Editorial Review
Once upon a world
where time is place
a journey beyond imagination
is about to unfold....
It begins in the most boring place in the world: Chickentown, U.S.A. Candy Quackenbush lives in Chickentown, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold.
When the answer comes, it's not one she expects. Out of nowhere comes a wave, and Candy, led by a man called John Mischief (whose brothers live on the horns on his head), leaps into the surging waters and is carried away.
Where? To the ABARAT: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from the Great Head that sits in the mysterious twilight waters of Eight in the Evening, to the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of Gorgossium, the island of Midnight, ruled over by the Prince of Midnight himself, Christopher Carrion.
As Candy journeys from one amazing place to another, making fast friends and encountering treacherous foes -- mechanical bugs and giant moths, miraculous cats and men made of mud, a murderous wizard and his terrified slave-she begins to realize something. She has been here before.
Candy has a place in this extraordinary world: she is here to help save the Abarat from the dark forces that are stirring at its heart. Forces older than Time itself, and more evil than anything Candy has ever encountered.
She's a strange heroine, she knows. But this is a strange world.
And in the Abarat, all things are possible.
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Customer Reviews
Abarat : another word for amazing 
2008-05-20
When I read this book, I had no real idea what to expect. I had never heard of it, but there was a quote from it in another book that I really enjoyed, so I decided to take a chance.
What I got was amazing. The illustrations by the author, Clive Barker, make the sometimes dream-like aspects come alive. Barker has a great handle on how to word passages to make the scenes seem to jump off the page. This was a very good read and I did not want to put it down once I started.
Perhaps my favorite thing was the unpredictability of it all. I have read many, many books, quite a few from this genre, and after a while you begin to be able to predict what will happen. This book contains some surprises though.
Conclusion: if you read it, you will love it.
Leaves you hanging in a good way 2008-02-21
I needed an imaginative fantasy romp, so I just finished Clive Barker's Abarat. It's sort of The Thief of Always (darkish kid's book) meets Weaveworld (for awesome otherworlds). And the thing that makes this book extraordinarily special: color drawings by Barker interspersed throughout the text. In a fantastical world like Abarat, it's immeasurably cool to see a piece of art depicting, say, a Sea-Skipper, sort of an elegant cross between a human and a sea horse, or a crazy island shaped like a man's pointed head.
The heroine, Candy Quakenbush, has an abusive father and an all-around dreary life in Chickentown, MN (guess what the industry is there?). When she's ripped out of her environment and gets swept away on a sea to the magical islands of Abarat, the joy I felt was similar to the relief I felt when Hagrid showed up to take Harry Potter to his first year at Hogwarts. Candy doesn't get a grace period to adjust, though - the bad guys are after her from the start. She's helped by wonderful creatures on various different islands - called The Hours, as each one is locked in a different time of day - and her sense of adventure and loyalty makes her an exciting heroine.
About 3/4 of the way through, I realized there was no way this book would conclude in a neat little package: there's a sequel on the way. It turns out that this is the first of five planned books (the 2nd is already out, so I'm off to the library for it soon...) This will be a fun story to follow in the coming years.
Great imaginative book; will leave you wondering about the next book 
2007-12-14
This is the first children's book I have ever read by Clive Barker. I know that he is much more well known for his works of horror. However, I was very impressed by this book.
I listened to this book on audio book. The audio book was very well done. I think the guy who read the audio book must be the same person who read Stephen King's Dark Tower series on audio book. At least they sound very similar since I keep getting flashbacks to when I listened to the Dark Tower; maybe it is just that Clive Barker and Stephen King have a somewhat similar writing style. The only bad thing about listening to this on audio book is that I missed out on all the neat color pictures. I have the paper version at home so I still got to see the pictures, just not while I was reading the book.
The tone of this book reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland and is, initially, a similar premise. Candy Quackenbush lives in Chickentown, MN and, during an assignment for school to write a paper on interesting things in Chickentown (a decidedly uninteresting town), runs into a mystery concerning a man who committed suicide in a hotel room. A strange nautical device is found in the dresser drawer of this hotel room. Candy finds herself obsessing about the symbols on the device. Candy is fed up with her boring life in Chickentown, her beaten down mother, and her abusive father. After a particularly bad scene in class at school, where Candy gets sent to the principals office, Candy decides to just leave school and go walking. She finds herself in a vast prairie outside of Chickentown. While there she runs into an 8 headed man, John Mischief, and ends up helping him to light the lighthouse in the prairie (which Candy thought was an abandoned building). Following some crazy events Candy finds herself swept off to Abarat and swept into a crazy adventure there.
This was a really great book. It is wildly imaginative and full of non-stop action. I loved the way Candy accepted her adventures with ease (since *anything* is better than Chickentown). I also loved the numerous quirky characters that Candy ran into along the way. Candy seems to have a knack for getting people's attention and getting drawn into trouble. There are tons of interesting good and neutral characters in this book. There are also some very interesting villains. The villians in this book are particularly special. There are numerous levels of evil, making you wonder who the *real* villain is. All of the villains have a lot of depth to them, you can see multiple sides to their character. This makes them seem somehow less ultimately evil but more scary and unpredictable.
The description in the book is wonderful. The plotline rolls along gracefully taking Candy from one adventure to the next. Even though many different characters are introduced and interact with Candy, none of it seems forced.
The only disappointment I had with this book was that I thought that the storyline with John Mischeif didn't get much closure; I am sure this storyline will be revisited in the next book. I am also curious as to what is happening back in Chickentown; does Candy's mother know she is missing?
This was a great book. I would read it to slightly older children though since at times it is very violent and it deals with issues of suicide and torture at points. Great book, I am excited to read the next one.
[...]
"Incredible" does not even come close. 2007-10-21
Clive Barker has done an incredible job in writing this book. This book is more imaginative and fantastic than the Harry Potter series. It has everything from wild fantasy, friendship, love, evil, the typical war between good and evil, fairy tale, deception, drama, comedy, etc. I would have given the book 10 stars if that was possible. It is a book which is not to be missed. It grabs you from the start and it is hard to put down. There were supposed to be a number of books to follow this first one and I think he only came out with one sequel. I hope for the sake of the future generations that Mr. Barker will come out with at least a few more sequels.
Fantasy with that weird Barker touch 2007-09-03
Now that the Harry Potter saga's come to a conclusion, there may be a little void left for the reader - child or adult - who enjoyed the type of fantasy that J.K. Rowling did so well: complex in plot but simple enough in language to be accessible to younger readers as well. Certainly, the best in the bunch would be The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) by Tolkien, but there are other choices out there, with probably the best of the rest being Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Then there is Clive Barker's Abarat.
With the popularity of Harry Potter, a number of "adult" writers took their shot at writing for a younger audience with mixed success. Barker, one of the great horror fantasists around today, was not one of these bandwagon jumpers, having already written one good "juvenile" novel, The Thief of Always, long before anyone knew who Harry Potter was. With Abarat, he starts a series of books with a similar young-and-adult-alike audience in mind.
Abarat uses one of the standard fantasy plot devices involving a youngish girl named Candy Quackenbush who discovers a world beyond her mundane existence, one in which she has a great destiny. For Candy, the mundane world is her life in Chickentown, a dull town with one industry (poultry, of course), where she lives with her family that may not be at a Dursley-level of nastiness, but is nonetheless a rather unpleasant one (due, in large part, to an alcoholic, abusive father).
Candy's life changes when she encounters the master thief, Mischief. It doesn't take long for Candy to realize he's something extraordinary: after all, he has seven other heads at the end of antlers. Mischief is being pursued by another strange creature named Shape, and in the process of helping Mischief escape, Candy is transported to another world called the Abarat. This is a set of twenty-five islands, one for each hour of the day plus a mysterious extra island. This is no mere figure of speech: each island sits in a certain block of time, so the noon island is always in bright sunshine, while others under different states of night, day or twilight.
The ruler of the midnight island, Christopher Carrion, has a sinister agenda that involves bringing night to all the Arabat. His opponent, Rojo Pixler, is no good guy either, but is a relentless capitalist intent on a monopoly on all magic and converting the whole world (and Candy's world, known to the locals as the Hereafter) into his own marketplace. In the middle is Candy who has adventures as she goes from place-to-place as both Carrion and Pixler seek her, aware that she is something special.
Abarat is not a self-contained novel, but the first in a series (which I believe to date has only one other book published). As such, it is hard to judge the novel on its plot, which is obviously incomplete. Barker does do a good job at creating a truly bizarre world, one that at times is almost too bizarre. With humor, drama and danger throughout the book, this is a nice read, even if it not a perfect one. For Harry Potter fans who are looking for something new (but at the same time not just a pale Potter imitation), this is a good choice.
Surreal fantasy, by a master of horror 2007-08-18
Once upon a world
where time is place
a journey beyond imagination
is about to unfold....
It begins in the most boring place in the world: Chickentown, U.S.A. Candy Quackenbush lives in Chickentown, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold.
When the answer comes, it's not one she expects. Out of nowhere comes a wave, and Candy, led by a man called John Mischief (whose brothers live on the horns on his head), leaps into the surging waters and is carried away.
Where? To the ABARAT: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from the Great Head that sits in the mysterious twilight waters of Eight in the Evening, to the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of Gorgossium, the island of Midnight, ruled over by the Prince of Midnight himself, Christopher Carrion.
As Candy journeys from one amazing place to another, making fast friends and encountering treacherous foes -- mechanical bugs and giant moths, miraculous cats and men made of mud, a murderous wizard and his terrified slave-she begins to realize something. She has been here before.
Candy has a place in this extraordinary world: she is here to help save the Abarat from the dark forces that are stirring at its heart. Forces older than Time itself, and more evil than anything Candy has ever encountered.
She's a strange heroine, she knows. But this is a strange world.
And in the Abarat, all things are possible.
A work of art on many levels 2007-07-13
Not only is this book a novel (and a fantastically original, bizarre, and intricate novel at that) but it showcases surrealistic paintings and very good poetry as well. Quite a deal for eleven dollars.
Candy Quackenbush lives in a town called Chickentown, which is almost as boring as it sounds. She longs to get away, but doesn't get her chance until her least favorite teacher bullies her and she walks out of the classroom.
In a deserted meadow she meets a strange creature who brings a whole new meaning to Multiple Personality Disorder, who tells her that "Light is the oldest game in the world" and requests a favor.
Playing the Game of Light, Candy accidentally summons the Sea of Izabella to Minnesota and is thrust into the world of the Abarat, a colorful, scary, wonderful set of islands that each have only one time all throughout the day, and stay that time forever.
But the Lord of Midnight wants Candy...and he has a whole lot of things to send after her.
This book didn't really have much of a plot resolution, but because of all the other amazing things about it I can forgive it that. It was a weird book, certainly, and can make you wonder whether the author is mentally insane at times, but if you allow yourself to just enjoy the story, you will realize it for what it is: a work of art.
I'll finish with one of my favorite short poems from this book, just as a taste of what it offers:
Life is short,
And pleasures few,
And holed the ship,
And drowned the crew,
But oh! But oh!
How very blue
The sea is!
Rating: Very Good
clive barker rocks! 2007-05-18
Ok, I'm not going to lie, i'm 23. and I absoutly love the Abarat books. They take you completly out of your current setting and make you feel like you're in a completly different world. If you want to escape reality for a little bit, this is the book for you.
If I were a child, this might have been interesting 
2006-10-31
It started fairly well but went downhill from there. Reminded me of a Carroll book for children. I would not try this author again.
Wonderful 2006-10-11
Abarat is a wonderfully imaginative book. In my opinion it is more imaginative, more vivid, and more colorful than the HP books, which I also love. This first book in a series is amazing, and I loved the allusion to Alice in Wonderland as Candy is in transit to the islands of the Abarat. The story is unresolved at the end of the first book, while some of the questions you are left with at the end are answered in the second, more questions arise. I am very much looking forward to the third book in the series, and though I wish it would come sooner, I would like Clive Barker to take as much time as he needs to get the story where he wants it and don't rush it out like some writers of series novels do.
