an excerpt from Paige Turner's Bookhooks review of Abarat

Candy Quackenbush finds herself in the most boring of all places - her home town of Chickentown, U.S.A... She's physically abused by her beer-drinking, out-of-work lout of a Dad and she's largely ignored by her mom. Her teacher abuses her verbally and she just can't seem to get a foothold on her dismally bleak future. Somehow life in the chicken factories does not excite her...

It's a good thing that she beckons a sea to come and carry her away to the wonders of Abarat! In Abarat, Candy finds a purpose. She senses that she has been to this world before, and yet, how can that be? Abarat is an archipelago of islands, one for each hour of the day. Each island is locked in time, displaying the qualities of that particular hour (permanent darkness, sleepy denizens, etc.) The twenty-fifth island is Odom's Spire, a place of dreams and timelessness -- and a nasty pair of brothers. More...