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    Abarat: Absolute Midnight
    Abarat: Absolute Midnight
    Abarat: Absolute Midnight
    Audiobook15 hours

    Abarat: Absolute Midnight

    Written by Clive Barker

    Narrated by Richard Ferrone

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Clive Barker, author of The Thief of Always, delivers an epic battle filled with fantasy and adventure that readers won't want to put down!

    Candy Quackenbush, her allies, and her enemies are back in Abarat: Absolute Midnight, the third book in Clive Barker's New York Times bestselling Abarat series.

    ""The waiting is over. Tomorrow there will be no dawn. Only midnight, absolute and eternal."" Mater Motley, the Old Mother of Darkness herself—following the events of Abarat and Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War—has crafted a scheme that may destroy the Abarat, a vast archipelago where every hour is an island in one eternal day.

    When Candy discovers Mater Motley's secret plot, she realizes that only she can bring an end to the destruction. Only she can stop the complete darkness threatening to abolish all hope and happiness from the Abarat.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 10, 2012
    ISBN9780062192721
    Abarat: Absolute Midnight
    Author

    Clive Barker

    Clive Barker is the bestselling author of twenty-two books, including the New York Times bestsellers Abarat; Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War; the Hellraiser and Candyman series, and The Thief of Always. He is also an acclaimed painter, film producer, and director. He lives in Southern California.

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    Reviews for Abarat

    4/5

    58 ratings44 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Do you think Alice in Wonderland is trippy? Think again. Only Clive Barker can write a young adult novel and make it this disturbing. He is a master of all the weird, odd, gross, and secret thoughts that might pass through anyone's mind. This is not as dark as his adult works, but you can taste it from here....Excellent. Looking forward to the second installment.
    • 4/5
      My relationship with Clive Barker's books tends to run hot and cold. I will either finish the book and it will automatically become one of my favourites or I will enjoy it at first but at some point over the course of my reading it becomes tedious and I have trouble finishing it. Well Abarat is a first for me I enjoyed it and I finished it but it's not one of my favourites.Candy Quackenbush of Chickentown Minnesota is bored. She is sick living in an unhappy home, sick of the endless boring prairies and not to mention she HATES chickens. After a disagreement at school over an assignment about Chickentown (but not about chickens) Candy just gets up and walks out of class and out of Chickentown. Once outside the town Candy meets an interesting individual with eight heads (all named John) who gives her a key and charges her with keeping it safe from the creature who has been chasing him or them. Candy jumps at the chance to abandon her previous life and follows the Johns to the world of Abarat which is rapidly heading towards an apocalypse.The world of Abarat is probably the reason this book didn't make it to favourite status. Abarat is absolutly nothing like the world we live in and trying to picture the creatures and lands of this world continously pulled me out of the story. I understand there is an illustrated version of this book and had I read one that I'm sure my final grade would have been different.Candy is a thoroughly likable heroine and I'm looking forward to seeing her character grow over the course of the series. Although she is young and a bit niave she's also got some grit to her and takes everything that happens in stride. The secondary characters (or creatures) even the minor ones have all been very well fleshed out and have obviously come from a very fertile imagination.The plot is quick paced and alot of fun but like I said previously I probably would have enjoyed it more and been more "into" the story had I read the version with the illustrations.All in all I did enjoy the story and will definitly look for the second installment the next time I'm in the book store. If this is your first time trying Clive Barker I would recommend reading the Thief of Always first it is a stand alone young adult fantasy and in my opinion is far more engrossing story.
    • 4/5
      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 imagination. Glyphs, for example - flying machines made of pure magic - are as yet tantalisingly unillustrated...
    • 4/5
      A seemingly ordinary girl gets whisked into an alternate world full of bizarre creatures, which is under attack by the forces of evil, and discovers she's a "chosen one" that must help save the world.
    • 5/5
      I love Clive Barker, he is an awesome author, dark, complex and subtle plots blending from extreme horror to fantasy with a dark touch. My favourite Barker trait is that no matter what supernatural or plain unnatural beings are involved it is the humans, or at the least the human aspects that contain the real good and evil .It's at the moments when his protagonists are most like us that we are most appalled and awed by them, and that's a real talent. The Abarat books are childrens/young adult books, the lead character is a young girl and she is drawn out of dull old Chickentown into a strange world with an island for each hour fo the day. Quite aside from the fact that i know drive my fiance mad with the "hamster tree" song every christmas, these books are witty, affectionate, entertaining and dark! I recommend the hardcovers, i wouldn't normally but Barker's art does add something to these books. Go, buy, read, enjoy!
    • 5/5
      Abarat is one of my favorite fantasy books, although the quality of writing strikes me as average. Clive Barker draws you into the fantasical world of Abarat, where there are islands for each hour. The descriptions of the islands and the creatures that inhabit them are wonderful. A true page-turner and it doesn't cut corners with character development either. Candy and Carrion (the villain) are both quite "round" characters and even the sidekicks (Malingo, the John's, etc) are more than just comedians. Clive Barker is truly the renaissance man. Not only did he write the poetry and prose, but created the beautiful paintings to help guide you on your own journey through Abarat. This review is only scratching at the wonders of this book (and its sequel). I strongly recommend reading them.
    • 3/5
      Wildly imaginative fantasy world but the plot is lacking. A bit like Alice in Wonderland, the main character jumps into a magically summoned ocean and is carried away. Then she pinballs from one near disaster and narrow escape to the next, meets weird friends and foes, and hears prophesies and tantalizing tidbits of her family history. The scary bits are pretty tame for the average kid old enough to read to themselves. With the abundant illustrations, may be better suited for reading aloud but not to very young kids.
    • 5/5
      {WIP} {Warning: Spoilers}Candy Quackenbush isn't like the other residents of Chickentown, Minnesota. While her classmates are going to parties and her neighbors are tending to their lawns Candy is bored sick of her hometown. She wanders in the countryside outside of town, strangely drawn by the scent of the sea, despite being thousands of miles from the ocean. The tide comes in. Candy is swept away by a sentient ocean to another world, called Abarat. Helped out by her new friend, John Mischief, a strange man with his seven brothers attached to his head by tentacle-like necks, Candy is led into the mysterious Abarat, a whole other world on the other side of the magical ocean. The brave girl must escape capture attempts from the disgusting Lord Carrion, save her new friends, and discover what in her past has connected her to the Abarat. Candy's journey of discovery leads back to Chickentown, where her mother is lost in dreams of the stormy night that her daughter was born. Candy isn't just her daughter, she also carries the soul of the Abarat's murdered princess inside her heart, and with it the future of the Abarat.
    • 5/5
      Clive Barker's illustrations alone would make this a compelling book for young adults raised in this digital, visual age. Creepy, yet compelling, Barker has created yet another setting where strange monsters like the terrifying Mendelson Shape and the strange, many-headed John Mischief interact with the young woman Candy, who is almost driven to her mundane life in Chickentown. The completely weird archipelego of Abarat is inhabited by more strange beings than most of us imagine in a lifetime. This is the first in a series of a possible four books. I enjoyed this trip into a dream of a book - dream as in the disjointed images and twisted reality that populates a typical night or nightmare. Barker has made his mark in young adult fiction!
    • 4/5
      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!
    • 5/5
      This is a novel of epic proportions, over 11 hours on mp3. The cast and lands of the Abarat are rich and fully developed, as is the prose of Clive Barker, full of vivid description and extensive vocabulary, as in this description of the Yebba Dim Day,It was a city, a city built from the litter of the sea. The street beneath her feet was made from timbers that had clearly been in the water for a long time, and the walls were lined with barnacle-encrusted stone. There were three columns supporting the roof, made of coral fragments cemented together. They were buzzing hives of life unto themselves; their elaborately constructed walls pierced with dozens of windows, from which light poured.There were three main streets that wound up and around these coral hives, and they were all lined with habitations and thronged with the Yebba Dim Day's citizens.As far as Candy could see there were plenty of people who resembled folks she might have expected to see on the streets of Chickentown, give or take a sartorial detail: a hat, a coat, a wooden snout. But for every one person that looked perfectly human, there were two who looked perfectly other than human. The children of a thousand marriages between humankind and the great bestiary of the Abarat were abroad on the streets of the city. Richard Ferrone’s voice on the audiobook version is as rich and varied as the world of the Abarat. A fantastic book! Highly recommended. Ages 12 and up.
    • 5/5
      I was a little thrown off by this book when I saw the cover. My mum bought it for me and I just kept it in a basket because I had no interest in it. Then I had read all my books in my room, except this one, and decided to read it. I saw the cover and thought it was interesting. Now, I love it and when I finished it, the secound book was about to come out, so of course I was over ecstatic! Definitly intersting. I love how Abarat upside down spells Abarat and how the oil paintings were made before the book!
    • 1/5
      I started this book with mixed feelings. The cover and the illustrations inside didn't agree with me. The first chapter of the book was situated in the fantasy world of Abarat and serves as a teaser. What follows is the first part of the book. Here we return to Earth and meet Candy Quackenbusch, a young girl living in Chickentown, Minnesota.Now I have to admit I stopped reading after the first two chapters. This doesn't happen often, but the style and the creatures that start to appear about then didn't do it for me. It is supposed to be a good book, but it isn't my taste. Try it for yourself and make your own judgement.
    • 5/5
      Born from the wicked imagination of Clive Barker, Abarat more like a fantasy than a horror story. It's a pity because my favourites are his older horror books but whatever.... Abarat IS a gerat book with great characters and great story.
    • 2/5
      DisneyeskOk, ich bin Clive Barker-Erstleser. In meinem Regal stehen eher solche Sachen wie D. Eddings, S.Lawhead und Herr Prattchett. Vielleicht auch wegen deren doch eher 'normalen' Fantasy-Welten hat mich Abarat leider nicht wirklich begeistern können. Es war mir einfach zu viel: zu viel Gerenne, zu viele absurde Kreaturen, zu schrill. Und dabei für mich zu oberflächlich. Tatsächlich hab ich mich während des Lesens z.B. ständig gefragt: wann zum Henker kommt Candy denn jetzt endlich mal dazu, ihr ach-so-müdes Haupt auszuruhen und vielleicht einen Happen zu essen?Obwohl das Buch sicherlich einige nette Ideen hat muss ich leider sagen, dass es für mich schlicht nicht gewirkt hat.
    • 5/5
      Characters: Heck yeah. Imaginative, deep, and interesting. Even (and especially) the main villian is interesting and multi-dimensional.Setting: See above.Illustrations: Simply amazing. Barker is amazing.Plot: The only reason that I dinged Abarat a 1/2 star was because the plot takes a bit to get into (though the beginning makes a bit more sense after reading the second book), and, at times, you can lose track of what exactly the protagonist's goal is.Overall: Highly recommended, am looking forward to the next book.
    • 5/5
      This is one of those rare post-Harry Potter fantasy books that can stand on its own; it's a great read! Abarat has a great combination of real life emotions and unique quirks in all of the characters. Candy Quackenbush, the heroine, is completely believable and her adventures through the land of Abarat just drew me in.Clive Barker has created such an amazing magical world: the realms of Abarat, a collection of islands. Each island has its own personality-- and time of the day-- which makes the land truly original.Recommendation: This book is a thrilling read for any fantasy-lover, and the wonderful illustrations make the book a good family-read-aloud book. Enjoy Abarat!
    • 4/5
      This book is the first book of the YA series "The Books of Abarat", written and illustrated by the brilliant Clive Barker himself.The series includes the following 5 fantasy novels:> Abarat (2002)> Days of Magic, Nights of War (2004)> Absolute Midnight (2011)> Kry Rising (work-in-progress)> Until The End of Time (forthcoming)In the first book, we're introduced to Candy, a lonely bored girl who decides to explore a brand new world: the exotic and fantastical islands of Abarat, where each island in Abarat represents an hour of the day and is populated with the most different creatures.There, she is hunted down by Lord Midnight, who has a mysterious interest on her, but she has no idea what kind of dark fate she just brought to herself.Abarat is Clive Barker's "children's tale" that has very little of "children" and a lot of dark fantasy & exotic creatures in the colorful yet dark world of Abarat islands.It's darker than Neil Gaiman's books, but can be placed together with his Coraline.It's both Barker's play with Surrealism and his gift to younger readers who, after reading this, will surely want to get a taste of the real thing whenever they can. =D
    • 3/5
      This isn't my favorite of Clive Barker's works, but I do love the imaginative world he's created and I enjoyed this book enough that I'll continue on with the next book in the series.

      What would raised my rating of this book? First, a stronger plot - although there are tense moments, much of this book seems to be more about description of the Abaratian world and the characters who inhabit it than about any real action, but I imagine that will change in the next couple books. Second, I think Barker's imagination way overshadows his skills as a writer. Not that he's a bad writer (The DaVinci Code, anyone?), but he's not excellent, either. There are ideas and descriptions that spark my imagination and give me insight I haven't had before, but never turns of phrase or word choices. It's been years since I read Barker's fiction for adult readers, so I am curious if his writing was simplified for the young adult novel, but my husband recently read The Great and Secret Show for the first time and he was not impressed with the writing in that, either.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Let me just first say that the illustrations in this book are nothing short of amazing. But, Barker has always been one of my favorite artists, so that didn’t exactly come as a surprise. I get a feeling, though, that the paintings preceded the story, which is an interesting artistic choice in that the text almost comes to illustrate the images, but which makes the text a little lacking in that the story gets “forced” into fitting the images. I love Barker’s worlds - I have since the first time I picked up Books of Blood - and the characters are as imaginative as ever. The one thing I find a little hard to like is that the storyline is so meandering that you easily lose your place in the (sometimes clumsy) transitions and forget what each character’s goal is – and there are a lot of characters to keep track of! My main enjoyment out of the book was to see each new character’s description and the accompanying painting, but the main story didn’t captivate me enormously. It is a YA novel, though, and a YA reader may be a little more forgiving.
    • 5/5
      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, 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.
    • 3/5
      At first this book held my attention, but it really started to lose me toward the end. Some of the sub stories never really seemed to tie in with the rest of the story. Altogether the story seemed a little choppy, and I was a little disappointed with the flimsy ending.
    • 3/5
      Although I haven't officially finished this book, it is rather good. It is filled with beautiful and amazing artwork and is fairly easy to read.I will finish this book someday and write a real review, I promise.
    • 3/5
      It seems 'too silly' is an odd complaint for a fantasy novel. Strict realism is never expected. Nevertheless, that's my gripe with this one. I wanted to like it. Clive Barker is usually pretty good. His The Thief of Always is one of my favorite ya fantasy novels. But this is, well, less than plot-driven. I'm not sure one thing in this book is ever fully resolved. And all of the characters have this odd, Dave McKean-esque, circus freak quality about them. More members of a dream cast, and less well-thought out denizens of a cohesive fantasy realm. Also, I'm never sure who authors are trying to appeal to when they use nonsensical fantasy words. Just because I'm reading a fantasy novel...I mean, honestly, at what point am I supposed to be able to say things like Yebba Dim Day (the name of one of the islands of Abarat), without feeling anything but utterly ridiculous? Not a bad book, but certainly not stand-alone. It feels like the product of some kind of unholy alliance between Dave McKean, Lewis Carroll and Tim Burton.
    • 3/5
      A bit strange but I enjoyed it. It reminded me of The Phantom Tollbooth in some ways.
    • 4/5
      The first time I started to read this book I was twelve years old and it scared me so badly I had to stop. Now that I'm older, this book seems a lot less frightening, but just as interesting. Barker's inventiveness in creating characters to inhabit his fictional land is awe-inspiring, and his illustrations fit the story beautifully. Most compelling is the character of the villain, Christopher Carrion. Though this books serves as little more than an introduction for the world of Abarat and a set up for the rest of the series, it is very entertaining in its own right.
    • 4/5
      i gave up on clive barker for a while. abarat grabbed my attention. i'm glad i picked up this slightly surreal adventure.
    • 5/5
      I really love this book, the illustrations are very colorful and catch your attenion, depicting the scene right before your eyes. it is very fantasy and at times, a little disturbing, Clive Barker, you had better hurry up writing the next two books!