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Abarat (Abarat Quartet 1)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
With Abarat, Clive Barker begins an ambitious sequence of fantastic novels aimed at a young audience as well as his adult fans. There is as much sense of threat to the world here as there was in the horror novels with which he made his name. But the worst almost never happens here--and there is whimsy and charm along with a carefully judged and measured sense of the nightmarish. Young Cindy Quackenbush finds herself transported from the boredom of a Mid-Western chicken-packing town to the 25 islands of the Abarat--islands torn between the evil magician Christopher Carrion and the equally power-hungry rational capitalist Pixler. Each of the islands has a nature determined by an hour of the day--part of the pleasure of the book is seeing how Barker works this conceit out as Cindy travels from peril to peril. The book is literally a book of hours--in the Medieval sense; it's lavishly illustrated with over a hundred of Barker's striking paintings--much of its imagery was conceived of pictorially and then reinvented as story. This is a fine book--it is also a beautiful and charming object. --Roz Kaveney
Review
Barker's energy shows no sign of deserting him, and this fizzing fantasy adventure for all ages is announced as the first of a quartet appearing at yearly intervals, spruced up with some striking illustrations by the author himself. Abarat is an archipelago of amazement and wonder: a land made up of numerous islands, each one representing one hour of the day, each one a unique piece of adventure and danger, all ruled over by the evil Lord of Midnight, Christopher Carrion. Candy Quackenbush (shame about the name) is a 16-year-old who crosses back and forth from our world into Abarat. Yes, Lewis Carroll is the guiding spirit here, but this is very much an Alice for the 21st century, with all the surrealistic imagery that we have come to expect from Barker.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's a strange hybrid. Alice in Wonderland meets The Neverending Story.
Only more visceral.
Take your classic Clive Barker storytelling from say, Weaveworld or The Great and Secret Show. Cut down the length (Nowhere near the length of Imajica), take out any ultra-gorey-barker-touches, adapt slightly for children, add usual colourful and wonderful characters and there you have Abarat. Fundamentally, it feels like a children's book for adults. It's cheery, much less dark and serious than many other of his books, and essentially works very well.
Starting with the premise of a bored heroine in a boring town, who wanders out of the city and helps a many-headed master criminal (albeit a very pleasant and polite one) escape from an evil assassin. From there she discovers the Abarat, where things are far from boring...
It's an excellently written novel, and the first in a small series (the next of which is published in September). Fantastic!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Abarat is firstly, on the surface, a beautiful book. As an object it is an amazing work of art, the heaviness of the pages, the evocative and slightly solvent smell of it, the amazing paintings. Even without reading any of the words this book is wonderful. Barker's illustrations add a great sense of atmosphere and bring some of the weird descriptions that might be glossed over by a careless reader to magnificent life.
In Abarat, Barker revisits his persistant theme of strangely familiar hard-to-reach worlds that he used in Weaveworld and Imagica. Barker has a great sense of the naming of things, evoking in a word the enitre personality of a person place or race. Just like in Imagica it is filled with wonderful fantastic places and people, and the ride through Barker's imagination is once again, brilliant.
Disappointngly, this book concludes nothing, and one is left feeling slightly deflated when the end comes and all the tying-up still seems miles away. Admittedly this is the first book in a series, but we know from the Books Of The Art (the Great and Secret Show, etc.) that Barker is not necessarily going to get around to the next part for a while.
Still, this is truly a return to form for Barker, after a run of forgettable and in some cases unreadable material. A dive back into the glorious sea of the imagination of a genius - and this time, with pictures!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I read this book within three days and Barker has lost nothing of his amazing imagery which he uses to sculpt out of dreams and imagination, new worlds for us to visit.
True it's a book for young adults, but as an adult myself I really enjoyed the story and found John Mischief and his brothers to be one of the most amusing characters to appear within fiction...A person with several heads on his antlers that each have their own characteristics and personalities makes for interesting reading when they are sorting a problem out or are just arguing...
The Abarat itself is a fantastic world to visit and to meet new creations and peoples and not be lost in alot of horror gore and bloodletting is quite refreshing. The paintings within the book are exceptional artwork and it helps those that may not be as visually inclined to see as Barker sees; but he helps them along with a few brushstrokes here and there to guide them on their way so as they don't miss any details within this adventure.
I for one can't wait for the next volume in the Books of Abarat.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Review of Audio Reading by Richard Ferrone
This is a review of the Audio, narrated by Richard Ferrone.
I like audio books, I listen to books most days commuting to and from work. Read more
I like audio books, I listen to books most days commuting to and from work. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Auton
Excellent fantasy series
I first read this book way back in 2002 when it was first published. In 2004, after much impatience I read the second in the series; Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War (Abarat... Read more
Published 8 months ago by simon211175
A Vary Good and Easy Read
This book, written for the younger generation, was a vary good and easy book to read. The lands and characters we meet are truely magical. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Traffic
Loved it : )
This was the first Clive Barker book that I read.. After seeing a couple of his films, nightbreed + hellraiser I decided to borrow a book from my Moms large Clive Barker... Read more
Published 18 months ago by booboo86
GOOD READ
Clive Barker takes you to a different world, that you wish you were apart of. Definitely worth readin.
Published on 8 July 2009 by Kishan Patel
Wolverhampton Libraries LGBT Reading Group Review
Candy is an unhappy teenage girl growing up in Chickentown, Minnesota, when, after another bad day at school, she finds her way into another universe with the help of John Mischief... Read more
Published on 2 July 2008 by Ms. R. Graham
Could do better
This book is obviously written for a different audience to Clive Barker's earlier books. He has much more competition now and has not made the change entirely successfully. Read more
Published on 19 Mar 2008 by D. Jillings
Intricate story from one of literature's great story-tellers
Given Clive Barker's reputation as one of literature's great writers of horror, I expected this to be dark, violent and grim, like Cabal. Read more
Published on 10 Feb 2008 by J. Roberts
Candy Quackenbush overcomes magic & sorcery in Abarat
Similar to the Harry Potter books and a bit like Tolkien's Hobbit series ... magic and sorcery exist on the islands of Abarat located on the sea of Izabella. Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2006 by Erika Borsos
A delightful work of unsurpassed imagination
No one will ever accuse Clive Barker of having no imagination. As wild as it is, it is just as vivid – and that is what makes Clive Barker such a remarkable writer and... Read more
Published on 5 Nov 2005 by Daniel Jolley
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