Abarat: Absolute Midnight (Book Three) [Hardcover]

I have been following the Books of Abarat since the first release. I was eleven or twelve. If any of you have been in love with this series since the beginning, you know that we had to wait seven years between the release of "Days of Magic, Nights of War" and "Absolute Midnight."

I actually bought "Absolute Midnight" the day it came out, but could not bring myself to start reading until yesterday. Seven years' anticipation was brought to fruition in about sixteen hours of reading. I was not disappointed.

"Absolute Midnight" is fantastic.

Unlike the second book, I don't think you can delve straight into "Absolute Midnight" without reading the other books. It is a fully contained story, but it is firmly planted in the Abarat. There are no explanations of phenomena or mysteries addressed in the first two and very little backstory. So please, please, please read at least the second book before picking up this one.

The story basically picks up exactly where "Days of Magic, Nights of War" left off. The islands are on the verge of the greatest war the archipelago has ever seen. The consequences are dire: if the forces of darkness win, midnight will eclipse the Abarat forever. Candy and her friends (although "friends" seems too light a word for the relationship she has with Malingo and Co.)aren't just up against Mater Motley. Monsters hidden in the caves of the islands and depths of the ocean are eagerly awaiting the darkness, and monsters beyond time and dimension as the Abarat knows it are waiting to destroy the islands.

"Absolute Midnight", while keeping the lyrical wonder that characterizes the series, is almost shockingly dark. Destroyers beyond comprehension, the insane but almost paradoxically calculating Mater Motley, stitchling armies displaying ominous levels of intelligence not seen before, corrupt councils, and more--Candy's allies have either turned their backs, or been silenced. Even Princess Boa, supposedly the embodiment of all things good and pure, is more selfish and cruel than Christopher Carrion ever was.

Character depth was pretty astounding. The Carrion family in particular got a great treatment, continuing and deepening the development brought up in book two. I've rarely felt so badly for a character as I did for Carrion.

Most of the people in the book were treated similarly. Malingo has believably developed courage and confidence, as another example, and Candy has grown into herself admirably in the rather welcome absence of Boa.
There were a few instances involving other characters where I felt something was done outof character, or something was unrealistic in relation to a character's past behavior. There was also one deus ex machina moment that sat a little oddly, but in the end I was so grateful things turned out that way that I didn't think too much about it. One thing that did kind of strike me as not entirely believable was the speed and intensity of Candy and Gazza's relationship. I thought it was great, don't get me wrong, but I wish it had been developed with the same depth as the other relationships and characters.

My only complaint was that I was seriously hoping to get more about Letheo. As weak and flawed as he is, he is a fascinating character with potential to be either great, or terrible.

The book itself is gorgeous. Nearly 600 pages, this edition is large, glossy, and full of incredible artwork.

Overall, the story was definitely worth waiting for. I was terrified I'd be disappointed, but I wasn't. I was enthralled. Abarat keeps getting better and better. It hold YA fiction--or any fiction, for that matter-- to a magnificent standard that's been mostly lost. If you read it, you will not regret it.

Given the cliffhanger, though, let's all hope we don't have another seven years to wait =)

After how breathless book 2 left me, I've been looking forward to this book quite excitedly. Imagine my disappointment when I received my kindle preorder and discovered there was no artwork. Not a single picture apart from the cover. Considering how important the pictures are to the story (and the fact they are included in the first two kindle editions!), this was a ridiculous oversight and maybe just greedy cost-cutting. I guess I'll have to rebuy the book in hardcover.

The story itself, however, is fantastic. Really quite amazing. I can't wait for the fourth book, Barker, it seems, is gearing up to write his best work and I think he knows it too..

Let me preface this by saying that I loved the first two books of Abarat. I read them 5 or 6 times and loved them each time I reread them. I have never seen an author create such a beautiful world. The sense of adventure was incredible and I enjoyed every second of it. On that note, let's start discussing Abarat 3. I enjoyed Abarat 3, but some things were seriously disappointing and prevented this book from getting more stars in my opinion. First things first, there was little character development. Candy was unfortunately a pretty dull character in this novel, which was disappointing. She was a very good character in the first two novels, given perfect traits to allow the reader to identify with her. However, in this novel, she became a character whose purpose was to allow the events in the book to happen. She hardly developed at all. She does receive a new love interest in the novel and I did not mind her love interest as much as some other people did. Barker has commonly done that love at first sight thing in many of his novels.

This whole character development thing was disappointing because Candy should not be a dull character, in the first two novels, she is a rebel and she is filled with just enough angst to make her a superb individual. Honestly in this book, for me, I began to actually get disappointed whenever I would get to a chapter from Candy's POV, though that was mostly because the side characters often had the best chapters. Where Candy received bad character development, characters such as Mater Motley and Rojo Pixler received great and very interesting chapters. These were often the best chapters in the book. Furthermore, a familiar character from the first two novels also develops well.

The action scenes were tremendous, though sometimes confusing. The book read like a movie for the most part, it's begging to be put on the silver screen. There are a lot of magic battles going on here and for the most part, they are pretty intense. Things get destroyed, massive things get summoned to battle, it's all a lot of fun really. However, sometimes Barker can get a bit carried away with descriptions of what's going on, hurting the pacing and intensity of the scene. Furthermore, sometimes the descriptions are a bit confusing, there's a lot of adjectives and it's just kind of difficult to wrap your head around what he's trying to say.

Honestly, though I was a bit disappointed with all of the action scenes. In the first two books, when you got an action scene, you received a lot more than just action. 2 examples come to mind: when Houlihan chased Candy and when Carrion chased after Candy. In both of those cases, when the action started, you received not only all the intensity of the action sequence, but Barker also took the time to give you a description of the world he built. When Houlihan chased Candy in Babilonium, he gave a description of the island while she was chased. There was very little of that in this novel, there was just straight action. I really wanted to see more description of the islands. I mean, Barker took the time to create a beautiful world, so I think we should get to see more of it. I didn't get that sense of adventure from this book that I got from the first two. That sense of adventure is the thing which caused me to read the first two novels 5 or 6 times. It was missing in this novel and was replaced with fights and conflicts. And though these conflicts were good in most cases, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed. I wanted to read a book where the world jumps off the pages like the first two, not a book which reads like a movie.

In the end though, this book was good, but a few aspects were a bit disappointing. Along with everything above, there are some continuity errors and some very confusing aspects to the novel. Candy and Boa have issues at the beginning of the novel and you never figure out how this conflict started. In the second book, Boa calls Candy "sister". This conflict was just quite sudden.

But, for me, a lot of issues of this book were made up with the cliffhanger at the end which made me so pumped for the next novel. Barker is taking us on a fun ride, and even though this book may not be up to par, I still enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to all people who enjoyed the first two novels.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 37 reviews  4.1 out of 5 stars