Hello. My nme is Shannah McGill, and I read a book every day. I've been reading a book every day for years. This blog will review, every day, one book. Enjoy!
Always remember before reading my review: I WILL put spoilers, if you were planning to read that book.
Today's book is Abarat: Absolute Midnight by Clive Barker. I haven't picked up an Abarat book in a long time, so this one had to refresh me on all of the characters, settings, and problems of the last books. It did so reasonably well, and without one of those "explanatory chapters" som series like to put at the beginning. It also had none of the obvious "recap dialogue" which is another favorite of some authors. What I love about the Abarat is the lack of werewolves. Unfortunately, there are dragons, but those are pretty much the only creatures that have been thought of before. Most books seem to love to use magical creatures that have already been invented centuries ago and are extremely overused. The Abarat, on the other hand, has geshrats, orange humanoids with large flaps of skin on their heads and four small horns. One of my favorite creatues is the Johns, a person with enormous horns sticking out of his head with eight speaking heads sprouting from them. Absolute Midnight gave a lot more attention to my favorite character: Christopher Carrion. I love the story of the tender-hearted soul who is the youngest of a great dynasty of evil. Christopher Carrion looks fierce, surrounding the lower half of his head with a liquid in which nightmares swim, but this dazzling and fearful lord of midnight is softspoken when not in battle. This book does have its problems, though: especially a certain problem named Gazza. Many book series these days have fomed the ugly hab it of getting a wonderful story going and then wrecking it by putting romace in. I do not read romance novels. They are boring and revolting, filled with kissng and pet names and all of that junk. When a normal novel gets a romantic subplot, I cringe. It could be a wonderful adventure, but no. Gazza has to be the love interest. There is no reason for him to be a love interest, or for a love interest to form anywhere in the series for Candy. The fact that Gazza starts out as a scoundrel pointing a knife at Candy makes it all the more ludicrous. Another flaw is the similarity of Rojo Pixler beingtaken over by the Requiax and Zephario Carrion beingtaken over by the Nephauree. What's the likelihood that within an extremely short time, TWO people will be taken over by Lovecraft-style evils that hate all life? The author, I assume, thinksthat it would be good writing to have that happen and then have it as a "theme" where they are "contrasted", when all it really does is take away from the coherency of the beautiful Abarat.
Despite those setbacks, Abarat: Absolute Midnight is a good book overall, with colorful chracters and unique pictures splashed throughout.
No comments:
Post a Comment