You know, I wasn't bothered so much by Sam's fear and misery about his responsibilities. I was bothered by his inability to tell anyone about it (instead of simply hiding in his room and whining) so that he could start having help dealing with it (even if, admittedly, it would still have taken until Lirael's appearance for a solution to appear). I have little patience for that kind of drama (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CannotSpitItOut).

I read Sabriel when I was a preteen, loved it, put it aside for a long time, and much later found out that sequels had been written. When I found my old copy of Sabriel and found the other two in the library a couple months back, I finally got around to reading the whole thing. I like both Sabriel and the following books, but I found Lirael a lot more appealing as a heroine than Sabriel. Not that I disliked Sabriel, but Lirael was more flawed, more troubled, and more interesting to me.

The Disreputable Dog and Mogget are still the best part of the series to me, though.