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    Abarat
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    Abarat
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    Abarat
    Ebook446 pages6 hours

    Abarat

    By Clive Barker

    4/5

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 8, 2009
    ISBN9780007301690
    Author

    Clive Barker

    Clive Barker is the bestselling author of twenty-two books, including the New York Times bestsellers Abarat; Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War; the Hellraiser and Candyman series, and The Thief of Always. He is also an acclaimed painter, film producer, and director. He lives in Southern California.

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    Reviews for Abarat

    4/5

    962 ratings46 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Wildly imaginative fantasy world but the plot is lacking. A bit like Alice in Wonderland, the main character jumps into a magically summoned ocean and is carried away. Then she pinballs from one near disaster and narrow escape to the next, meets weird friends and foes, and hears prophesies and tantalizing tidbits of her family history. The scary bits are pretty tame for the average kid old enough to read to themselves. With the abundant illustrations, may be better suited for reading aloud but not to very young kids.
    • 4/5
      This book is the first book of the YA series "The Books of Abarat", written and illustrated by the brilliant Clive Barker himself.The series includes the following 5 fantasy novels:> Abarat (2002)> Days of Magic, Nights of War (2004)> Absolute Midnight (2011)> Kry Rising (work-in-progress)> Until The End of Time (forthcoming)In the first book, we're introduced to Candy, a lonely bored girl who decides to explore a brand new world: the exotic and fantastical islands of Abarat, where each island in Abarat represents an hour of the day and is populated with the most different creatures.There, she is hunted down by Lord Midnight, who has a mysterious interest on her, but she has no idea what kind of dark fate she just brought to herself.Abarat is Clive Barker's "children's tale" that has very little of "children" and a lot of dark fantasy & exotic creatures in the colorful yet dark world of Abarat islands.It's darker than Neil Gaiman's books, but can be placed together with his Coraline.It's both Barker's play with Surrealism and his gift to younger readers who, after reading this, will surely want to get a taste of the real thing whenever they can. =D
    • 4/5
      There was a point in my life where I would have adored this book -- unfortunately, not right at the moment, but I'm going to try and review as though I was that Chess Garden loving, Sherry Tepper True Game obsessed, step into the sideways reality kind of girl.

      Anyway, here is a wildly imaginative heroine's journey, in which Candy Quackenbush flees the boredom and injustice and abuse of Chickentown for points unreal. The light filled and lurid and weirdly mustachioed paintings that accompany the story are a definite highlight, and the larger, lurking themes of abuse and forgiveness and love and evil add a considerable depth to a meandering plotline that skates along from crisis to crisis and mystery to enigma. This is a story with good bones, fearless romanticism and significant heft. Prepare for an unexpected journey.
    • 4/5
      This was quite an enjoyable novel that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. The tale resonates, between fantasy and myth and between reality and illusion. There is much to be found here and it is a surprisingly lucid and poetic read. This is Barker in fine form, and he does well bringing his reader into his storytelling magic for the ride.4 stars!
    • 4/5
      I enjoy Barker immensely. But sometimes he steps out on a limb and you can tell that he is being weird just for the sake of it and with his imagination that makes for a rather silly story.
    • 3/5
      It seems 'too silly' is an odd complaint for a fantasy novel. Strict realism is never expected. Nevertheless, that's my gripe with this one. I wanted to like it. Clive Barker is usually pretty good. His The Thief of Always is one of my favorite ya fantasy novels. But this is, well, less than plot-driven. I'm not sure one thing in this book is ever fully resolved. And all of the characters have this odd, Dave McKean-esque, circus freak quality about them. More members of a dream cast, and less well-thought out denizens of a cohesive fantasy realm. Also, I'm never sure who authors are trying to appeal to when they use nonsensical fantasy words. Just because I'm reading a fantasy novel...I mean, honestly, at what point am I supposed to be able to say things like Yebba Dim Day (the name of one of the islands of Abarat), without feeling anything but utterly ridiculous? Not a bad book, but certainly not stand-alone. It feels like the product of some kind of unholy alliance between Dave McKean, Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton.
    • 5/5
      What if your ordinary life turned out to be anything but? That's what happens to Minnesotan teenager Candy Quackenbush when she meets John Mischief in a field one afternoon. He seems normal - aside from having seven talking heads with their own personalities that is. Candy will soon follow Mischief to his world of 25 islands (one for every hour of the day plus a mystical 25th hour).

      You can tell throughout the story what an amazing imagination is present to build such an amazing world. Barker never writes what you expect to happen, and I love that quality in an author. Turning the pages of the Abarat is akin to floating through your own dreams in a half-wake state.

      The story and characters are amazing. A friend suggested Barker to me, and my view of sci-fi / fantasy has never been the same. Abarat holds you spellbound with this fantastical world, and even hoping against reality that it's real. The special editions contain wonderful illustrations.

      I will read anything by Barker because of Abarat. If you're looking for a break from the mundane and ordinary, hop on my sailboat and read along.
    • 3/5
      There were parts of this book that dragged; mostly the parts with Christopher Carrion and Rojo Pixlar. They just felt much slower than the rest of the book. Candy and John Mischief on the other hand were very interesting. The description of the islands were amazing and pretty entertaining but hopefully when we get into the rest of the series a bit more time will be spent on plot, otherwise I'm not sure I'm going to continue reading.
    • 4/5
      Abarat is truly a work of art. The setting of the novel is lavish and imaginative, weaving a world that effortlessly combines the surreal with the mundane. The entire novel has a dreamlike quality to it, creating a vibrant and varied universe and filling it with a menagerie of vibrant and diverse beings. Candy is presented as a sympathetic and likable protagonist. Although she did not seem to do much of her own volition within the novel (rather, she just went wherever the story took her), she evidently boasts some hidden strengths that will be developed in future novels and I certainly did not want to see anything bad happen to her.Although I have read this novel several times now and it remains one of my favourite Young Adult fantasy stories, I do have to deduct a star because of the plot. While engaging, it does inevitably build to nothing. The story is more a length introduction to the world of Abarat than a complete tale in its own right, and does not have any kind of satisfactory conclusion.However, this did not detract from the stunning originality of Barker's world and it certainly made me want to read more of Candy's adventures.
    • 4/5
      A fun, fantasy adventure! Very imaginative world-building, though I was disappointed that my library's copy was the paperback edition and hence lacked Barker's excellent illustrations. (I am reading the sequel now, with illustrations, and really appreciating how much life they add to the text.)
    • 4/5
      One of the most creative books I've read in quite some time. The illustrations really do add a lot to the story and help one to vividly imagine the world being described. Very enjoyable and I look forward to continuing the series!
    • 2/5
      DisneyeskOk, ich bin Clive Barker-Erstleser. In meinem Regal stehen eher solche Sachen wie D. Eddings, S.Lawhead und Herr Prattchett. Vielleicht auch wegen deren doch eher 'normalen' Fantasy-Welten hat mich Abarat leider nicht wirklich begeistern können. Es war mir einfach zu viel: zu viel Gerenne, zu viele absurde Kreaturen, zu schrill. Und dabei für mich zu oberflächlich. Tatsächlich hab ich mich während des Lesens z.B. ständig gefragt: wann zum Henker kommt Candy denn jetzt endlich mal dazu, ihr ach-so-müdes Haupt auszuruhen und vielleicht einen Happen zu essen?Obwohl das Buch sicherlich einige nette Ideen hat muss ich leider sagen, dass es für mich schlicht nicht gewirkt hat.
    • 3/5
      This isn't my favorite of Clive Barker's works, but I do love the imaginative world he's created and I enjoyed this book enough that I'll continue on with the next book in the series.

      What would raised my rating of this book? First, a stronger plot - although there are tense moments, much of this book seems to be more about description of the Abaratian world and the characters who inhabit it than about any real action, but I imagine that will change in the next couple books. Second, I think Barker's imagination way overshadows his skills as a writer. Not that he's a bad writer (The DaVinci Code, anyone?), but he's not excellent, either. There are ideas and descriptions that spark my imagination and give me insight I haven't had before, but never turns of phrase or word choices. It's been years since I read Barker's fiction for adult readers, so I am curious if his writing was simplified for the young adult novel, but my husband recently read The Great and Secret Show for the first time and he was not impressed with the writing in that, either.
    • 5/5
      {WIP} {Warning: Spoilers}Candy Quackenbush isn't like the other residents of Chickentown, Minnesota. While her classmates are going to parties and her neighbors are tending to their lawns Candy is bored sick of her hometown. She wanders in the countryside outside of town, strangely drawn by the scent of the sea, despite being thousands of miles from the ocean. The tide comes in. Candy is swept away by a sentient ocean to another world, called Abarat. Helped out by her new friend, John Mischief, a strange man with his seven brothers attached to his head by tentacle-like necks, Candy is led into the mysterious Abarat, a whole other world on the other side of the magical ocean. The brave girl must escape capture attempts from the disgusting Lord Carrion, save her new friends, and discover what in her past has connected her to the Abarat. Candy's journey of discovery leads back to Chickentown, where her mother is lost in dreams of the stormy night that her daughter was born. Candy isn't just her daughter, she also carries the soul of the Abarat's murdered princess inside her heart, and with it the future of the Abarat.
    • 5/5
      this pleased me immensely. it made for excellent reading. i'd already read the second book first, a long time ago, because that was the first one i discovered on the shelves in the bookstores in brunei. i'm glad i found a really good online bookstore to order the first and third books of the Abarat trilogy :) the story was fascinating, the characters colourful, with a lot of weirdness thrown in. very interesting and captured my imagination. so much so that i even read it in the loo. TMI. haha :p
    • 5/5
      This is one of my favorites by Barker. The detailed worlds he created and the wonderfully illustrated pages which I flipped back to several times while reading just added to the overall fantasy feel.
    • 4/5
      Do you think Alice in Wonderland is trippy? Think again. Only Clive Barker can write a young adult novel and make it this disturbing. He is a master of all the weird, odd, gross, and secret thoughts that might pass through anyone's mind. This is not as dark as his adult works, but you can taste it from here....Excellent. Looking forward to the second installment.
    • 5/5
      Clive Barker's illustrations alone would make this a compelling book for young adults raised in this digital, visual age. Creepy, yet compelling, Barker has created yet another setting where strange monsters like the terrifying Mendelson Shape and the strange, many-headed John Mischief interact with the young woman Candy, who is almost driven to her mundane life in Chickentown. The completely weird archipelego of Abarat is inhabited by more strange beings than most of us imagine in a lifetime. This is the first in a series of a possible four books. I enjoyed this trip into a dream of a book - dream as in the disjointed images and twisted reality that populates a typical night or nightmare. Barker has made his mark in young adult fiction!
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      It seems 'too silly' is an odd complaint for a fantasy novel. Strict realism is never expected. Nevertheless, that's my gripe with this one. I wanted to like it. Clive Barker is usually pretty good. His The Thief of Always is one of my favorite ya fantasy novels. But this is, well, less than plot-driven. I'm not sure one thing in this book is ever fully resolved. And all of the characters have this odd, Dave McKean-esque, circus freak quality about them. More members of a dream cast, and less well-thought out denizens of a cohesive fantasy realm. Also, I'm never sure who authors are trying to appeal to when they use nonsensical fantasy words. Just because I'm reading a fantasy novel...I mean, honestly, at what point am I supposed to be able to say things like Yebba Dim Day (the name of one of the islands of Abarat), without feeling anything but utterly ridiculous? Not a bad book, but certainly not stand-alone. It feels like the product of some kind of unholy alliance between Dave McKean, Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton.
    • 4/5
      The first time I started to read this book I was twelve years old and it scared me so badly I had to stop. Now that I'm older, this book seems a lot less frightening, but just as interesting. Barker's inventiveness in creating characters to inhabit his fictional land is awe-inspiring, and his illustrations fit the story beautifully. Most compelling is the character of the villain, Christopher Carrion. Though this books serves as little more than an introduction for the world of Abarat and a set up for the rest of the series, it is very entertaining in its own right.
    • 5/5
      Born from the wicked imagination of Clive Barker, Abarat more like a fantasy than a horror story. It's a pity because my favourites are his older horror books but whatever.... Abarat IS a gerat book with great characters and great story.
    • 4/5
      This is one of the few fantasy books I've ever made it all the way through and very possibly the only one that ever made me want to buy sequels. I'm not entirely sure I agree that it's an "all ages" read. Maybe high all ages. It does have a socially permissive slant, but then, if you didn't know that by the author's name on the cover, you probably missed the eighties.
    • 5/5
      I was a little thrown off by this book when I saw the cover. My mum bought it for me and I just kept it in a basket because I had no interest in it. Then I had read all my books in my room, except this one, and decided to read it. I saw the cover and thought it was interesting. Now, I love it and when I finished it, the secound book was about to come out, so of course I was over ecstatic! Definitly intersting. I love how Abarat upside down spells Abarat and how the oil paintings were made before the book!
    • 5/5
      I love Clive Barker, he is an awesome author, dark, complex and subtle plots blending from extreme horror to fantasy with a dark touch. My favourite Barker trait is that no matter what supernatural or plain unnatural beings are involved it is the humans, or at the least the human aspects that contain the real good and evil .It's at the moments when his protagonists are most like us that we are most appalled and awed by them, and that's a real talent. The Abarat books are childrens/young adult books, the lead character is a young girl and she is drawn out of dull old Chickentown into a strange world with an island for each hour fo the day. Quite aside from the fact that i know drive my fiance mad with the "hamster tree" song every christmas, these books are witty, affectionate, entertaining and dark! I recommend the hardcovers, i wouldn't normally but Barker's art does add something to these books. Go, buy, read, enjoy!
    • 5/5
      This is a novel of epic proportions, over 11 hours on mp3. The cast and lands of the Abarat are rich and fully developed, as is the prose of Clive Barker, full of vivid description and extensive vocabulary, as in this description of the Yebba Dim Day,It was a city, a city built from the litter of the sea. The street beneath her feet was made from timbers that had clearly been in the water for a long time, and the walls were lined with barnacle-encrusted stone. There were three columns supporting the roof, made of coral fragments cemented together. They were buzzing hives of life unto themselves; their elaborately constructed walls pierced with dozens of windows, from which light poured.There were three main streets that wound up and around these coral hives, and they were all lined with habitations and thronged with the Yebba Dim Day's citizens.As far as Candy could see there were plenty of people who resembled folks she might have expected to see on the streets of Chickentown, give or take a sartorial detail: a hat, a coat, a wooden snout. But for every one person that looked perfectly human, there were two who looked perfectly other than human. The children of a thousand marriages between humankind and the great bestiary of the Abarat were abroad on the streets of the city. Richard Ferrone’s voice on the audiobook version is as rich and varied as the world of the Abarat. A fantastic book! Highly recommended. Ages 12 and up.
    • 4/5
      My relationship with Clive Barker's books tends to run hot and cold. I will either finish the book and it will automatically become one of my favourites or I will enjoy it at first but at some point over the course of my reading it becomes tedious and I have trouble finishing it. Well Abarat is a first for me I enjoyed it and I finished it but it's not one of my favourites.Candy Quackenbush of Chickentown Minnesota is bored. She is sick living in an unhappy home, sick of the endless boring prairies and not to mention she HATES chickens. After a disagreement at school over an assignment about Chickentown (but not about chickens) Candy just gets up and walks out of class and out of Chickentown. Once outside the town Candy meets an interesting individual with eight heads (all named John) who gives her a key and charges her with keeping it safe from the creature who has been chasing him or them. Candy jumps at the chance to abandon her previous life and follows the Johns to the world of Abarat which is rapidly heading towards an apocalypse.The world of Abarat is probably the reason this book didn't make it to favourite status. Abarat is absolutly nothing like the world we live in and trying to picture the creatures and lands of this world continously pulled me out of the story. I understand there is an illustrated version of this book and had I read one that I'm sure my final grade would have been different.Candy is a thoroughly likable heroine and I'm looking forward to seeing her character grow over the course of the series. Although she is young and a bit niave she's also got some grit to her and takes everything that happens in stride. The secondary characters (or creatures) even the minor ones have all been very well fleshed out and have obviously come from a very fertile imagination.The plot is quick paced and alot of fun but like I said previously I probably would have enjoyed it more and been more "into" the story had I read the version with the illustrations.All in all I did enjoy the story and will definitly look for the second installment the next time I'm in the book store. If this is your first time trying Clive Barker I would recommend reading the Thief of Always first it is a stand alone young adult fantasy and in my opinion is far more engrossing story.
    • 4/5
      This is the first Clive Barker I've read (I'm just too much of a wimp to be a proper horror reader), and the available Abarat sequels have gone straight onto my want list. Yes, the conclusion of book one is blatant cliffhanger-for-sequel, but when the world explored is as lavish as this one, who cares? You're happy to get more.Candy is an appealing heroine, sensible and resourceful, while still naive and full of wonder and prone to mistakes. Barker describes her allies and enemies with equal sympathy - while we know our villains must be stopped, we know they have their own cares and frustrations.Barker's lavish paintings are an added bonus, aiding our visualisation of this fantastic world while still leaving some things to the imagination. Glyphs, for example - flying machines made of pure magic - are as yet tantalisingly unillustrated...
    • 4/5
      Let me just first say that the illustrations in this book are nothing short of amazing. But, Barker has always been one of my favorite artists, so that didn’t exactly come as a surprise. I get a feeling, though, that the paintings preceded the story, which is an interesting artistic choice in that the text almost comes to illustrate the images, but which makes the text a little lacking in that the story gets “forced” into fitting the images. I love Barker’s worlds - I have since the first time I picked up Books of Blood - and the characters are as imaginative as ever. The one thing I find a little hard to like is that the storyline is so meandering that you easily lose your place in the (sometimes clumsy) transitions and forget what each character’s goal is – and there are a lot of characters to keep track of! My main enjoyment out of the book was to see each new character’s description and the accompanying painting, but the main story didn’t captivate me enormously. It is a YA novel, though, and a YA reader may be a little more forgiving.
    • 5/5
      The Abarat is an odd sort of world, a world where anything and everything is possible. Candy Quackenbush, the main character, ends up in the Abarat, seemingly by accident. The book covers her adventures through the world. The paintings distribuited throughout the text are wonderful and add tremendously to the quality of the book. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that this is one of the best books i've read all year.