Sabriel

Sabriel is classic fantasy book hands down! Garth Nix is a genius. On of my top fantasy books ever. Deserves way more attention then some overrated homophobic books.

While the story in itself is quite interesting the world Nix creates isn't as interesting as some other fantasy world's. The characters aren't well developed and you don't feel too connected to them yet. Maybe book 2?

Very interesting read. It has a well defined system of magic and characters. Definitely reading the rest of the series.

Wish I'd read this when I was young, would probably have loved it. Reading it now, there's nothing to it.

I am a bit unsure about this book. I think the target audience would be teenagers. The story was interesting and the main character was easy to like. The pace was decent and I plunged into the story ignorant of most things just like the main character, so there was a lot of incentive to keep reading to find out what happens next and for more information to be revealed.However I found the world of the old kingdom to be very bleak and what scant bit of information that was revealed didn't do much to make the world very likeable or relatable. I just couldn't get into it and really care about the fate of such a world where virtually nothing is known about its history, people and magic. Everything is dark and harsh, dead things coming to life is the only thing we know that is happening. I suppose this is what a "dark fantasy" is supposed to be like but somehow it didn't really attract me.Also I found myself skimming over a lot of paragraphs in the action scenes as I wasn't really sucked into the narrative - perhaps because I couldn't really connect much to the characters. They're not bad but just no so well fleshed out. And what happened to Horyce in the end - no idea.I don't know.. overall I guess my impressions were stark grey bleak with very little colour vividity saturation. It was an ok read - not sure if I will pick up the next book in the series.

Good read

Like others have found, the file for this book must be corrupt on Amazon’s server, as it tries to download but always fails. I have tried on a Kindle, two different iPads and an iPhone all with the same result, when other books download perfectly. I have the books in the series on either side but want to read them in order.

The book is brilliant - hence I have given it 5 *. One I read over and over (as with the whole series). However, I don't like this kindle edition - the author's "interesting" facts at the end of each chapter totally break up the flow of the story. I find that I'm lost in the events and the world... only to come to the end of the chapter and come down to the real world with a bump because of these asides. I don't want to know what the author thinks - at least not all the way through the book! Sure, add them at the end or the beginning for information - or even add them as interactive notes (this is an electronic book after all) - but don't spoil the story. Hopefully the publisher will read this and amend this edition...

Well, first of all, Sabriel is an excellent YA fantasy novel - inventive, atmospheric, witty - so I have no serious criticism to make of the book itself (based on having read it in paperback years ago).The kindle edition would be excellent value at the current low price, but unfortunately it's completely broken. The file won't download on any of my devices, and I can't open the book at all. Looking at previous reviews which also mention corrupted files, it's disappointing that Amazon haven't done anything about the problem for some time.Avoid until fixed.

One of the things that I liked about Sabriel from the start was the world-building. A crucial part of any fantasy, and Nix has done an excellent job here. Particularly in regard to the well thought through system of magic, but also with the entire world that it is based in. He does a fine line in monsters and the bells are a particularly nice touch.The characters were slower in developing - particularly Sabriel herself, who seemed rather two dimensional in the early chapters, only filling out as the story progressed. This is perhaps a result of Nix's approach to story writing: in one of his little asides about his methods, he says that he puts the story first and the characters develop as he goes along. Well, that's exactly how it reads to me.And while we're on the subject of those asides - at the end of several chapters Nix puts in a paragraph or so about how he writes. Now, as a writer myself, I'm quite interested in other people's ways of working. But NOT while I'm in the middle of actually reading their story! There could hardly be a better way of breaking the flow and pulling me out of the fantasy world than to stop to show off the nuts and bolts. 'Look, this is how I put that bit together'. I found it intensely irritating.But, when he's not sabotaging his own work, Nix writes really well, with a strong and absorbing flow of words that kept me wanting to know what happens next. So, in spite of my grumpy response to his little idiosyncrasies, I would recommend this as a very good fantasy adventure, and I certainly want to go on to the next one in the series.

I have never managed to get this book to open. There's obviously a fault which has been mentioned many times over the years, seems to me the right thing to do would be to offer a free replacement to people that have wasted their money on this and been unable to access it.