Customer Reviews

Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War (Bk.2)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.