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Between 2 and 3 stars.
The world-building and paintings in Abarat are fantastic and wondrous, but for some reason, I just couldn't get into the characters or the story. The characters aren't developed enough, or in such a way, that I became emotionally attached to them. The main character, Candy just seems like a standard protagonist (Mary Sue?) who feels out of place, but for some reason is chosen to be super important and powerful in a story, whom everyone in the setting who's not a villain happens to find charming. The writing in Abarat seems to be at a low level for a YA book, and I found the writing somewhat bland and, at times, stilted. Abarat is one of those fantasy adventure novels that's just a bunch of (supposedly) exciting episodes strung together. The book seems to foreshadow and overarching plot, but it just never arrived, and I don't know if I'm invested enough, or curious enough, to read the other two books. I may just get them to look at Clive Barker's art, though.
P.S. No offense meant to anyone with the same name, but it's hard to think of the main character as some kick-butt, prophesied heroine with a name like Candy Quackenbush, but maybe that's part of the point.
The world-building and paintings in Abarat are fantastic and wondrous, but for some reason, I just couldn't get into the characters or the story. The characters aren't developed enough, or in such a way, that I became emotionally attached to them. The main character, Candy just seems like a standard protagonist (Mary Sue?) who feels out of place, but for some reason is chosen to be super important and powerful in a story, whom everyone in the setting who's not a villain happens to find charming. The writing in Abarat seems to be at a low level for a YA book, and I found the writing somewhat bland and, at times, stilted. Abarat is one of those fantasy adventure novels that's just a bunch of (supposedly) exciting episodes strung together. The book seems to foreshadow and overarching plot, but it just never arrived, and I don't know if I'm invested enough, or curious enough, to read the other two books. I may just get them to look at Clive Barker's art, though.
P.S. No offense meant to anyone with the same name, but it's hard to think of the main character as some kick-butt, prophesied heroine with a name like Candy Quackenbush, but maybe that's part of the point.