A Book a Week: Absolute Midnight

Finally finished my book for week 2 (just in time).  This was my first week back at school, and I was sick, so I can pretend that those are good excuses.  Really, the first week is always the easiest (although finals week is a close second) and being sick should have meant that I was reading all the time.  Instead, I mostly watched TV and stared into space.  Blaghh.

Abarat: Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker is the third book in the Abarat series.  They are set in a magical archipelago, where each island stands forever at a different hour in time.  The first two books (Abarat and Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War) are really great.  They are magical, whimsical, and very strange.  The paintings which accompany the text give life to the words and the complex, detailed world they describe.  These first two books have as much dark in them as they do light, with some pretty terrifying villains and monsters.  There is, overall, a great deal of life in these books, some of it vibrant and beautiful, some of it putrid and malevolent.

Opening sentence: "On the early coast of Idjit, where two a.m. looked south over the darkened straits toward the island of Gorgossium, there was a house, its facade much decorated, set high upon the cliffs."

Where the first two books are a captivating mixture of light and dark, Absolute Midnight has very little of the light.  The beautiful world which we have just barely glimpsed is being destroyed.  The book is filled with long, detailed descriptions of truly horrific beasts and sights.  I got bored.  I found myself skipping paragraphs, skimming for something of interest to come.  The paintings were more jumbled than in the earlier books and they mostly made be anxious.  I suspect that was Clive Barker's intention; I suppose I am just not into horror.  I will read the remaining books (there are supposed to be five) when they come out, but I do not have high hopes for enjoying them.  Recommended if you have read the first two and either really need to know what happens or like bizarre fantasy/horror.