Recent Reads: Sabriel

I've been reading a handful of young adult adventure and fantasy books this fall, to get a sense of how other authors address certain things, like action scenes, sexuality, fantastical elements, etc. Garth Nix's Sabriel was on my to-read list and a friend saw it there and mentioned that she loved this book when she was young. A number of my main characters in my comics and in my novel are young and female so I picked this one up thinking it'd be a good study. And it was. Definitely more in the fantasy genre than anything I write, but the main protagonist Sabriel is a good character. Nix handles writing things that aren't particularly visual really well, like the sound of the various bells Sabriel uses. It's an important element in the book and writing about sound isn't always easy. He does some great world building as well as Sabriel crosses the land and meets friends and foes. The visual descriptions of the magical enemies are nice and chilling, some great moments of light horror mixed in, as well as some short moments of sexuality, done tastefully and with the curiosity a girl of Sabriel's age would show.