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{{infoboxinfobox1
|title=Abarat
|author=Clive Barker
|date=August 2004
|isbn=0006513700
|website=http://www.clivebarker.info/
|cover=Barker_Arabat
|aznuk=0006513700
|aznus=0006513700
}}
Candy Quackenbush has one great fear; that she will never leave her home of Chickentown, Minnesota. It is only when asked by her loathsome teacher to do a project on her dull town that she finds there is more to the place than meets the eye. Following the suicide of the town's original namesake Henry Murkitt, Candy is drawn into a world known as "Abarat", a world filled with wondrous sites and horrific visions. Her first encounter with a genial eight-headed creature known as John Mischief leads her on a adventure in which she is to become an unlikely heroine. Endlessly pursued by agents of evil who wish to unleash the "Requaix" hidden below the sea, how can this fourteen-year old hold the fate of the world in her hands?
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the novel is that the evil Candy must face is threefold. Rather than the traditional dark nemesis, Barker provides us with three major threats to consider. In Christopher Carrion we have the traditional threat of the evil madman driven by bad experiences. Secondly, we have the threat of the "Requiax", primeval beings akin to the Greek Titans. If they should surface from the sea, destruction would be total. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, is the threat of Rojo Pixler. His attempts to conquer and monopolise the Abarat with his own unique brand of magic mixed with technology is perhaps the biggest threat. His wish to capture Candy and discover a way to enter Chickentown is perhaps the most sinister. It is in this frightening man's similarity to our own world's corporate tycoons we see the most threat.
Barker, in taking the unusual step of providing three possible adversaries, never relents in terms of action and pace. Candy is relentlessly thrown from one ridiculous situation to the next and in this way this novel bears great resemblance to [[The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum, Michel Laporte, Olivier Latyk and Vanessa Mieville (translator)|The Wizard of Oz]] and more recently Stephen King's [[''The Talisman]]''. By providing us with a young hero there are no death defying feats of agility or superhuman displays of strength. What we get instead is a confused yet courageous young girl's account of a mysterious world that she finds strangely familiar.
Although I am ridiculously enthusiastic about this novel it is not flawless. It ends abruptly in an obvious set up for the sequel [[''Abarat 2: Days of Magic, Nights of War]]''. At times, Candy's constant scrapes and escapes verge on the implausible, despite her importance in the world of Abarat. However, the sequel is nicely set up in my version by an Appendix which gives a brief description of each of the twenty-five islands as well as an excerpt that teases and tantalises about what the sequel has in store.
I strongly recommend all fans of the fantasy genre to give this a go. Its simple style makes it easy to read and it allows your imagination the freedom you rarely get from a novel nowadays. In an often over serious genre, this is fantasy writing how it should be done, with verve and style. A novel everyone should enjoy.
