A walk in the shadow of the valley of Death

Well, it took an additional two weeks of squishing in one chapter a night before bed like a fourth-grader, but I did finally finish my reread of Garth Nix's Abhorsen, meaning that as far as I am concerned I am done with my reread of the Old Kingdom trilogy. I don't understand this "books 4 and 5" nonsense and I'm not real interested in doing so.

 

Abhorsen picks up right where Lirael left off. Lirael and Sam, accompanied by their sassy talking animal companions and armed with new knowledge about their heritages (and the powers that come with them), are on a quest to prevent the necromancer Hedge and Sam's possessed Ancelsterrian friend Nick from releasing a being aptly called the Destroyer. If the Destroyer is released, it will destroy all life. Why Hedge trusts he's going to get anything out of this instead of just being obliterated too is beyond me; I'm chalking it up to Plot-Convenient Dumb Henchman Syndrome. 

 

Anyway, there are increasingly morbid shenanigans as our heroes' plans to defeat Orannis keep going sideways, inevitably leading to the most difficult and dangerous Last Resort type of plan, which involves Lirael going deep into Death to See the past, as that is, after all, her specialty. 

 

I feel like I had a little bit of a harder time really getting into and following this one than I did with Lirael, but that is likely due to not being able to read it in big enough uninterrupted chunks. Ideally, I would have liked to have read this in one or two days; it's certainly a fast enough read. 

 

Despite the absolutely bananapants body count of this book, it ends up being pretty cheerful, especially since two of the relatively few established character deaths turn out to be misreported. So all the death is mostly just to provide absolutely macabre worldbuilding, and it certainly works. 

 

Overall I am very glad I reread this series, and I hope it's not 10 years before I remember to reread it again.