Clariel by Garth Nix

11 years after Abhorsen was published, Nix came out with Clariel. That's a long lag. Most authors produce one book every year to two years to keep a series going. Slower than that, and it can be difficult to get a new book out because the fans wander off and find new things to follow. Sometimes though, if a book has a big enough following, a new book in the series can be well received. Clariel is such a book.

Sometimes an author gets interested in the backstory of a villain which can lead to some interesting problems. If the villain cannot be made sympathetic in someway, it can be hard to run a book from their perspective. Make them too sympathetic and it is no longer believable that they can be villainous. So, it's a very hard line to walk. I imagine it is made harder when the first exposure
the audience has to the character is as a villain.

In this case, Nix came up with an interesting solution. The events of Clariel happen about 600 years before the rest of the Abhorsen books. For most of the book, it is unclear how, or even if, the main character Clariel relates to the other later timeline. By the time I figured it out, the book was about three quarters of the way through.

Clariel is a girl uprooted from her environment by her parents and moved to the capital city of Belisaere. Her parents are goldsmiths and it's a good move for them with plenty of opportunity. However, it's a disaster for Clariel who wants nothing more than to be alone in the forest. Normally this just makes for an unhappy teenager, but Clariel is related to both the royal and abhorsen bloodlines and so is an inheritor of power. Power, can be a wonderful thing or it can be terrible.

I like the story of Clariel and, while the end made sense and was satisfying, it made me sad. The best part of the book for me was the glimpse of the Old Kingdom at or nears it's height of glory. All of the Abhorsen books take place in a time when the Old Kingdom is struggling to put itself back together, so it's interesting.