Random thoughts on re-reading 'Abhorsen' & 'The Creature in the Case' by Garth Nix
Gah. Abhorsen is sooooooooo good. I might even go so far as to say it's the best in the series..... - so far. I started reading it yesterday and couldn't stop myself. Today I snuck out during lunchtime to read and devoured the last section of the book. I've read this book a few times before - not recently - but I was still in suspense and extremely stressed towards the end of the book when they were having their final battle with the Dead. So gripping. I was sitting in Schlotzsky's reading and I swear I didn't notice anything around me, the waitress had to almost thump me to get me to look up :)
Abhorsen is the third in the Old Kingdom series and is not a stand alone novel. You have to have at least read Lirael before you read it. It continues on directly from Lirael so although you probably don't need to have read Sabriel (although eee! eee! eee! but you should! :), it won't make sense if you haven't read Lirael.
In Abhorsen we come to a very pivotal and dramatic struggle between life and death. The battle in Sabriel was frightening and creepy but the battle in Abhorsen is terrifying and very large in its scale.
As I've mentioned, Abhorsen is the title given to the people who have the task of keeping the living safe from the malevolent Dead who don't want to stay dead .....
'...the Abhorsen, whose birthright and charge was to maintain the borders of Life and Death. The Abhorsen, who used necromantic bells and Free Magic, but who was neither necromancer nor Free Magic sorcerer. The Abhorsen, who sent any Dead who trespassed in Life back to whence they came.'
Death itself is also a physical place divided into nine precincts, the Ninth Gate being the final gate through which a spirit must pass. My only problem with the Old Kingdom books is that it makes death look like it's always bad. Is there no such thing as a peaceful afterlife in the Old Kingdom? :)
Abhorsen starts very dramatically ..... Sabriel (the current Abhorsen) and Touchstone (the King) are in Ancelstierre in an attempt to conduct negotiations in relation to a refugee crisis that is rapidly deteriorating. The pair are assassinated. It is a very, very bleak beginning .....
The story then shifts back to Sameth, Lirael, Mogget and the Disreputable Dog who are trapped in the House of the Abhorsen. They are surrounded by the forces of the Dead who are slowly and inexorably closing in upon them. In order to escape, the Disreputable Dog suggests that they take an apparently perilous route via the House's well and descend into the labyrinthine system of passages beneath the House.
Under The Abhorsen's House has got to be busier than the jolly London Underground because not only is the evil Kerrigor trapped in a cellar there, there also lingers the last traces of a powerful magic creature ..... This section of the book is incredibly creepy .... I could almost smell the rosemary and Nix writes it so well.
"It's rosemary," said the Dog shortly. "And there is amaranth, too, though you probably cannot smell it."
"Fidelity in love," said a small voice from Sam's backpack. "With the flower that never fades. And you still say she is not there?"
The Dog didn't answer Mogget but stuck her snout down the well. She sniffed around for at least a minute, pushing her snout farther and farther down the well. When she pulled back, she sneezed twice and shook her head.
"Old smells, old spells," she said. "The scent is already fading."
I was genuinely frightened as the characters pass through the abandoned passageways with crumbling torches and remnants of times gone past. The description of the tragic, power and sorrowful presence beneath the House is very evocative. They escape narrowly - although Mogget is taken ....
The group then head towards the Red Lake where Nick is. Along the way they come across a party of slaughtered merchants and it's very distressing and graphic but to be honest, I was more distressed when they come across a dying Guardswoman named Mareyn:
It was at exactly that time after a rest, with her total attention on getting the mud out of her eyes as they climbed up yet another gully, that they found a dying Royal Guard, propped up against the trunk of a sheltering tree. Or rather, the Disreputable Dog found her, sniffing her out as she scrabbled ahead of Lirael and Sam.
The Guardswoman was unconscious, her red and gold surcoat stained black with blood, her mail hauberk ripped and torn in several places. She still held a notched and blunted sword firmly in her right hand, while her left was frozen in a spell-casting gesture she would never complete.
They discover that Nick is very much under the power of the Necromancer Hedge who is bent on raising the Destroyer. Lirael manages to kidnap Nick and in a moment of lucidity, the two of them speak but unfortunately, the sliver of the Destroyer reawakens in Nick and Lirael is forced to flee, leaving Nick behind with Hedge.
Unfortunately it is all too late as Hedge has already excavated the items necessary to resurrect the Destroyer and these are being taken to Ancelstierre, where they will awaken the Destroyer and .... destroy the world. Very Buffy-esque I know.
Sameth, Lirael and the Disreputable Dog must then cross the Wall and enter Ancelstierre in an attempt to stop the destruction of the world. Meanwhile, Hedge has been successful in plotting with certain Ancelstierran politicians to trick thousands of Southerling refugees to gather in the same area as the Destroyer's intended location. The plan - for them to die so that they may be harvested by the Dead, the huge number of deaths allowing Death to pour into the living and destroy the world.
We then come to my favourite part of the book. They encounter my favourite minor character - Lieutenant Francis Tindall, one of the Perimeter soldiers in Ancelstierre and a Charter Mage - he gets his own post because I love him.
They also encounter Major Greene, an Ancelstierran officer who is also a Charter Mage and he is an old dear. The soldiers are a fascinating study of the weird dichotomy of the worlds - science and magic, Old Kingdom and Ancelstierre. The soldiers who guard the border between the two countries are posted by a Government that does not officially acknowledge the existence of magic. They have been forced to develop their own low-tech weaponry to fight the Dead as more advanced technology frequently fails when in close proximity with magic. Among the Ancelstierre soldiers are Charter Mages - something I find very fascinating, especially when you see that Sameth's own best friend Nick is something of a sceptic when it comes to magic - placing his belief in notions of science.
Sameth and Lirael ask the army for its assistance and find themselves confronting a positively massive army of the Dead. As it is now too late to stop the Destroyer from being awoken, Lirael has no choice but to enter the realms of Death to look into the past in order to ascertain how the Destroyer was defeated and bound previously.
The scenes in Death are very frightening as Lirael and the Disreputable Dog journey through Death, pursued by Hedge until there is a final confrontation. The final battle is quite amazing with Lirael in Death with her corporeal body protected by Sameth and the soldiers. It is during this battle that Sameth really comes into his own, using a combination of Charter Magic (to deal with the Dead) and diplomacy (to deal with the Southerling refugees).
I adore the soldiers. They're so heroic and hopelessly outnumbered but they are so incredibly brave in the way they face down the Dead. One of the most awful and sad chapters is when the Dead come upon a lighthouse occupied by the Ancelstierre military. It's terrifying - if it was a horror movie I'd be hiding behind the sofa and yet the characters are so selfless and heroic despite their obvious fear. Everything that takes place in the lighthouse takes place in one chapter - part of one chapter in fact, and yet I found myself caring about the fate of Lieutenant Drew, the young officer who has only been out of Naval College for eighteen months and Able Seaman Kerrick who sacrifices his life as well. It's a very dramatic and poignant section in the book even though we are only with these characters for a very brief period of time.
Also worth mentioning is Lirael's confrontation with Chlorr of the Mask Chlorr is a very mysterious character. A former living necromancer, she was very powerful but according to the book:
She had made a mistake, a mistake that had led to her servitude and death. But her Master had not let her go to the Ninth Gate and beyond. She had been returned to Life, though not in any living form. She was a Dead creature now, caught by the power of bells, bound by her secret name. She did not like her orders yet had no choice but to obey.
From what we can see, she is a former Abhorsen which explains why Mogget intervenes when Lirael attempts to banish her past the Ninth Gate. I hope Nix writes more about Chlorr's origins one day.
I'm not going to write about the ending because I don't think I can do justice to it.
I should add that I was touched by this earlier exchange between Lirael and the Disreputable Dog:
"I have to go into Death, don't I?" whispered Lirael. "To use the Dark Mirror and find out how It was bound in the Beginning."
Still the Dog didn't speak.
"Will you come with me?" asked Lirael, her whisper so low no human could have heard it.
"Yes," said the Dog. "Wherever you walk, I will be there."
General thoughts
I've said it before, although this book is found in the children's section - it is definitely not a children's series. The language, pacing and concepts are not childish and Nix never is never patronising and the occasional flashes of humour are very dry and droll. I read a review somewhere that said described Nix's writing as follows:
'Nix has very compact prose - his writing is sparse and minimalist, but good word choice and a fluid style mean that he doesn't need to use fifty adequate words to explain a concept - he'll use ten good ones, and keep the story moving at a fast pace.'
I agree. The banter between the Disreputable Dog and Mogget continues in this book and the two of them are absolutely delightful, their past history hinted at tantalisingly although there is something still fundamentally doggy and catty about their banter. I read somewhere that characterisation is one of Nix's weak points. I don't agree. His animals are hilarious - sardonic, smart and intelligent. His human characters are always flawed. Sometimes it can be difficult to understand them, for instance Lirael and Sameth come across as somewhat immature, self-absorbed and self-pitying in Lirael, but that makes their gradual development all the more wonderful. By the time of the final battle in Abhorsen, the two of them are very well-rounded and fascinating. I also am very fond of Sabriel and Touchstone and was pleased to see them again.
Sam's elder sister Ellimere comes across rather badly in the books. Bossy, beautiful, talented and annoying. Nonetheless, I can't help thinking that it would be nice if Nix wrote another book which told of her story. In any case, i might write a fic about her and my beloved Francis Tindall :)
The much-maligned Nicholas Sayre
I'm still keeping my Shippy Moment RADAR alert for darksilvermoon :)
Nicholas Sayre is approximately Lirael's age - approximately nineteen or twenty. He is tall and blond and suffers a great deal during the course of the books. It's funny, I'd never imagined him as blond - I usually thought of him as being dark-haired.
For those critical of Nicholas, I'd like to point out that:
- he was one of the boys who kept his head together when they were attacked by the Dead
- his original encounter with Hedge the Necromancer is solely because he remembered that Sameth said that there was no point simply fighting the Dead - they had to attack the Necromancer controlling the Dead
- his force of will and strength enabled him to resist for so long.
"I gave you a late baptism to preserve your spirit," said the Dog. "You bear the Charter mark on your forehead now, to balance the Free Magic that lingers in your blood and bone. You will find Charter mark and Free Magic both boon and burden, for they will take you far from Ancelstierre, and the path you will walk will not be the one you have long thought to see ahead."
OK, a few shippy-friendly moments. There's nothing obviously shippy but there are definitely possibilities:
- 'Lirael didn't answer either question. She just looked at him, waiting for him to talk. He met her gaze at first, then faltered and looked away. There was something unnerving about her eyes. A toughness he had never seen in the young women he knew from the debutante parties in Corvere. It was partly this that made him talk, and partly a desire to impress her with his knowledge and intelligence.'
- 'Lirael almost apologized, but she held it back. She did feel sorry for Nick. It wasn't his fault he had been chosen by an ancient spirit of evil to be its avatar. She even felt sort of maternal to him. He needed to be tucked in bed and fed willow-bark tea. That thought led to the idle speculation of what he might look like if he were well. He could be quite handsome, Lirael thought, and then instantly banished the notion. He might be an unwitting enemy, but he was still an enemy.'
All right, the 'maternal' bit isn't great, but the fact that she thinks that he could be quite handsome is very promising ;)
- '"I'm in trouble, aren't I?" said Nick. His voice was unsteady. He looked down at the bottom of the boat, hiding his face, taking very controlled breaths.
"Yes," said Lirael. "But Sameth and I, and the . . . our friends . . . will do the best we can to save you."'
Nick really breaks my heart in this scene. He realises that he's in a really bad situation - doomed even and it's just so sad. :'(
- '"Keep fighting," Lirael instructed, but she didn't know what else to tell him. "If we can't keep you, then when the time comes, you must do whatever you can to stop ... to stop it. Promise me you will!"
"I promise," groaned Nick through clenched teeth. "Word of a Sayre. I'll stop it! I will! Talk to me, please, Lirael. I have to think about something else. Tell me ... tell me ... "'
- 'The fragment was still infused with Charter marks, which flowed over and through the wood. As Nick watched them, something stirred in the recesses of his mind. For a moment he remembered who he really was once more, and recalled the promise he had given to Lirael.'
- ' He fought against the pain in both places and the pressure in his head. "Yes-you go, Tim. Tell her . . . tell them I'll try and stop it. Tell her-"
"What? Who?" asked Tim. "You have to come with me!"
"I can't," whispered Nick. He was remembering again. Talking to Lirael in the reed boat, trying to keep the shard of the Destroyer within him at bay.'
- 'Desperately he thought of Lirael lifting him into the reed boat, of his promise to [Lirael]. '
- "Lirael," whispered Nick. "Tell Lirael I remembered her. I tried ..."
*sob*
There are some droll moments in the book to lighten the bleakness.
- When Lirael uses a Charter Skin to transform herself into an enormous owl to carry herself, Sameth and Mogget to the Perimeter. They crash land:
'The flapping worked, after a fashion. Sam picked himself off the ground, checked that his bruised knees still functioned, and went over to the enormous owl who lay next to him, apparently stunned.
"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously, uncertain how he could check. How did you feel an owl's pulse, particularly an owl that was twenty feet long?'
- "Damn it! It is that simple! I'll order the company to go. After all, the politicos can only shoot me for it later if we win. As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I'll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?"
"Yum," said Mogget.
Unanswered questions
I have many, many questions that still remain after my re-reading of the books
1. When Mogget technically 'saves' Chlorr from being 'killed' by Lirael, presumably that is because he is bound to protect the Abhorsen, but is Chlorr still an Abhorsen given that she has now become one of the Greater Dead? Technically, Mogget should be supporting Lirael or Sabriel.
2. Does the Disreputable Dog die or not? Surely she can't hang around in Death.
3. Has Mogget been released from his servitude? All Nix says is this:
"Behind her, she heard Yrael speak, and Sabriel, and the brief chime of Belgaer, so strange after the massed song of all the bells, its single voice freeing Mogget from his millennia of servitude. But the sound was far away, in another place, another time."
and
"A white cat suddenly appeared next to Nicholas's feet. He sniffed in disgust and said, "I might have known"; then he looked past Nick at
something that wasn't there and winked, before trotting off in a northerly direction."
4. Garth Nix successfully makes Death and everything connected with Death look horrible, bleak and scary - but then it makes you wonder if there is supposed to be a positive side of Death as well ie what happens to good people? If they hang around in Death long enough will they also become evil? eg when they meet Mareyn the newly deceased royal guard in Death, Lirael notes: "Even the newly Dead could be dangerous, and a friend in Life would not necessarily be so here. It was safer not to touch."
5. There are little hints indicating that past Abhorsen/Sabriel's mother etc linger in Death and have not passed through the 9th Gate yet are not evil. The problem with that is - if they're hanging around in Death, not evil and retain a sense of consciousness - why aren't they patrolling to help get rid of the evil things?
6. I've discussed this issue before about the connection between the Charter Mark, Charter Magic and being a Charter Mage. I'm still not entirely sure about the extent to which it can be learned given that there are Ancelstierrans who are Charter Mages eg the schoolgirls / Perimeter Scouts. Clearly magic is not restricted to those from the Old Kingdom unless those Ancelstierrans with Charter Magic actually have Old Kingdom blood in them. On the line hand, the emphasis on Bloodlines indicates a genetic basis but on the other hand, Ancelstierrans with magical ability indicate that perhaps it can be learned.
7. With both Sabriel and Nick Sayre - a charter mark was able to preserve their spirit and bring them back from death but what exactly does this mean?
Kibeth says this: "I gave you a late baptism to preserve your spirit," said the Dog. "You bear the Charter mark on your forehead now, to balance the Free Magic that lingers in your blood and bone" It looks as if the baptism/Charter Mark somehow allows a person to be brought back from the Dead.
"Sabriel" is confusing. At the beginning, one of the watchers says the child is dead and there is no need for a baptism. The Abhorsen says there will be a baptism, "the child is not yet dead". The charter mage then baptises Sabriel and is startled when the wood ash on his forehead forms on Sabriel's forehead and he says: "But .... she is dead!" Abhorsen then goes into Death and finds that Sabriel has not yet gone beyond the first gateway which was good otherwise he would not have been able to "bring her back" without more stringent preparations and a subsequent dilution of her spirit.
Then after he "defeats" Kerrigor, he looks down at Sabriel: "Nervously, Abhorsen laid a hand across the brand on her forehead and felt the glow of her spirit within. The Charter mark had kept her life contained when the river should have drained it."
Some people think that an uncorrupted charter mark prevents the Dead from infesting the bodies and dominating the spirits, but people bearing them die normally but that can't be right because even those with Charter Marks are vulnerable vessels when they die unless the cleansing rites are performed. Clearly I'm still confused about this issue about what on earth that Charter Mark on the brow is supposed to do.
I don't have much to say about The Creature in the Case except that it was unsatisfyingly short. Hmph :)