D- It's a good book, but it hasn't really "stuck" with me, and although I have the sequel, I haven't read it yet. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

Would make a good read-a-like for Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials. They are both quests of young girls who meet strange creatures. They both seem to have deep symbolism and commentary underneath the obvious story. However, the tone of the evil in this one is more gruesome. The creatures more nightmarish amalgamations. Barker's imagination is also more bizarre, weird, and twisted. However, the more gruesome the appearance, the purer the heart -- so far.

It doesn't feel like horror to me, nor like the intent was to frighten the reader the entire time. The fright is more like suspense in short bursts. ( )

Susan says:This book was not even close to one of my favcrites, although at least it read faster than the first one did. In this book Candy Quackenbush is traveling throughout the islands of the Abarat, trying to escape Christopher Carrion and the people he sends to catch her. There are many fantastic characters and settings in this book, but at 500 + pages, it is too long and too expansive. There are too many people to keep track of, and unfortunately you can see the plot points coming from a mile away, and there are not enough of those either. This book feels like it has been regurgitated out of Clive Barker’s dreams, and it should have been pared way down, or at least put into some appendixes to the main plot. I’m looking forward to moving on to something else!

This is my second time reading Abarat, and I think I felt the same about it the first time I read it – not that impressed. This is not my style of fantasy at all – Abarat is a series of islands far removed from our world. Candy Quackenbush is transported from Minnesota to Abarat through a chance encounter and a magical sea. What she finds there seems to be the regurgitation of everything in Clive Barker’s imagination – there are so many detailed descriptions of unusual characters that you really can’t keep track of who everyone and everything is. However, we are reading the second book in the series next week, so I felt like I needed to reread this. I am glad I did because I am not sure I would have remembered what I needed to for the second book, but on the other hand, it took me forever to read. It is a long book, and the descriptions of Abarat seem to take forever. I hope the next book will build on this and not expand on it. ( )