.  Two bodies, one single purpose, they work in a complicated couples choreography for each kill.  Once back in the army camp, Vree's life still revolves around Bannon in every possible way.  Including eroticism.  Bannon, however, a charismatic golden boy, lives his life surrounded by people and revolving around himsef.

On a mission only they could pull off, Vree catches up to Bannon to discover someone has stolen Bannon's body, and the only way to save his life is to take his kigh into her body.  Not just a body swapping book, but a body double.  Desperate to get Bannon's body back, they desert--a death sentence for an assassin.  What they find is Gyhard in Bannon, a man whose kigh has been around the block plenty of times in plenty of bodies.  They strike a deal.  Vree, with her assassin abilities, will help Gyhard into an Imperial Prince the assassins have sworn to protect.  Only the siblings plan on forcing Gyhard out before they have to turn to treason and Gyhard plans on having them killed once he can make it so.

Before the trio/duo make it to the prince, the real villain of the piece shows and steals the prince.  Khars is rather sweet, and kind, ancient.  If only in his insanity didn't choose his friends by raising the dead--Singing the Fifth to force a dead body's kigh back inside.  He cares for his rotting, impaired children with gentleness and sorrow.  Then he sees the prince.  By those deep lashed, dark eyes, Khars knows he has finally found what he has been looking for--his heart.  Now Gyhard knew Khars a few bodies back, and is torn up to find him alive and still torturing souls back into bodies.  Gyhard needs to stop Khars.  Vree and Bannon both follow Bannon's body and need to save the prince.

The characters are well drawn.  Bannon and Vree, at the beginning of the book, only have each other--especially Vree.  A study of their relationship if rife with nuance even before he ends up in her head and the distinction between the two begins to shred and blend.  I'm wracking my brain, but I can't remember anyone take on incestuous feelings and reliances between equal siblings in Huff's honest way.  Being Tanya Huff, yeah.  That's sticky sweet hot with a twist up against a wall.

 Gyhard and Vree's growing warmth relies on the fact neither one of them has had someone to be truly open with their entire lives(ssss).  Meeting in raw honesty produces a heady attraction.  I've said that I hate I-hate-you-so-I-love-you-so-I-hate-you relationships, but that isn't the way Vree and Gyhard are relating.  Both of them want something.  The something will cause the other's death.  They are both business people on the concept of death.  As they travel together, get to talk to each other like they haven't to anyone, and slowly merge to a goal, their affection, though awkward, feels natural.

One thing I absolutely love about Huff and it is in this series more than any other:  her honest and absent use of same sex relationships.  There is no stigma attached, and many appear to move back and forth between the sexes based on the individual relationship.  The fact that it is such a NON issue makes it a) not feel like she's cramming an issue down our throats while b) being able to cram an issue down our throats.  And I applaud her on this one.

Her army is also lovely in it's non sexist status.  If she writes "the corporal", don't assume any gender until she writes the pronoun to go with it because that corporal is just as likely to be female as male.

The book could be honestly called a nonlinear.  And we do know how much I love a nonlinear.  She moves into sections of her characters' pasts not in past perfect or swimmy flashbacks and italics, but by ending a scene, and starting the next scene (she has really short scenes) in the past.  The following scene will most likely be in someone's present, but not always.

A book in which two people in one body think to each other, especially as they slowly become more aware of each other's thoughts and dreams and emotions, able to take over movement of the body from each other till their selves shred--it is not an easy thing to do.  She uses *thought* for when they are purposefully thinking to each other.  Italics when Vree is just thinking to herself.  It is quite clean and easy to follow, even as they descend into being each other.

I will complain that I felt her third omniscient view on top of all the thought dancing got awkward.  I'm never a fan of jumping pov mid scene, and she jumped it all over the place.  As much as I was engrossed in the material, I found this distracting and it sometimes pulled me out of the story.  Especially in a story where within one character the pov may be switching, I felt as if I really didn't need any more switching around per scene.

I also accuse her of having a desperate "seems" problem.  She uses the damn dumb word in what feels like every sentence.  I will note I am nitpicking here, however, as I have read other books with as big seems problems and never mentioned it because I had way bigger things to talk about.

I did like the army.  And I never say that.  Armies bore me.  I've never met an assassin that felt remotely realistic.  Until now.  I liked the highlights of how Vree and Bannon worked.  I loved the detail they immediately knew.  I liked the images of the army as a family to Vree and Bannon--all they had ever known.  A great creature that their tiny selves made up a part of.

Now for the horror:  Khars.  He was meant to be a bard.  He was tortured.  His slim hold on reality slipped at some point and now death is his best friend.  His zombies didn't lurch around with their arms out.  Their brains appear intact.  They knew they were dead.  They could speak until their mouths or tongues rotted.  I had to appreciate that.  Not just the walking dead, but the way they slowly rotted around him--the woman holding her desiccated baby.  The leg that snaps when the foot has worn away.  Finally the guts rupture.  This stuff is grotesque but made creepy because Khars truly loves his little family, and he descends the prince to near madness.

The horror and the fantasy blend seamlessly.  They are both born out of the same basic concept which drives the entire book:  the fifth quarter.  The book has an apt name and a guiding concept which both allows her characters to be directed exactly where they need to go without breaking character, and gives the book a cohesive drive.

Rebirth!!

Rebirth, my second novel, is out and I'm so geeked!  The links to it are in the making!

Back cover blurb:

Gavin Lewis, 20, is the kind of guy who picks worms off the sidewalk so they don’t get squished.  So, of course, when Gavin finds a naked girl in the People of the Bog exhibit, he takes her to his sarcastic, cynical best friend Topher Soper so they can take care of her, obviously in trouble.

Her confusion, her demeanor, and the fact she can heal wounds lead Topher to realize she is one of the bog mummies, reanimated.  But they don’t know how.

How is Annie Miller, an anthropologist with a pension for necromancy.  Albeit, the magic takes hold of her when her four-year-old daughter dies of cancer.  Now Annie can bring her daughter back to life, but it takes the bog girl to heal her of cancer.  Annie will let nothing get in the way of her daughter’s rebirth.  As the three figure out the riddle to the bog girl, she must find her own rebirth into our world, even as Gavin and Topher need to learn live anew as well. 

I actually wrote  this book before Weaver's Web--Weaver's Web is my most recent book, really.  I have to say Rebirth is the most rebellious book I have ever met.  Most of the rebellions went on during the designing phase.  But it was a bull headed, charging bull of a book.  First of all, the bog girl was supposed to be the main character.  Gavin elbowed her over, and now it is clearly is book, which I like because he is not the magical power in the book.  He's not some weird magical creature.  He doesn't learn any magic.  He's not so hot in a fight.  He's just a good guy.  And the book totally belongs to him.

The romance totally threw me through the loop as well, but I once I thought of it, I understood it was the only way it could go.

Amber, Gavin's sister, developed a plot line I had completely not expected either.  Though, once again, once I thought it through, I realized it was the only thing that made sense.

In this book, the characters controlled the book more than I did.  I generally don't say this, but I'm really proud of that.  It is not as if I just let the book run away on me.  Like I said, the rebellions were in the development stages.  What I'm proud of is that I so solidly created unique, strong characters, that they led me through the book.  To me, a promising sign of a good book is when the characters are so strong, I can ease up on my reins.  What they say and how they say it and what they do--I never have to ponder, because I know them so well, they speak for themselves.

The final big change on this book was this was the book where I developed my signature style of heavy dialogue and light description.  In my old days of writing, I had complex, long descriptions and an absolute abuse of adjectives and adverbs.  Rebirth taught me to pare down as much as possible.  I relied on small character insights from the characters--a line or two.  Then actions--not just fight scenes, I'm talking small movements that suggest anger or fear.  And a lot, including forwarding the plot happens through dialogue.  I actually went through my other books and stripped them down to this style.  I like dialogue and the occasional character wisp of emotion or thought leading the reader through the story.  They have to think about it.  Their thoughts may not even run along what I originally thought I was accomplishing in a scene (though so far it has), but that is even more awesome that they are putting that emotional and thoughtful analysis.

This has a heavy fusion of horror and fantasy, along with my usual other influences.  The style I just described in part came from poetry--the meaningful double meanings and meaningful, single images.  Of course the background in film came into play as a script has to tell the audience pretty much all they need to know, but it is interpreted through actors and directors and producers and editors.  It is fluid.  So I carved it down to bare bones.  Crack those bones open, and eat the marrow inside.