Kayde Fisher's Reviews > Goldenhand

I have very mixed feelings about Goldenhand. First things first, Sabriel is my favorite book and has been since I first read it in middle school. I am now 28, and I have reread Sabriel and the original Old Kingdom Trilogy more times than I can count. I was somewhat disappointed with Clariel, but was excited to hear that we would be revisiting the Old Kingdom and our beloved characters in Goldenhand. My expectations were high, but tempered with my "meh" feelings toward Clariel.

The Good: We get to spend time with Lirael, Nicholas, Sabriel, Touchstone, Sam, and other locations and characters that made me feel warm and fuzzy with nostalgia. We also got to explore familiar locations from new perspectives. As ever, the world and mythology that Garth Nix created is fully realized and as fascinating as ever. I would give anything to spend a day in the Library of the Clayr to learn about the mysteries of the Charter...

The Bad: The pacing and structure of this book are it's two biggest flaws. The first half was too slow, and the second half was too fast. We spend about 1/3rd of the book with a character that I didn't really care about. The title of the book is "Goldenhand" referring to Lirael, but I never really felt as connected to her as I did in her namesake book. Relationships between the characters were rushed, or ignored. We get almost no description or exploration of the relationship between Sabriel and Lirael, now that they are working together as the Abhorsen and Abhorsen-in-Waiting. Lirael reunites with Nick, and they basically fall totally in love and start throwing around public displays of affection in about 2 pages. To me, this was not true to Lirael's character. Sam is a peripheral character with almost nothing to do, and Sabriel and Touchstone are banished "on holiday" to keep them out of the main story for more than half the book. In the meantime, we are introduced to a new character named Ferin, who is a little interesting, but basically only serves as a plot device to make certain things happen. For much of the book, various characters are just traveling around the Old Kingdom until they all end up at the Clayr's glacier. The story really starts here, very far into the book, which makes the resolution feel thin and rushed.

I also feel that this fight, with this foe, should almost have featured Sabriel more than Lirael. I wish this book would have focused more on Sabriel and Lirael as a team, and their struggles with their age difference, backgrounds, personalities, and philosophies about Charter magic and their responsibilities. I'm all for a little romance, and Lirael certainly deserves some happiness, but it should have been a B or C story, not one of the main focuses of the novel.

It's difficult to describe, but all in all, I feel that this book lacked the substance and grandeur of the previous books. Everything felt rushed, from the character interactions, to the descriptions, to the story. There were even a few sentences that were so convoluted and weirdly written, I had to reread them a few times to figure out what Nix was trying to say.

I don't see myself rereading this book often, if at all. My feelings may be influenced by the fact that I'm no longer the right age to fit the intended audience, but the fact that this is a "young adult novel" is no excuse, when the genre is so rife with excellent writing, and especially considering that Sabriel was first published in 1995 and the original fans have to be about my age. If you are a fan of the series, by all means, read this book and take a visit back to the Old Kingdom. But don't expect to have the time to settle in and make yourself at home.