Abarat
core novel 2002 Abarat
Record
| First published | 2002 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.10 (30,040 ratings, collected 2026-10-08) |
| Page count | 400 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780060280925 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Candy Quackenbush, a bored and unhappy teenager in Chickentown, Minnesota, the most boring town in the world, walks out of school one day into the prairie and finds, where no sea has ever been, a lighthouse, a strange man with eight heads and the Sea of Izabella rushing in to carry her away. She is swept into the Abarat, an archipelago of twenty-five islands, one for each hour of the day and night and one, the Twenty-Fifth Hour, that lies outside time, each with its own eternal hour and its own creatures. Pursued from the first by the servants of Christopher Carrion, Lord of Midnight, who sees in the girl from the Hereafter a threat to his plans for the islands, and befriended by the geshrat Malingo, a slave she frees from a wizard, Candy discovers that the Abarat seems to know her. The first of the Books of Abarat, illustrated throughout with Barker's own paintings.
Where it sits
- Universe: Abarat
- Series: The Books of Abarat core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Clive Barker
Awards (verified)
- Bram Stoker Award (Best Work for Young Readers), 2002: nominated
Notes
- From the series record (The Books of Abarat): Clive Barker's illustrated young-adult fantasy of Candy Quackenbush of Chickentown, Minnesota, and the Abarat, an archipelago of twenty-five islands, one for each hour of the day plus one out of time. Planned as five books, painted before they were written; three published, the fourth (Kry Rising) long announced.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series The Books of Abarat: position 1 of 3: next Days of Magic, Nights of War (2004)
Sources
← Abarat dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.