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Review
Praise for ABARAT I illustrated hardback edition:
“ABARAT is more than just a new and major contender. It is (like his earlier book, THE THIEF OF ALWAYS) full of a level of beautiful terror that children are still just able to bear”
Independent
“Always creating and always pushing into the furthest reaches of the human mind, he is an artist in every sense of the word. He is the great imaginer of our time”
Quentin Tarantino
“You’re eager to love this beautiful, heavy, richly coloured slab of a book. And thankfully it’s easy to love…Abarat is a sumptuous and lovely thing. With beautiful pictures of monsters.”
The Guardian
Product Description
A dazzling fantasy adventure for all ages, the third part of a quintet appearing at two yearly intervals, richly illustrated by the author.
The Abarat:a magical otherworld composed on an archipelago of twenty-five islands – one for each hour of the day, plus an island out of time.
Candy Quackenbush, escaping her dull, dull life from the most boring place in our world, Chickentown, USA, finds that in the Abarat she has another existence entirely, one which links her to marvels and mysteries; and even to murder…
In this, the third volume in Clive Barker's extraordinary fantasy for both adults and children, Candy's adventures in the amazing world of the Abarat are getting more strange by the Hour. Christopher Carrion, the Lord of Midnight, has sent his henchmen to capture her. Why? she wonders. What would Carrion want with a girl from Minnesota? And why is Candy beginning to feel that the world of the Abarat is familiar to her? Why can she speak words of magic she doesn't even remember learning?
There is a mystery here. And Carrion, along with his fiendish grandmother, Mater Motley, suspects that whatever Candy is, she could spoil his plans to take control of the Abarat.
Now Candy's companions must race against time to save her from the clutches of Carrion, and she must solve the mystery of her past before the forces of Night and Day clash and Absolute Midnight descends upon the islands.
A final war is about to begin. And Candy is going to need to make some choices that will change her life forever…
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Customer Reviews
Firstly, this is not the last in the series. This is my only real disappointment. After so long a wait, I'd really hoped for some sort of conclusion, but it seems Barker is going for an even more epic story than originally conceived.
Other than that, 'Absolute Midnight' has everything I'd hoped for. The story is much darker than either of the two previous books as Mater Motley begins her plans to unleash the horrors of Abarat and blot out all light. After the first two books took us on a magical journey around the islands, filled with beautiful sights and incredible people, Barker now seems to take delight in tearing apart and utterly destroying many parts of Abarat, and he describes it all in such a way that we too feel the losses that have been caused.
Despite the chaos that has been unleashed in Abarat, the many characters (new and old) and the many plotlines that are set up and followed, the story never seems rushed nor too confusing. What is most exciting about this book is how much the plot of the previous books has been shifted on, and it clear that nothing in the Abarat will ever be the same.
So what was wrong? Well, despite it being a decently long book and despite following two others, the events in it still felt a tiny bit rushed. The setting up of various characters like Rojo Pixler and the heroes, like Finnegan sees little development. Only Mater Motley gets much time but she is pretty much pure evil so there isn't much of a way for her character to grow. Pixler the ambitious founder of Commexo city in particular is given short thrift and though a lot happens to him (again no spoilers) it feels like too much, too quickly and with a huge number of unanswered questions. The rising of the Requiax, the coming of the darkness, it all seems to come a bit too quickly and although the descriptions across the islands leaves no doubt as to how horrible it all is for the inhabitants of the abarat it still feels a little like 2 books squeezed in to a single one.
I wonder if after such a long delay Barker was under some pressure just to get a book out - its still Barker and has the same taste and as many wonders as the other volumes but to me, the whole book had a rushed feel and the cliff-hanger ending is excruciating, considering how long we might have to wait for a 4th instalment. If you're new to the Islands of the Abarat then its a wonderful, spell-binding book, no question, but I can only really review it in the context of the other volumes. The first starts at a good place, and the second continues it, but here things seemed to get a little out of control. Hopefully 'The Dynasty of Dreamers' (as it will be called) will be at least as long and find the time to clear up many unresolved issues.
The story itself, however, is fantastic. Really quite amazing. I can't wait for the fourth book, Barker, it seems, is gearing up to write his best work and I think he knows it too..
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