Abarat
Abarat • Book 1
by Clive Barker
Narrated by Richard Ferrone
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
Richard Ferrone reads Clive Barker's fever-dream archipelago like a man who's been to the dark islands and barely made it back.
- Great if you want: dark imaginative fantasy with Barker's signature surreal strangeness
- Listening experience: episodic and dreamlike — each island shifts the mood
- Narration: Ferrone's deep, unhurried voice grounds Barker's most chaotic invention
- Skip if: you need linear plotting or a fully resolved ending
About This Audiobook
Abarat is set in the Abarat, an archipelago where each island corresponds to a different hour of the day, from the perpetual light of afternoon islands to the absolute darkness of Midnight. Candy Quill, a girl from the most boring town in America, is swept into this world and discovers a destiny she never expected, confronting the darkness that emanates from the island of Midnight and its ruler, Christopher Carrion.
Richard Ferrone's narration gives Barker's rich imaginative vocabulary the gravity it requires, his deep voice well-suited to the novel's gothic register. The Abarat is one of the most visually inventive fantasy worlds in the genre, and Ferrone's descriptive command keeps the geography legible even in audio, where the original illustrations cannot assist. The eleven-hour runtime unfolds with the expansive energy of a writer deploying his full imaginative range.
