The narrative takes the reader to some of the 25 islands of Abarat: each of them, in a mystical way, is an hour of the day, and one is the time outside time. A foundation of ethical seriousness is established, which is not too badly undermined by intimations of Candy's "destiny" - an annoying trope impossible to pull off except at the cost of the characters' agency.įor the most part, people will read this book for the setting, and for the monsters. The moral and philosophical stakes are raised: actions have consequences in what must be a real, though alternate, world. By introducing Candy to what we have already seen, the solipsism of childhood is undercut: there is no room for this to be only a dream. What is inevitably lost is the first astonishment - the sense of awe as we step out of the Kansas house with our child-avatar into a Technicolor Oz.īut something is also gained. In other words, we do not fall down a rabbit hole into the magic kingdom with our protagonist: we know about the magic already, and have to wait for her to catch up. Unlike most classics of this kind, Abarat starts with a prologue in the fantasyland itself, tracking an incomprehensible conversation between three of its inhabitants, before we meet Candy.
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