A journey beyond imagination
is about to unfold. . . .

It begins in the most boring place in the world: Chickentown, U.S.A. There lives Candy Quackenbush, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold.

When the answer comes, it's not one she expects.

Welcome to the Abarat.

In Abarat, accomplished novelist and artist Clive Barker turns his considerable talents to creating a rich fantasy world for young adults.

Candy Quackenbush is growing up in Chickentown, Minnesota, yearning for more--which she finds, quite unexpectedly, when a man with eight heads appears from nowhere in the middle of the prairie, being chased by something really monstrous. And so begins Candy's epic adventure to the islands of the Abarat. Peopled by all manner of creatures, cultures, and customs, the islands should prove a fertile setting for the series that Barker is calling The Books of Abarat. Candy is an intelligent and likable heroine, and the many supporting characters are deftly drawn, both in words and in the full-color interior art that Barker has produced to give the story an extra dimension.

Abarat delivers the rich and imaginative storytelling that Barker is known for, with less overt horror or violence than one of his adult novels might include. However, Candy's path isn't an easy one, and young adult readers should appreciate the hard choices she must make along the way. --Roz Genessee

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good artwork, and that's about it
Comment: Okay, so the artwork is great (hence the two stars), there's no disputing that. The colors are rich and beautiful, the imagery creative, and the sense of atmosphere they give is really quite fantastic and captivating.

But the story... oh ouch. Suffice it to say that I seriously began to wonder if the main character had had a lobotomy somewhere in the intervening pages and I had somehow missed it. Case in point, and this is not giving anything away, but an escape scene through a forest was _immediately_ followed with her walking through the same forest she is currently escaping in, singing at the top of her lungs. What? And then there was the way that she seemed to change her motivations or opinions at the drop of a hat. "I hate home, I miss home, no wait I hate home" or "He's a horrible man ... he seems polite enough, can't think of a thing wrong with him ... oh he's a monster!" And these changes would occur within a few sentences of one another. I love conflicted characters, and complex story lines that change and shift, but sense is good too.

Ultimately, the writing was dreadfully laborious, the motivations and mindset behind the characters' actions seemed barely thought out at best (and only served to move the plot along, not give any impression of rationality on the part of the main character), and by the time I finished the book, I honestly just didn't care anymore what happened to the girl.

Buy it for the art, but definitely not for the story.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: creative
Comment: wow. the paintings were said to have taken 6 years to prepare for the books. i was impressed by the creativity of the world of Abarat. to make up something that big requires a lot of ideas.
the things i didn't like were: there was too much creativity. i had a hard time keeping track of the characters and their nature as well as the names of the places and the events.
by the time the second book came out i felt lost i had to flip through book one to catch up. it took me a couple chapters to recall all that had happened in book one. i hope you have a good memory otherwise you will struggle to keep up with Clive Barker.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Abarat : another word for amazing
Comment: 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.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Leaves you hanging in a good way
Comment: 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.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great imaginative book; will leave you wondering about the next book
Comment: 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.

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