Of Swords and Parasols

This is something I discussed back on Red's journal back when I first read it, but in a nutshell I liked and admired Sabriel the character, and enjoyed her first book immensely, but she didn't really grab my heart. (But she is exactly the sort of competent, ass-kicking heroine I was DESPERATE for back when I was at the target age, and I suspect if this book had only been out back when I was in my tweens or a little younger, I would have been head-over-heels in love with it.) Lirael, OTOH, on an intellectual/critical front I found the book a little more interesting because of the subversion of genre tropes, and emotionally I was just hopelessly identified with Lirael due to lots of similar Issues in my own background. So her books just wound up squeezing at my heart in a way Sabriel, deeply enjoyable as it was, did not. (Not to mention that the Disreputable Dog and the Library were of course utterly irresistible to me.)