By Garth Nix
Publication date: October 14, 2015
HarperCollins, 382 pages
Source: Purchased
"Sixteen-year-old Clariel is not adjusting well to her new life in the city of Belisaere, the capital of the Old Kingdom. She misses roaming freely within the forests of Estwael, and she feels trapped within the stone city walls. And in Belisaere she is forced to follow the plans, plots and demands of everyone, from her parents to her maid, to the sinister Guildmaster Kilp. Clariel can see her freedom slipping away. It seems too that the city itself is descending into chaos, as the ancient rules binding Abhorsen, King and Clayr appear to be disintegrating.
With the discovery of a dangerous Free Magic creature loose in the city, Clariel is given the chance both to prove her worth and make her escape. But events spin rapidly out of control. Clariel finds herself more trapped than ever, until help comes from an unlikely source. But the help comes at a terrible cost. Clariel must question the motivations and secret hearts of everyone around her - and it is herself she must question most of all."
- Goodreads.com description
The short of it:
Had one or two good moments for Old Kingdom trilogy fans, but wouldn't particularly recommend to newcomers to the series.
The long of it:
It seems appropriate to begin my book review blog with the first book I absolutely would have loved buying on release date, but could never in a million years have managed, considering I was 41 weeks pregnant and gave birth the very next day. So I'm about five months late on this review, but I'm too much of an Abhorsen fan to care.
The only problem? This wasn't a very Abhorsen-y book.
Clariel is set "approximately six hundred years before the birth of Sabriel," the book announces before the prologue, and as an Old Kingdom fan, I got chills. I couldn't wait to see how this new Abhorsen tied into Sabriel's story. Maybe she was Touchstone's mom? Or was she the Abhorsen who created the Remembrancing tools Lirael found in the Library? Something about the name Clariel set off bells (ha ha), but it's been almost a year since I reread the Old Kingdom books and I couldn't quite put my finger on the reference, which in a way was even more exciting.
I turned page after page in anticipation of finding the connection. As the book progressed through pages and pages about clothing, I realized that this was pretty much the only thing keeping me interested. I knew from the previous Old Kingdom books that Garth Nix likes to take his time introducing the character, her situation, and her world. Sometimes hundreds of pages of time. But in Sabriel and Lirael, his world-building was so interesting that I didn't really mind. Who wouldn't want to read two hundred pages on the interplay between a steampunky regular world and the magical medieval world just a wall away, or four hundred pages of description of a crazy-awesome library in a mystical glacier of enigmatic all-seeing women?
But two hundred pages on how a girl wants to go back to a regular old forest got pretty old pretty fast. Sure, it's a "Great" forest, but in comparison the Old Kingdom/Ancelstierre and Clayr's Glacier worlds, not to mention the incredible Abhorsen's House, Clariel's "Great Forest" is just a little...blah. And Clariel just constantly drills it in: forest, forest, forest. Alone, alone, alone. That's all she single-mindedly thinks about, which makes her a very hard character to relate to. Not very many people want to be totally alone all the time. At least Lirael was a lone wolf because she felt different from everyone around her, which is a relatable problem, and not because she was completely antisocial like Clariel.
Don't get me wrong; I definitely found some things to love in Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen. I liked that she was a berserker, which was a little link to Touchstone from Sabriel, and made for a really interesting character trait. I liked that this book goes more into Free Magic sorcery than the others, too. I really enjoyed the moment when I realized who exactly Clariel was. But none of these things were new or original to Clariel's story. They were all throwbacks from the other books. And where were the terrifying Dead, the perilous forays into Death, the quests of epic proportions? Not to mention that Ancelstierre basically existed only to provide the annoying ritual of tea, and that the most interesting aspect of the entire Old Kingdom world, the good necromancers with the special magic bells every true fan has memorized the names and abilities of, was basically totally ruined, since Abhorsens were "out of fashion" and completely useless during Clariel's time.
I wanted to give this book a five star rating, I really did. I wanted to read this book and fall in love with the Old Kingdom all over again, but that's just not what happened. I rode the high from figuring out where I knew Clariel's name from all the way to the last page, but when I look back at the entire story, I'm disappointed all over again. The jacket calls Clariel a "prequel to the Old Kingdom Series," but if I had read this book before Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen, I don't think I would have bothered reading the rest of the series. So, for those of you who like reading a series in chronological order, don't! If you simply must read Clariel, read the Old Kingdom trilogy first. Fall in love with Garth Nix's writing first. Then read this book because you just can't imagine leaving any Abhorsen lore unexplored.
My rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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