We waited years for Clariel to come out. Years. So many years we forgot that we were waiting. Getting our hands on a copy of this book felt impossibly good.
What’s not to love about the world of the Old Kingdom? For one thing, surcoats. After reading this series who doesn’t want a surcoat to go over their armour with in royal blue and decorated with silver keys? For another a world that is not divided by gender, how rare is that? For another, necromancers, bells and charter marks.
Those wonderful things are in Clariel but the story itself seemed a little, lacking. Clariel whined, and whined a lot about things that could easily be put on hold, and consequently fell from grace. Had she had a little bit of patience the whole thing could have been avoided. And when Clariel got a little annoying there were lot of secondary characters that we could have fell back to, but that never happened.
The book marks a welcome return to the Abhorsen series, with promises of sequels to come. If you have been dying for an Old Kingdom fix, by all means Clariel will be a decent read, but if you’ve never read the series before I recommend you start from the beginning and give yourself a good chance to fall in love with the world, before you pick up Clariel.
