Sabriel

How it reads

Sabriel is fantasy (necromantic epic fantasy, specifically), and its dominant mood is adventurous. It's driven by momentum, discovery and getting into trouble. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an invented world, in no single period, told in the third person, staying close to one character. Its central concerns are coming of age, power and politics and survival. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It opens a series. The ending resolves happily. At 496 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.