Annoyed that I didn't bring home the next book with me before the holiday, so now I'll have to wait until Friday to start. I didn't expect it to go so quickly, but I read about 400 pages on my day off today, because it's so easy to just breeze through. Also, not that there wasn't plenty about death, etc. in Sabriel, but this book is significantly (and surprisingly) darker than its predecessor. The violence is more traumatic because of the way the protagonists respond to it - neither Lirael nor Sameth is as mentally tough as Sabriel was - and there's a lot more internal struggle with things like depression and suicide. Very interesting, and I liked the way it was handled, but definitely dark.