Sorry I have updated for a minute. Been busy with work!
If you read one book the rest of the year, make it one of the "Abarat" books by Clive Barker. I read these books in high school and have just ordered them from Amazon so I can read them again. These books are especially exciting if you're into things like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Alice in Wonderland.
Abarat focuses on Candy Quackenbush, a teenage girl frustrated with her life in Chickentown, Minnesota. After an argument with her teacher over a school project, Candy leaves the school and goes to the edge of town, where she sees the remains of a lighthouse. She then encounters a master thief named John Mischief, whose brothers live on his horns. Because he is being followed by a sinister creature named Mendelson Shape, Mischief sends Candy to light the lamp in the lighthouse, which summons the sea of the Abarat, known as the Sea of Izabella, in a parallel world. After giving her a key to protect and extingushing the light, Mischief and Candy ride the seas to the Abarat. A group of creatures carry them to a nearby island where Candy is separated from Mischief. On the island, Candy learns that the Abarat consists of twenty-five islands, each occupying a different hour of the day. The Abarat was also connected to Candy's world before the harbor was destroyed by Abaratian authorities.
SPOILER ALERTDon't read past here if you are planning, whole-heartedly, to read these books and don't want them ruined for you.
Islands of the AbaratThe series is set on the "Islands of Abarat", of which each is based around a time of day (except the last island, which is based on the 25th hour). These islands are mounted in the Sea of Izabella, an ocean sometimes personified by the characters. Together, they compose what is described as "a limitless world" encompassing "chaotic diversity" called Abarat. Below are descriptions based on what the character Samuel Hastrim Klepp, author of the popular Klepp's Almenak, has to say about each of the islands:
1:00 a.m. The Pyramids of Xuxux"There is no quieter place in the Abarat" than at One o'Clock in the morning, where the six Pyramids of Xuxux rise out of the dark and uncannily placid waters of the Izabella. Some have suggested that these pyramids and the Ziggurat of Soma Plume at 5:00 p.m. were designed by the same hand and built by the same masons. The writer of Klepp's Almenak, the omnipresent traveler's guide to the Abarat, disagrees, claiming that the tombs at Soma Plume are "calm and curiously reassuring places" whereas the six pyramids at Xuxux are "sites of mystery and tragedy". The character Christopher Carrion uses the pyramids as a breeding-ground for the ravenous, chaotically diverse, monstrous insects known as the Sacbrood.
2:00 a.m. IdjitKlepp, who never visited when he was sober, described Idjit as an island of "immense charm," saying that it "encourages excesses, a kind of happy foolishness". It shares with neighbouring Gorgossium a "spiky, barren topography", while storms rage perpetually about the landscape. It has been calculated that a visitor to Idjit is more likely to be struck by lightning than a man on the roosts of Efreet is to be hit by bird excrement. The result is either instant death (as in the human world) or euphoria.
3:00 a.m. PyonPyon is described as having been "once a quiet island, but no longer. The work of an entrepreneur by the name of Rojo Pixler has transformed the island utterly. It was Pixler's dream (some have said folly) to build the biggest city in the archipelago on Pyon, its light so bright that the darkness of the Hour would be a grand irrelevance". This is Commexo City, a Las Vegas-like tourists' paradise whose image Pixler seeks to impose on the entire archipelago.
4:00 a.m. Isle of the Black EggHere lie the Pius Mountains, a range of needle-sharp crags that are the tallest natural phenomenon on the islands. These are the home of peaceful, mountain-dwelling villagers, as well as passionate revolutionaries. Klepp claims to have "discovered to date two hundred and seventeen explanations for the name [of the island], each contradicting the next. As I cannot distinguish the value of any one explanation over any other, and it seems arbitrary to simply pick one for retelling here," Klepp adds, "I'd prefer to simply state that nobody knows how the island got its name and leave it at that".
5:00 a.m. Speckle FrewSpeckle Frew is geographically an uneventful island; the earth is sandy and covered with fine, sharped-edged grass, while the wind is always howling. Though the terrain is scarcely varied, the island is home to a wide variety of species, most of them dangerous. Being the habitat of such animals, Speckle Frew is called "a bestiary" and "not to be trespassed lightly". Despite this, some comments by two characters in the first book imply that it is at least in part open to human habitation. It is suggested to be a quiet landing-point by a seafaring character called a "Sea-Skipper", and a mystic named Mariah Cappella is said to have lived there. Mariah's son is Finnegan Hob, a figure of some importance to the story.
6:00 a.m. EfreetUnlike its neighbour Speckle Frew, Efreet was once an island of great sophistication. The city of Koy, considered to have been the most cultured city in the Abarat, was built on the lower steppes of the island. Opinions vary as to how long it stood and why it fell, but what remains of the city - rows of pillars, archways, and frescoes - testifies to a site of elegance and learning. Efreet is also home to five infamous beasts; the armoured orange Waztrill; the Thrak, a purple beast with a small head and huge bugeyes; the serpentine Vexile; the shaggy, blue, lice-infested Sanguinius; and the Fever Gibe, a beast who walks on two legs and has an opening in its head which opens and closes like a giant fan.
7:00 a.m. AutlandAutland is joined to Efreet by the Gilholly Bridge. There is a palace on Autland, built for Queen Muzzel McCray, to a design that appeared to her in a dream, or so local legend dictates. The Queen's husband was a creature called Nimbus, Lord of the Tarrie-cats. Nimbus still lives in McCray's palace, inside the dream - so to speak - of the woman he loved.
8:00 a.m. ObadiahThis is an island of extraordinary flora. Here a visitor will find strange and sometimes aggressive plants growing in virtually inexhaustible profusion. Some have called Obadiah the Elegiac's Garden, and suggested it may have been a laboratory in which the mythic Creators of Abarat, A'zo and Cha, experimented with the evolution of life.
9:00 a.m. Qualm HahThis is a puzzling place to explore, because it has two distinct faces. At the western edge of the island stands the busy seaport of Tazmagor, where the food is good, the people happy, and the air filled with the din of extemporised songs. Outside the bounds of Tazmagor, toward the eastern end of the island, the land is empty. Nobody builds there, and no one gives a reason for not doing so; this, says Klepp, is peculiar, given how crowded Tazmagor has become.
10:00 a.m. SpakeThis is a mountainous island having many cypress trees on its lower slopes. On its heights, above the trees, stands a simple stage, which has been used for performances of every kind - circuses, slapsticks, and High Tragedy - since the beginning of known time. By a consequence of the island's location, the Theatre is every three days shrouded in a mist that blows from the southeast, surrounding the hill. Tiny flames litter this dark fog and magically illuminate the dramas that are performed on the heights of the hill.
11:00 a.m. NullyTopographically speaking, the island merits little study, but it is the location of one of the Abarat's most extraordinary buildings: the Repository of Remembrance, which is the Abarat's most famous museum. The toys of emperors, the rag dolls of queens, and other now useless but historically and sentimentally valuable objects are kept here.
12:00 p.m. (noon) YzilThe island of Yzil is a lush and temperate forest. Here lives the Princess Breath, a figure of Abaratian legend who by her exhalations creates live things, which are then wafted through the air until they arrive at some suitable habitat. She is mentioned in the first book and seen in the second book by characters Malingo and Candy.
1:00 p.m. HobarookusHobarookus is a small, rocky, swampy island inhabited by pirates and buccaneers. The food produced there is prepared by the best cooks in the Abarat, because of the hour's use as a lunch time. Kalukwa birds, a species of bird whose eggs hatch downy human babies every ninth year, are common throughout the swampy areas, called the Sinks. These babies are commonly taken and raised by the pirates.
2:00 p.m. Orlando's CapOrlando's Cap is a small, ill-favored island. It is here that an insane asylum is located, because the founder believed that the 2:00 hour promotes healing in the soul. Patients are apparently allowed the run of the islands, and have been given permission to follow artistic disciplines, which means that there are many weird and wonderful sculptures and objects created by the patients. It is probably based on Alcatraz Island, which was also the site of an asylum for the insane.
3:00 p.m. The NonceThe Nonce is a beautiful, drowsy island. Most people who visit fall asleep quickly, and dream about the beginning of the world. This implies that the Nonce is the site of that event. It is also notable for its torrential rainstorms, which wreak havoc on the native plants before becoming the water supply of new growth. This new growth takes the form of a rainforest so biologically diverse that there is often little separation between plants and animals. The name "nonce" means "the immediate" or "the moment at hand".
4:00 p.m. GnomonThis island is riddled with the ruins of temples and Oracles. On many parts of the island, the air is filled with thousands of whispering voices, all sounding at once. It is believed that these are the voices of the ghosts of the inhabitants of Gnomon. There are many roads on the island that lead to nowhere, thus leading to the speculation that Gnomon was once part of the island of Soma Plume. Whether this would violate the accepted correspondence of hours to islands is not revealed.
5:00 p.m. Soma PlumeSoma Plume is a large island, twice the size of Gnomon. It houses the Great Noahic Ziggurat, a place that has been used for burial of the dead for many generations.
6:00 p.m. BabiloniumThere is far more entertainment available on this island than would be suggested by its size. It consists of a single, immense carnival, encompassing rides, comedic plays, freak shows, and all other manners of entertainment.
7:00 p.m. ScoriaeScoriae is the meeting place of night and day, also known as the 'Island of Lengthening Shadows'. It has on it a live volcano known as Galigali, as well as the Twilight Palace, which once belonged to King Claus of Day. Galigali has destroyed three great cities in its time: Gosh, Divinium, and Mycassius. Not one person survived the eruptions. Stark ruins of the cities, as well as the Twilight Palace, still remain.
8:00 p.m. Yebba Dim DayThis island, also known as the Great Head, is a sort of informal capital of the islands. It is, in fact, fashioned in the shape of a giant humanoid head and shoulders in the likeness of its late owner Gorki Doodat. It is a labyrinth of tunnels on the inside, and the outside is mostly covered by shabby dwellings, save for the half-dozen high towers atop the statue's cranium. Some of these towers are said to contain individuals of immeasurable age. This island is Candy's first destination in the Abarat.
9:00 p.m. HuffakerHuffaker is a large island, peppered with huge rock formations resembling natural caverns and cathedrals, the largest of which being Hap's Vault. Lydia Hap, after whom this cavern was named, claims that the Vault (which she refers to as the Chamber of the Skein) is in fact the origin of the so-called Abaratic Skein, a thread of light which connects everything in every world to everything else.
10:00 p.m. NinnyhammerThis island has almost no noteworthy characteristics, save for a small town known as High Sladder, which has been taken over by the tribe of feral tarrie-cats. On the northeast side of the island is the wizard Kaspar Wolfswinkel's house, which some, upon seeing the glass observatory in the roof, have mistaken for a giant eye or temple. This house has traditionally been inhabited by wizards or magicians, but little else is said of it. Its dome is broken early on in the story, but the remnants retain the power of magnifying both the image of the viewer inside and the objects he sees outside.
11:00 p.m. JibarishThis is a mostly barren island, on which the rock is fluid, fire is cold, water is like iron, and the air changes any spoken word into complete gibberish, hence the name. Jibarish is a place of paradoxes and confusion. The island is occupied by a tribe of women, who cause the changes. Men are not welcome here.
12:00 a.m. (Midnight) GorgossiumThe island of Midnight is a dark mountain cloaked in red mists. On top is the fortress Iniquisit, a palace of thirteen towers (of which only one is still standing by the end of the second book). The Carrion clan has occupied this Hour long before the emergence of any written record. Rumored features on the island include a forest of gallows and a garden of flesh-eating plants. This island is, until the second book, home to the Prince of Midnight, Christopher Carrion. He is generally known as the cruelest and most evil person in all of the islands of the Abarat, though his cruelty is surpassed by that of his grandmother, Mater Motley, who in the second book destroys twelve of the towers.
The 25th Hour/Odom's SpireThe Twenty-Fifth Hour is also commonly called by other names including "Odom's Spire", "Whence", "Lud", and "the Time Out of Time". It is the home of Diamanda, Joephi, and Mespa, the three sisters of the Fantomaya. The Fantomaya are three powerful, wise enchantresses, who immerse themselves in the constant stream of memories that permeate the Spire. They are the guardians of this stream of memories, which encompass all histories of the universe. The island is also home to Abraham Hollow, a territorial warden, and to his assistants Tempus and Julius, who are called the Fugit Brothers.
OthersThough there are other small landmasses amongst the larger Islands of the archipelago, few of them are large enough to be considered "islands." Few of these landmasses have names. Most notable is the small, desolate collection of boulders known as Vesper's Rock. As the Rock is near Gorgossium and small enough not to be obvious, it is used by Christopher Carrion to perform various magical acts away from the sight of Mater Motley. Another "rock of distinction" is Alice Point, a now defunct viewing station from which people were formerly able to catch glimpses of the Time Out of Time.
These books are absolutely amazing. Clive Barker is set to release the third book in the series in 2011. Rumor has it that after book three, there will be two more books in the series. This is definitely a series to take a look at!
