Sabriel

Sabriel, The YA Protagonist All Others Hope to Be, Aka, the perfect mixture of personality traits and a decent level of competency while not being arrogant.
Sabriel is neither helpless nor too powerful or competent at saving the world, thinks clearly, doesn't do stupid things, and is, for the most part, an example of all the right things a person should say or do(and maybe this takes away from the book, removing a lot of character development in Sabriel from the book)
Not only does Sabriel not fall into the common faults I find in most recent YA heroines, but Sabriel the book avoids such flaws I find in most recent YA books as well (and not saying that I don't enjoy such books with some of these faults on occasion, but never in too high a concentration, please).Garth Nix, as with the Keys to the Kingdom series, which I read some time ago, creates a interesting world that is the perfect mixture of unique, fresh ideas and well-worn, trite fantasy.
The world isn't huge, isn't full of too much lore (or rather it isn't explored), but there is more than enough world building for a YA book.

And why has Sabriel lost a star?
Because its a bit boring sometimes.
Sabriel just felt..a little dull.I never wanted to do nothing else but finished the story; I wasn't enthralled in the book because I felt like I knew how it would go, knew how it would play out. It felt like I'd already read Sabriel. Everyone felt too good. It feels odd to say that this book felt dull. In only one book a schoolgirl has defeated a evil that has plagued the land of The Old Kingdom for 200 years.It just felt like a puppeteer was running the show and had planned out events from the start.
So... Sabriel goes here, kills this, escapes.
Goes here, does this, continues.
Stops, turns around, kills this.
Sabriel kills great evil. The End.
Not only that it felt too easy. That's it? That's all it takes. This is how I felt at the end of The Final Empire in many ways (although it was a longer book with more THINGS in it, so not so much). But then Sanderson reveals that it was not, indeed, as simple as that. Lets see what Lirael and a new PoV protagonist does to the series.