Spoiler: Minor plot stuff
Show
I particularly loved the sections in the Undertomb and the Labyrinth. It's a testament to her writing ability that she created such an overpowering sense of dread with so few elements to work with: a young teenager wandering dark corridors with very little actually "happening" would feel quite boring in a lot of writers' hands, but it gripped me completely here. When they finally escaped the tombs at the end, I actually felt my chest unclench with relief and realized how powerful the sense of dread and dark had been.
It's a relentlessly optimistic and idealistic book, and the ending is almost beat-for-beat the cliché of "we have to use the power of friendship to defeat the Concept of Darkness", and yet it works. It feels organic and relatable, and when Sparrowhawk talks about the power of trust, I actually believe it, because we've spent the whole book seeing this young girl become more and more isolated and helpless. She considers using the darkness and isolation as a weapon against him, but ultimately uses it to protect him, and then she finally relinquishes the only tiny amount of power she has in the world for the chance that a less terrible world exists somewhere else. It was done so cleanly I barely noticed the pieces coming together until the very end.