It’s been over seven years since the second installment of Clive Barker’s critically acclaimed children’s series ABARAT, and the wait was well worth it.

Harper Collins Publishers and the esteemed author have finally delivered ABARAT: ABSOLUTE MIDNIGHT, a gorgeous and mammoth 569 page epic adventure, featuring over one hundred and fifty original Clive Barker paintings created specifically to illustrate this edition.

ABSOLUTE MIDNIGHT picks up immediately after the finale of Book Two.  Sixteen year-old heroine Candy Quackenbush and her ragtag allies, Malingo the geshrat and master thief John Mischief, are thrust back into the world of Abarat, an archipelago of islands representing the 24 hours in a day.  There is even a 25th hour island (representing time out of time).  At the end of Book Two, Candy narrowly escapes her pursuer, The Prince of Midnight, Christopher Carrion.  Candy is not in the clear however, as Mater Motley picks up where her grandson Carrion left off.  Motley continues to forge a stitchling army; horrible creatures designed to cause “Absolute Midnight” and the inevitable war amongst the islands of time.

ABARAT: ABSOLUTE MIDNIGHT is everything one desires from an epic follow-up; it has a continuity that brings the reader right back into the adventure while serving up something fresh and like the third chapter in the HARRY POTTER series, Book Three is the darkest installment thus far. ABSOLUTE MIDNIGHT is rich and magical, creating worlds that are at once fantastic and familiar; so familiar you may be salivating, knowing that there are still two more Books in the works!

While technically for younger readers, Clive continues to refuse to dumb down any of his fiction; treating children and teenagers as intelligent beings, and filling his pages with sufficient darkness, surrealism, and originality to awe and mesmerize readers of any age. The ABARAT series is in a league all its own.  I desperately hope that we don’t have to wait another seven years for the next edition.

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