Lirael

[sawyl]

The second of Garth Nix' Old Kingdom series, Lirael delivers on the promise of the first book, expanding the size of the world seen in previous books and introducing a new pair of strong leading characters. As a whole Lirael feels considerably more polished and assured than its predecessor.

Lirael is fourteen when we first meet her and hoping against hope that her birthday will mark the day she gains the Sight, the ability to see the future that makes the Clayr unique. When her gift does not come, she travels up to the top of the glacier, intending to throw herself off. Instead, in a roundabout fashion, she finds herself given the job of third-assistant librarian and spends the next five years using her substantial gift for Charter magic to explore the library's vast vaults.

The Clayr stronghold is an intriguing place, set high in the mountains and with a colossal library that doesn't just contain books but seems to hold examples of practically everything — including vast oak trees and terrible free-magic monsters. For all Lirael's self-pity at not having the Sight and not looking like most of the other members of her clan — her mother is dead and her paternity is shrouded in mystery — it is clear almost immediately that she's an extremely talented Charter mage and that she learns formidably fast, wolfing down the secrets of the library as quickly as she finds them.

Almost immediately after becoming third-assistant librarian, Lirael breaks the enchantment on the magical bracelet given her by the Chief Librarian, creating for herself a set of skeleton keys. After using the keys to accident free a monster, she a book found in the same room to create a dog spirit using a combination of different sorts of the magic. This spirit, the Disreputable Dog, becomes her firm friend and helps her achieve a series of escapades, most of which occur off-stage.

Prince Sameth, only a year or so younger than Lirael, has had capped his time at school in Ancelstierre by scoring the winning six in a varsity cricket match. Things take a distinctly unpleasant turn when the bus home is hijacked by the walking dead under. When Sam travels into death to challenge the rogue necromancer commanding the attack, he manages to win enough time to save the day despite suffering burns in the process.

With the introduction of the prince, we also get a crash course in the politics of Nix' world. We learn that there is a war far to the south of Ancelstierre and that the government, pushed into action by an unpleasant rabble-rouser with his hands on the balance of power, is forcing them north to the region around the Wall. This is clearly intended as a critique of the developed nations' attitude to immigrants — something Garth Nix acknowledges in the afterword to my Kindle edition — but it also set up an important plot point for later. The attack on the cricket team also introduces Nick, the nephew of a powerful politician, who goes on to become important later on.

Returning to the Old Kingdom to recover his strength, Sam finds his parents absent — Sabriel and Touchstone are frantically trying to damp down outbreaks of evil in the east — and his domineering sister Elimere in charge. Desperately unhappy, Sameth struggles to deal with the expectations of those around him, all of whom expect him to be busy studying The Book of the Dead in order to become the Abhorsen-in-waiting whereas his traumatic encounter with the necromancer has left him sick at the very thought of the book and completely unable to read it.

Sameth and Lirael are something of a pair, both burdened with impossible expectations. But in Lirael's case her expectation that the Sight will change her life comes from within, while Sameth's problems come from the inability of those around him to see how unhappy he is with his role as Abhorsen-in-waiting and his own ability to express what he sees as his own failings. Elimere, although she means well, can't seem to see that her brother may have suffered mental injuries as well as physical ones during the fight in Ancelstierre and does her best to keep him busy with all manner of useless tasks — rather like the sort of person who believe that the answer to depression is simply to tell the person to snap out of it.

Still lacking the Sight at the age of nineteen, Lirael's birthday marks the day she decides to explore a deep crevice in wall of the library. Egged on by the Disreputable Dog, Lirael endures various risks to find herself in a room far below the Clayr fortress where she finds a book and a set of seven pipes whose names and tones match those of the Abhorsen's bells. Lirael's reflections are interrupted by a visit from two of the most gifted seers, who show her a visions of a young man being manipulated by a necromancer into carrying out some great evil. Tasked with saving the man, Lirael is promptly put aboard a boat and sent sailing off downriver with no-one but the Dog for company.

Meanwhile Sameth has received a letter from old school chum Nick, who has decided to come north for a visit. Reading between the lines, Sam quickly realises that Nick is already in trouble and sets out to rescue him — a decision that has the happy side-effect of taking him away from his sister and from his endless attempts to avoid reading The Book of the Dead. Being a prince and somewhat unworldly, Sam gets himself into his own scrape and soon finds himself pursued by a group of dead servants of the necromancer. It is only when Mogget, the Abhorsen's talking cat, shows up that Sam finds himself with an ally in his mad flight to stay alive.

The two threads finally merge when Lirael, aboard her little boat Finder, finds Sam and Mogget floating downriver in a tin bath. After helping to rescue the pair — something that prompts an interesting encounter between Mogget the Cat and the Disreputable Dog — Lirael and Sam decide to head for the Abhorsen's house where they plan to regroup and come up with a way to rescue Nick — the subject of both their quests.

Lirael is a very solid middle-of-trilogy novel that introduces a new arc via a pair of strong lead characters who are both struggling to come to terms with the cards life has dealt them. The book substantially enlarges the setting, giving us our first taste of real politics and bringing hither-to off-stage elements like the fortune-telling Clayr to the fore. The story is solid and although there are a some revelations before the end — Lirael's parentage for one — the resolution of the plot involving the mysterious necromancer has to wait for Abhorsen, the final book in the sequence.