Book Title: Lireal
Author: Garth Nix
Published: 2001
Pages: 487
Category: fiction: young adult, fiction: fantasy
While it is evident from the beginning that Lireal’s story takes place in the same world as Sabriel’s did years before, we are not immediately able to figure out how her story will connect with that of Sabriel and her family.
Lireal is a girl who doesn’t fit in. Someone without the gift of sight amongst The Clayr, a culture that holds the future to be the only thing worth seeing. She is isolated, young, and those her surround her do not know how to deal with this unique situation. So she is alone.
Alone, that is, until she meets two of the Clayr who allow her to work in the Great Library. She changes into a kick-ass* Librarian who’s job involves fighting dark magic in the recesses of this huge collection of books, and learning intense amounts of magic and finding more nooks and crannies than perhaps any other Librarian of The Clayr.
We get to watch as she discovers the truth about herself and her particular magical gifts and begin a quest of her own.
Lireal, as a sequel, loses nothing of Sabriel‘s qualities, and only improves the experience by allowing us more insight into the world that Nix created years before with Sabriel. I am always glad when authors return to a story, with more to tell us.
*not exactly a technical term, but still relevent.
Philippa Adams 