I'm ultimately mixed as to what my overall official opinion is for this book. I liked it, but it wasn't as fantastic as I'd hoped it would be. This might be because the book has a strong "high fantasy" feel to it, which is a genre that I don't generally read. However I can see that the book is exceedingly well written and has "Future Hollywood Blockbuster" written all over it. 
 Now despite how extensive the world is, the story here isn't actually that deep. By that I mean that the story is fairly straight forward and doesn't really delve that deeply into the whys and wherefores of everything. This works for and against the book at points. It helps give everything a nice feeling of urgency and pacing, but at the same time it left me with more questions than answers. Everything here is well self-contained and explained decently enough, so readers shouldn't feel too overly confused or lost as they read through Sabriel's adventures. 
 I have to say that the descriptions are probably the strongest parts of this. I didn't really feel the huge chemistry between Sabriel and Touchstone, but everything else was so well described that I couldn't help but keep reading. I think my favorite example of this would be the crew passing under the huge chain at Belis Mouth. You get this sense of this massive chain and the feeling of how it'd be to pass under something so huge and mysterious. If/when this ever gets made into a movie, it's one of the scenes I'd most like to see. 
 Overall I can see why this is a favorite of so many people and I've already decided that I'll pass this book on to my eldest nephew. It's the type of thing he'd really love, assuming he hasn't read it already. I liked the overall story well enough that I'll try starting on the next book in the series.