Slightly disappointing prequel to a series I love.

This is a prequel, and prequels can be dicey, so let me just start by saying: this could have been much, much, much worse.

Clariel is the story–not of how young Clariel becomes Chlorr of the Mask from the original series like I was expecting it to be–but of how the foundations for that eventual change are laid. Seventeen year old Clariel moves with her family to the city of Belisaere. Clariel’s a girl of the forest, so right away this makes her unhappy, but the city and the people she encounters are extra bizarre. For me, also. The Old Kingdom we first see in the original trilogy is one full of magic and dead things coming back to life. Sorcerers, Abhorsens and other magic users are respected and necessary. But the world Clariel encounters is messed up. Magic users are looked down upon. The Abhorsen and his family don’t take their (very important) work seriously. And something dead is wandering around the city, causing trouble.

All Clariel wants is to move back to the forest, but the city and her teachers and her parents and her cousin the Abhorsen-in-waiting all want her to do other things. To learn magic. To read the book of the dead. To resist the temptation she begins to feel after coming into contact with a free magic being at the beginning of the novel.

This one is tough, because Garth Nix is one of my favorite writers, and there’s not actually anything *wrong* with what he’s written in this book. It was fun to see the Old Kingdom 600 years before the original trilogy, even with it as effed up as it was. I also really liked Clariel and empathized with her, to the point where it was painful to read about her descent into free magic sorcery. But. I also feel like all the really interesting stuff just started happening as the book ended, so ultimately I just finished the book feeling really unbalanced by the story.

[3.5 stars]