Abarat; Days of Magic, Nights of War; Absolute Midnight (Abarat books 1, 2, 3) – Clive Barker Free Audiobook

Written by Clive Barker
Read by Richard Ferrone
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 48 Kbps
Unabridged

The current three books in the Abarat series, by Clive Barker. These books are exactly what you’d expect to happen when the creator of Hellraiser writes YA fiction. The darkness is all there, but with the sort of hope and adventure that most YA doesn’t do very well. Definitely worth a try for anyone who enjoys weird fantasy.

Abarat:

It begins in the most boring place in the world: Chickentown, U.S.A. There lives Candy Quackenbush, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold. When the answer comes, it’s not one she expects. Out of nowhere comes a wave, and Candy, led by a man called John Mischief (whose brothers live on the horns on his head), leaps into the surging waters and is carried away.

Where? To the Abarat: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from The Great Head that sits in the mysterious twilight waters of Eight in the Evening, to the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of Gorgossium, the island of Midnight, ruled over by the Prince of Midnight himself, Christopher Carrion.

Candy has a place in this extraordinary world: she is here to help save the Abarat from the dark forces that are stirring at its heart. Forces older than Time itself, and more evil than anything Candy has ever encountered.
Don’t miss any of the magic in the world of Abarat.

Days of Magic, Nights of War:

Candy Quackenbush’s adventures in the amazing world of the Abarat are getting more strange by the hour. Christopher Carrion, the Lord of Midnight, has sent his henchman to capture her. “Why?” she wonders. What would Carrion want with a girl from Minnesota? And why is Candy beginning to feel that the world of Abarat is familiar to her? Why can she speak words of magic she doesn’t even remember learning?

There is a mystery here. And Carrion, along with his fiendish grandmother, Mater Motley, suspects that whatever Candy is, she could spoil their plans to take control of the Abarat.

Now Candy’s companions must race against time to save her from the clutches of Carrion, and she must solve the mystery of her past before the forces of Night and Day clash and Absolute Midnight descends upon the islands.

A final war is about to begin. And Candy is going to need to make some choices that will change her life forever.

Absolute Midnight:

“’I know that many of you here have waited years for this Hour,’” Mater Motley said, using that voice that, though it was barely conversational in volume, was somehow heard everywhere. ‘The waiting is over. Tomorrow there will be no dawn. Only midnight, absolute and eternal.’”

And so begins a new chapter in the epic story of 16-year-old Candy Quackenbush and her journeys through the world of the Abarat, where every hour is an island in one eternal day, and nothing is as it seems.

Candy travels through the Abarat from island to island and across the sea with an unlikely band of friends: the escaped prisoner Malingo the Geshrat; the quarrelsome John Brothers, who all share the same body but never the same opinion; and the many other colorful characters they meet along the way.

The problem is that trouble finds Candy wherever she goes. And soon she discovers a secret plot, masterminded by the diabolical Mater Motley, who is obsessed with becoming Empress of the Islands. Her method is simple. She will darken the skies, putting out the suns, moons, and stars. She will bring absolute midnight.