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Candy Quackenbush of Chickentown, Minnesota, one day finds herself on the edge of a foreign world that is populated by strange creatures, and her life is forever changed.Tags
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kawika The Thief of Always is a stand alone novel, as opposed to the Abarat series which will have five installments, and is more of along the lines of a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale and is wonderful.
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Member Reviews
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 show more imagination. Glyphs, for example - flying machines made of pure magic - are as yet tantalisingly unillustrated... show less
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 show more imagination. Glyphs, for example - flying machines made of pure magic - are as yet tantalisingly unillustrated... show less
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 show more bones, fearless romanticism and significant heft. Prepare for an unexpected journey. show less
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 show more bones, fearless romanticism and significant heft. Prepare for an unexpected journey. show less
Wow. This was not a good novel.
Have you ever had an author that you loved so intensely, so completely, then, you read something and you felt that intensity just dissolve?
I loved Chuck Palahniuk. For a period of time, he was actually my favourite author--above Stephen King, which, for those of you who know me, is really saying something--and I'd rejoice each time a new novel of his came out. I devoured his first ten books, fiction and non-fiction, thinking only two--Invisible Monsters and Haunted--as slightly less than brilliant. Then came Snuff, which seemed like a serious misstep. Then I read Pygmy and realized that Chuck was, at this point, sitting down to write a novel as Chuck Palahniuk, not just letting his voice come out. I read show more about a flying vibrator and knew that I no longer loved Palahniuk.
It also happened with Tom Clancy (never a great writer, but a good storyteller and plotter) and Stephen R. Donaldson.
And now, with Abarat, after the disappointment of The Scarlet Gospels, it's happened with Barker. I used to love your stuff, Clive. Love it. Your fourteen-year run of novels, starting with Weaveworld and running all the way through to Coldheart Canyon were, each in their own way, brilliant.
Then came this steaming mess. What's so wrong with it?
It still has the trademark Barker imagination stamped all over it. The problem is, that's all it has. Candy Quackenbush is your stereotypical keener teen, underappreciated by her teachers and with an abusive parent. There's lots that can be done with this, but Barker only paints Candy in broad strokes of cliche.
Then there's the story...or the lack of it. Nothing much happens in the novel, except to lurch the characters from one place to another so Barker can stop and show us his prodigious imagination. Which is great, if it has a place in the story, if it advances the plot or characters in some way. Otherwise, it's closer to a porn movie, where the thinnest of storylines are simply to corral characters together to fuck. In this case, the corralling is so all the characters can either narrate a wonder, or goggle over one.
I really wanted this novel to be good, because I love Barker as an artist and as a writer and as a person--he's one of the nicest, most giving guys I've ever met. But this wasn't the book to wash away the taint of The Scarlet Gospels.
I won't be reading the rest of the series. But now I'm very much in fear of how he'll complete the Book of the Art series. Because if he fucks that up, I'll never forgive him. show less
Have you ever had an author that you loved so intensely, so completely, then, you read something and you felt that intensity just dissolve?
I loved Chuck Palahniuk. For a period of time, he was actually my favourite author--above Stephen King, which, for those of you who know me, is really saying something--and I'd rejoice each time a new novel of his came out. I devoured his first ten books, fiction and non-fiction, thinking only two--Invisible Monsters and Haunted--as slightly less than brilliant. Then came Snuff, which seemed like a serious misstep. Then I read Pygmy and realized that Chuck was, at this point, sitting down to write a novel as Chuck Palahniuk, not just letting his voice come out. I read show more about a flying vibrator and knew that I no longer loved Palahniuk.
It also happened with Tom Clancy (never a great writer, but a good storyteller and plotter) and Stephen R. Donaldson.
And now, with Abarat, after the disappointment of The Scarlet Gospels, it's happened with Barker. I used to love your stuff, Clive. Love it. Your fourteen-year run of novels, starting with Weaveworld and running all the way through to Coldheart Canyon were, each in their own way, brilliant.
Then came this steaming mess. What's so wrong with it?
It still has the trademark Barker imagination stamped all over it. The problem is, that's all it has. Candy Quackenbush is your stereotypical keener teen, underappreciated by her teachers and with an abusive parent. There's lots that can be done with this, but Barker only paints Candy in broad strokes of cliche.
Then there's the story...or the lack of it. Nothing much happens in the novel, except to lurch the characters from one place to another so Barker can stop and show us his prodigious imagination. Which is great, if it has a place in the story, if it advances the plot or characters in some way. Otherwise, it's closer to a porn movie, where the thinnest of storylines are simply to corral characters together to fuck. In this case, the corralling is so all the characters can either narrate a wonder, or goggle over one.
I really wanted this novel to be good, because I love Barker as an artist and as a writer and as a person--he's one of the nicest, most giving guys I've ever met. But this wasn't the book to wash away the taint of The Scarlet Gospels.
I won't be reading the rest of the series. But now I'm very much in fear of how he'll complete the Book of the Art series. Because if he fucks that up, I'll never forgive him. show less
Summary: Candy Quackenbush is a fairly normal, if unhappy, teenager who feels trapped in her life in the stiflingly boring Chickentown, Minnesota. One day, after a fight with her teacher, she follows a strange impulse and takes out walking into the grasslands outside of town. When she gets near a ruined (and landlocked) lighthouse, she meets John Mischief and his seven brothers (who are heads sprouting out of his antlers, and are all named John). He convinces her to climb the lighthouse, and so call back the sea - and also to take the mystical Key, an object of great power that is being sought by the evil Christopher Carrion, into her protection. Together, Candy and Mischief are swept away by the sea, towards the islands of the Abarat - show more a fantastic place that seems as though it may have sprung from Candy's dreams, where peril lurks around every corner. However, despite the strange lands she encounters and the even stranger people she meets, she feels strangely at home...
Review: Reading this book felt a lot like slipping into a dream. Of course, that's got both good and bad connotations. Abarat is undeniably fantastically imagined, incredibly creative, and surreally vivid. The lavish painted illustrations on nearly every other page help create the dream-like atmosphere. They're gorgeously done, and really add to the reading experience, but man alive, the inside of Clive Barker's head must be a strange, strange place.
Unfortunately, the dream-like quality of this book also extends to the plot and the pacing. One scene doesn't always connect to the next, and more effort is spent introducing characters and exploring the fantastic world in which they move than in actually telling a story. The end of this book doesn't actually wrap anything up and so seems like a somewhat arbitrary break - it could have ended a few chapters earlier or a few chapters later, and regardless, you'd still have to read the sequel to get the whole story. That's not particularly satisfying, especially given that the fractured dream-logic feel of the rest of the book kept me from getting particularly involved in the story or the characters.
Overall, it's a lot of very pretty, very imaginative, very well-written wrapping surrounding a pretty minimal plot. It was pretty enjoyable as escapist reads go, and it's definitely worth flipping through if just for the illustrations, but I came out of it wanting a little more cohesiveness to the story; if all I was after was a bunch of bizarre jumbly dream sequences, I'd have taken some Nyquil and had a nap. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: I can see it appealing to younger readers (younger than me, I mean - maybe mid-teens?) who like the creepy and the bizarre. For the rest of us, it's worth reading for the times when you need a little bit of dark escapism, as long as you're okay with a setting-driven book that's somewhat light on plot. show less
Review: Reading this book felt a lot like slipping into a dream. Of course, that's got both good and bad connotations. Abarat is undeniably fantastically imagined, incredibly creative, and surreally vivid. The lavish painted illustrations on nearly every other page help create the dream-like atmosphere. They're gorgeously done, and really add to the reading experience, but man alive, the inside of Clive Barker's head must be a strange, strange place.
Unfortunately, the dream-like quality of this book also extends to the plot and the pacing. One scene doesn't always connect to the next, and more effort is spent introducing characters and exploring the fantastic world in which they move than in actually telling a story. The end of this book doesn't actually wrap anything up and so seems like a somewhat arbitrary break - it could have ended a few chapters earlier or a few chapters later, and regardless, you'd still have to read the sequel to get the whole story. That's not particularly satisfying, especially given that the fractured dream-logic feel of the rest of the book kept me from getting particularly involved in the story or the characters.
Overall, it's a lot of very pretty, very imaginative, very well-written wrapping surrounding a pretty minimal plot. It was pretty enjoyable as escapist reads go, and it's definitely worth flipping through if just for the illustrations, but I came out of it wanting a little more cohesiveness to the story; if all I was after was a bunch of bizarre jumbly dream sequences, I'd have taken some Nyquil and had a nap. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: I can see it appealing to younger readers (younger than me, I mean - maybe mid-teens?) who like the creepy and the bizarre. For the rest of us, it's worth reading for the times when you need a little bit of dark escapism, as long as you're okay with a setting-driven book that's somewhat light on plot. show less
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, show more 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. show less
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, show more 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. show less
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 stars!
Unlike some other reviews, I thought this book was fantastic. The world that Barker has created is new and fresh and has an untold amount of potential. When I read the first book, the second one was already out so I could not wait to finish one and get to the next. The characters are deep and interesting and the tension between Candy Quackenbush and Lord Carrion is thick. It may seem like the first book does not finish much, but this is a four part series and the second book alone ties a lot up. I am eagerly awaiting the 3rd volume.
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Author Information
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Critics of the horror story have frequently called Clive Barker the "British Stephen King". Born in Liverpool in 1952, Barker attended the University of Liverpool but moved to London in 1977, where he worked as a commercial artist and became involved with the avant-garde theatrical community. Primarily a playwright during this period, he also show more produced short fiction that he would eventually publish as part of his six-volume collection titled Books of Blood (1984-85). More than any other author of contemporary horror fiction, Barker has had a major impact on the direction of the genre. He has introduced strong elements of sex and graphic violence into his fiction, but these elements are employed with an artistic objective. Barker underscores his work with complex subtextual metaphors and artistic allusions. Preoccupied with the craft of writing and with its effect on the reader, Barker is an innovator of formula and genre, often parodying the former in order to change the philosophical contour of the latter. Barker has achieved commercial success not only with his short fiction but also with his novels, which tend to be epic in scope and to blend elements of horror with those of high fantasy. Barker is one of the more influential voices in horror cinema, having written and directed a number of films. His printed works include The Candle in the Cloud, Absolute Midnight, The Scarlet Gospels, and Black is the Devil's Rainbow: Tales of a Journeyman. His films include Dread, Tortured Souls: Animae Damanatae, and Hellraiser. (Bowker Author Biography) Clive Barker was born in October, 1952, in Liverpool, England, and graduated from Liverpool University. While a student, the resourceful Barker formed a theater company as an outlet for his career as a budding playwright. After minor success with several plays such as "Frankenstein in Love," Barker vaulted onto the horror fiction scene with the publication of his short stories, "The Books of Blood." Later books such as "The Damnation Game," "Imajica," and "Everville" have further established his reputation as a Master of Horror. Barker gained further popularity with several motion picture projects. Unhappy with previous film versions of his works, he chose to direct the successful movie "Hellraiser," which generated a string of sequels. In addition to writing and directing, Barker has produced several of the movies in both the "Hellraiser" and "Candyman" series. Besides his writing and film activities, the multitalented Barker is an actor and illustrator, with several published volumes of his artwork. Barker is a recipient of British Fantasy awards and a World Fantasy award, and resides in Los Angeles. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Distinctions
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Companhia das Letras (2003)
Heyne Allgemeine Reihe (53225)
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Abarat
- Original title
- Abarat
- Alternate titles*
- Abarat vol.1
- Original publication date
- 2002-09-01
- People/Characters
- Candy Francesca Quackenbush; Christopher Carrion; John Mischief; Rojo Pixler; Kaspar Wolfwinkle; Malingo (show all 36); Geneva Peachtree; Joephi; Diamanda; Mespa; Melissa Quackenbush; Miss Schwartz; Bill Quackenbush; Don Quackenbush; Ricky Quackenbush; Norma Lipnik; Henry Murkitt; Linda; Deborah Hackberth; Ruth Ferris; Frank Wrightson; Lavinia White; John Fillet; John Sallow; John Moot; John Drowze; John Pluckitt; John Serpent; John Slop; Mendelson Shape; Deaux-Deaux; Pux; Tropella; Kocono; Officer Branx; Izarith
- Important places
- Chickentown, Minnesota, USA; Yebba Dim Day, Abarat (8 o'clock in the evening); Gorgossium, Abarat (midnight); Ninnyhammer, Abarat (10 o'clock in the evening); Nonce, Abarat (3 o'clock in the afternoon); Odom's Spire, Abarat (The Twenty-Fifth Hour) (show all 11); The Lyre (boat); Sea of Isabella, Abarat; Comfort Tree Hotel (Chickentown, Minnesota, USA); 34 Followell St. (Chickentown, Minnesota, USA); Abarat
- Epigraph
- I dreamed a limitless book,
A book unbound,
Its leaves scattered in fantastic abundance.
On every line there was a new horizon drawn,
New heavens supposed;
New states, new souls.
One of those souls,<... (show all)br>Dozing through some imagined afternoon,
Dreamed these words.
And needing a hand to set them down,
Made mine.
-- C. B. - Dedication
- To Emilian David Armstrong
- First words
- The storm came up out of the southwest like a fiend, stalking its prey on legs of lightning.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Better to be alive in the Here and the Now -- in this bright, laughing moment -- and let the Hours to come take care of themselves.
- Blurbers
- Tarantino, Quentin
- Original language*
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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