I'm giving “Goldenhand” 4 stars instead of 3 because “The Old Kingdom” and the characters from the original trilogy have a special place in my heart. It was wonderful returning to the world of Free and Charter Magic, the seven bells of necromancers and the Abhorsen, and the weird colliding of worlds of Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom. In “Goldenhand,” we get to venture into the northern parts of the world, which we learn to be largely outside of the influence of the Charter but where Free Magic can still be practiced by chained shamans of nomadic clans. Garth Nix also introduces a wonderful new character Ferrin, a young woman from one of those nomadic clans. Like all of Nix's female characters, Ferrin is wonderful to get to know.
Beyond world building, I think “Goldenhand” is mostly a continuation of Lirael's story. In the original trilogy, we got to see Lirael grow as a character: from a shy, isolated girl, whose only friend was a magical dog, to a heroine willing to sacrifice her life for her newfound friends and the world. “Goldenhand” shows Lirael in her element as a confident Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and sort of serves as an epilogue to the trilogy.Now for the cons. Apart from the awkwardly written romance with Nicholas Sayre (and the weird nascent romance between Sameth--who we hardly get to see--and Ferrin), there's not much character development at all. The novel was extremely quick to read, which I think was a blessing because the stakes never seemed particularly high and the character development in the form of Lirael's romance with Nick was cringey and not quite believable.
In the end, however, I had a good time reading “Goldenhand,” which took only about a day to read–a testament to how immersive Nix's world is. “Goldenhand” is a bit like a Christmas special of a beloved show, and it was wonderful seeing characters I grew up with in a setting that had such a powerful effect on my childhood imagination.
I was going to give this 3 stars, but I decided that I enjoyed how ridiculous the plot was.
Basically, Katharine, the protagonist, decides to get engaged with this dude, William Rodney, because she thinks that by doing so, she'll be freed from the oppression of her family and finally able to "do" mathematics and astronomy. I didn't find this motivation convincing at all because I could never understand the amateur mathematics Katharine seemed to be doing in secret. Based on Woolf's descriptions, I think she does arithmetic exercises from textbooks, but I'm not sure.Anyway, Katharine tries multiple times to break it off with William, but keeps relenting. In one memorable scene, William breaks down and has a cry under a tree, nestled against Katharine. Note that throughout William's engagement to Katharine, he's been extremely controlling out of some weird sense of insecurity, so the breakdown was somewhat satisfying, even if Katharine's capitulation wasn't.Meanwhile, Ralph Denham, who is from a lower social class to Katharine and is described as very poor despite having more than one servant, pines away ridiculously for Katharine. His whole world is taken over by Katharine. For the longest time, however, Katharine has no idea what's going on inside Ralph's head because Ralph acts awkwardly and comes off as mean whenever he encounters Katharine. As a reminder, Ralph is around 30 years old and a law clerk. Basically, I'm trying to say that he is a grown man, but I guess even grown men can be totally afflicted by love of a teenage sort.Finally, after much wrangling, Katharine and William secretly break off their engagement and Katharine helps William pursue her younger cousin, Cassandra. Meanwhile, everyone, including Cassandra, thinks that Katharine is still engaged to William. So understandably, when William comes on to Cassandra, Cassandra tells Katharine that she'll leave them alone at once. Katharine's reaction? Katharine's like, "Don't worry girl. But do you actually like my fiance? You can hang out with him even more." Meanwhile, Katharine finally falls in love with Ralph.All this time, Katharine's aunt has been stalking all the lovebirds and confronts Katharine's father, Mr. Hilbery, about the situation that is bringing shame upon the family. Katharine's father throws a temper tantrum and throws everyone out of the house, except Katharine because, as Woolf helpfully notes, she lives there. He writes to his wife, Mrs. Hilbery to deal with this domestic kerfuffle. Throughout much of this kerfuffle, Katharine's mother has been away at Stratford-upon-Avon because she wanted to stand upon the bones of Shakespeare. Anyway, she is quickly recalled from her Shakespearean adventure to deal with the unwanted Shakespearean comedy happening in her house.But when Mrs. Hilbery returns, what does she do? She sings rather incoherently about earth and water and the "sublime spirit brooding over it all" and brings the lovebirds together. Mr. Hilbery enters the scene and is horrified by how much his wife has misapprehended why he recalled her from Stratford-upon-Avon. But then, Mrs. Hilbery distracts Mr. Hilbery with a question about Shakespeare and, no joke, "The power of literature . . . now came back to him, pouring over the raw ugliness of human affairs its soothing balm," and he basically okays the situation because of Shakespeare.One final ridiculous scene: In the penultimate chapter, Katharine and Ralph are alone at home and they exchange their written declarations of love. Ralph gives Katharine his poetical declarations of love and, no joke, Katharine gives him her arithmetic exercises. "Ralph followed her figures as far as his mathematics would let him." And then they sit in silence, in love.
