I’ve always loved Clive Barker’s work. I remember the first story I read, THE HELLBOUND HEART in the back of the car on the way to the Metallica/Guns N’ Roses concert in 1992. It’s not just his imagination, which is incredible, but his prose. Barker’s one of the most poetic fiction writers I’ve ever encountered. Back in the 80s, Stephen King himself called Barker “the future of horror”.
Things change. Barker hasn’t written an honest-to-God horror novel since . . . I can’t even remember. Over the last decade he’s moved more toward fantasy and his work is less and less horrible with every novel, which I have no problem with, as long as the quality of his work remains the same. I just finished ABARAT and I have to say it seems the transition is complete. I have seen the future of fantasy, to paraphrase Stephen King, and it’s name is Clive Barker.
ABARAT is a huge project for Barker, who, the back flap says, spent four years doing the interior paintings, over 100 of which are in this first volume (how many volumes are there? No idea, but the second volume, DAYS OF MAGIC--NIGHTS OF WAR was released very recently) and if anything it doesn’t even seem to be written for adults, but reads more like a young adult novel.
Candy Quakenbush is fourteen and she’s going to die in Chickentown, Minnesota if something doesn’t change in her life. This story begins with something as simple and non-threatening as a homework assignment. Candy’s class is told they have one week to bring in ten interesting facts about Chickentown. After Candy exhausts the library’s store of information and comes away with nothing interesting, her mother suggests she talk to Norma Lipnik and get the story of Henry Murkitt. But when Candy tries to relate his story to her teacher, she’s met with an F and is told the assignment was to gain FACTS. After an argument in the classroom, Candy is sent to the principal’s office. Except she never makes it there. She turns the other way and walks out of the school and down the street. She eventually comes to a field where the streets end and, among the broken pottery and fish bones--fish bones in the middle of a field in Minnesota?--Candy meets John Mischief and his seven brothers.
Thing about John and his brothers is they only have one body. Mischief has the body, while his brothers, John Fillet, John Sallow, John Moot, John Drowze, John Pluckitt, John Serpent, and John Slop are tiny heads attached to the antlers atop Mischief’s own head. Mischief is hiding from Mendelson Shape, an assassin sent to retrieve a key that Mischief has stolen from Shape’s master, Christopher Carrion. To escape, Mischief distracts Shape while Candy ascends the lighthouse--lighthouse in the middle of a field in Minnesota?--and activates the light which brings the Sea. Mischief and Candy board the jetty and are gone.
This is the beginning of Candy’s journey to the Abarat, which is a series of 25 islands, all representing a different hour of the day (24 hours, plus a mysterious 25th where no one ever goes). With the help of a group of sea-skippers Candy is taken to the Yebba Dim Day where it is always 8:00PM. Mischief, a wanted thief in the Abarat, leaves Candy there and disappears into the water. So far it’s looking like a typical Barker novel where you really don’t know what’s going to happen next but, given what’s come before, you know it really could be anything at all.
Except this is also where it starts to get a little . . . tired. For one, there’s a big chunk in the middle here where Candy becomes the absolute most helpless main character ever created. She does nothing for a long time except let the story act upon her, she doesn‘t make one planned move, instead just running from danger in scene after scene. She’s kidnapped twice, and narrowly escapes being kidnapped again just before her second kidnapping, as she is taken from one island to the next, and never once does she wonder What the hell am I doing here? All she knows is it’s more exciting here than in Chickentown. That may be the case, but I know if the Prince of Midnight were after me, I’d probably be a little more discreet, but Candy seems to have no problem saying loud and proud, “I’m Candy Quackenbush from the Hereafter (the Abaratian word for our world), and Christopher Carrion is after me but I don’t know why” to anyone who’ll listen.
ABARAT was probably written with action in mind, something to keep the younger readers reading without getting them too bogged down in story and detail, and I’m fine with that. But if you’re Clive Barker, for God’s sake, write like Clive Barker. There are parts of ABARAT that I’m praying to God have SOMETHING to do with the story in the second volume, because otherwise they’re just a waste of time. He takes a break from Candy, right in the middle of everything, to rejoin John Mischief and his brothers who are being hired as a digger to help search for a character who was thought dead years ago. They’re on the boat, John, his brothers, and the rest of the crew when all of a sudden a dragon attacks. There’s a struggle and the dragon is beaten. Wrong. The dragon returns, there’s another struggle, and FINALLY the dragon is beaten, but the boat is destroyed. They wash up on the island they were heading to, naturally. Mischief and his brothers are injured, but before anyone gets a moment’s rest, a monsoon strikes. Mischief is found wrapped in a big plant, healed.
Come on now. First, like I said, this had better be important in the next volume. And second, you’re Clive F**kin’ Barker, don’t ever ever use the phrase “all of a sudden”, please!!! You’re better than that. That’s the phrase of a beginner who’s trying to establish a sense of shock (now that I’ve said that, I’m going to have to go back through all my work and make sure that phrase isn’t in there. It probably is.). All of a sudden the rocks fell, all of a sudden the monster sprang up, just when everyone thought he was dead, all of a sudden I thought I was reading a crappy pulp novel from the 30s. And maybe it’s because this is the first volume in a series, but so far I don’t have a clue what’s going on. Candy is taken to the Abarat where it’s one thing after another and we really learn very little about why she’s there until the end. And all we learn then is that she’s supposed to do something important.
Well, of course, isn’t that the way it works? Surely she’s been to the Abarat before and naturally Candy is probably some promised hero who’s returned and is going to bring new light to the islands or something like that. I mean, it’s textbook stuff. Unless you’re Clive Barker. So I’m just praying the rest of this story unfolds in a less predictable manner because I love Barker’s work, I always know I can count on him to take me by complete surprise. At least, I HOPE he still can. And while the individual events aren’t entirely predictable, they’re not entirely original, either. She’s already met her traveling companion in Malingo, a slave she freed from the second person who kidnapped her, Kasper Wolfswinkel (the names Barker has chosen for these characters is another thing that keeps me from taking this story too seriously. Wolfswinkel? Quackenbush? Kiss Curl Carlotti?). I’m waiting to find out her parents are really Abaratian royalty who were banished to the Hereafter or something. Also the common person discovering some magical land and doing something important isn't exactly a new plot in ANY Barker novel anymore. IMAJICA, WEAVEWORLD, CABAL, THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW. We've already read those stories.
ABARAT is one easy read, and enjoyable despite my complaints here, and from anyone else it would probably be even better, but I know Barker’s potential and so far he’s not meeting it.
One thing ABARAT does have going for it, however, are those paintings I mentioned earlier. Envisioning Barker’s creations has never been the easiest thing in the world, because they’re never your ordinary monster, so seeing them through his eyes, in very bright and exciting color, is a huge plus for this book. Before I started it, I could have just flipped through the pages and looked at the pretty pictures over and over. And now that I know what those pictures represent, I can enjoy them even more.
I DO recommend ABARAT, but it’s with a warning: while nothing Barker has written is anything you’d expect, this one isn’t all THAT original (though I do like the idea of each island existing in a different hour of the day; time was a subject he also explored in THE THIEF OF ALWAYS, another book for younger readers) in terms of plot, and the writing is sometimes just not up to Barker standards. So read ABARAT, but do it knowing what you’re getting into. And do it knowing the second volume is out now, because the way this one ends, you’re going to want that second volume pretty quickly.
Barker s New York Times bestseller continues the story of young Candy Quackenbush from Chickentown, U.S.A., who embarks on an epic, life-changing jour...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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