The plot is intricate and the world is complex, (think Cirque Du Soleil meets Inkheart meets HP Lovecraft meets something else twisted and ancient and a little familiar, like you’ve known about The Abarat all along and were waiting with your sextant to see the ocean spread out over the prairie.) In fact, that strange feeling of familiarity is how the first book starts.Ĭandy Quackenbush is bored of Chickentown. Somehow, Clive Barker succeeds in describing a world and its people even more vividly than images can express. Spend the extra money, seduce a rich person if you must, but get the damned illustrations!

When you all rush out to your local bookstore to buy seven copies of each book, make sure you get the full-color illustrated copies. Barker is an excellent painter he can show the mood of an island in just a few colors or he can paint a crowd of monstrous people in every spectrum you could imagine, and the illustrations are so captivating it’s a surprise that the story and the characters and the prose can live up to the high standard they create. You know you’re imagining the characters and the places exactly the way they were written because you see them in oils on the page, multiple heads and skull shaped islands in all their colorful, nightmarish glory. One thing which makes the Abarat books unique is that Barker himself paints the illustrations, which are beautiful in some cases and spine-chillingly horrifying in others, and they capture the spirit of The Islands of the Abarat perfectly. Now, the third book in the series is rumored to be looking at a release date later this year, and I can’t wait to be thrown headfirst into the Sea of Isabella again. I picked up the first book when I was in middle school and I was quite certain that I was the protagonist, Candy Quackenbush, in my own attempt to escape Chickentown and come across a magical jetty.

This is because there are few books for youngsters quite so magical, so alien, so funny, and so downright freaky-as-all-hell in all the world of fiction. Originally posted to Dark Lady Reviews on May 20, 2011Īge Range Recommendation: Ages 11 and up.Ībarat holds a very special place in my heart, it is one of my fifteen favorite books.

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