At eighteen, Sabriel is a confused mixture of woman and child, learning to be confident of her own abilities yet still wanting and needing her father's guidance and advice. In this way, she typifies older teens who want to be treated as adults but have second thoughts and doubts when the time comes.

Sabriel's reaction when she first sees Touchstone as a nude wooden figurehead is perfectly normal. She experiences an embarrassed fascination with his complete nudity, having only seen pictures in textbooks.

His exposed body conversely makes her aware of her own, covered by clothes and armor in the beginning of a sexual awakening only hinted at in this book.

Sabriel's fight against death for the life of her father is also a normal reaction. Death is something that happens to other people, other families. Teens especially blind themselves to the possibility of death as...