Clive's biz adventure: super author Clive Barker expands his yarn about one plucky girl named Candy and her exploits in a fantasy universe

Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War * Clive Barker * HarperCollins * $24.99

After a massive publicity launch in 2000--including the announcement of an $8 million deal with Disney that includes TV productions, a video game, and a linked theme-park attraction--Clive Barker's young adult-oriented Abarat quartet continues with volume 2, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War.

For Barker fans who may have missed the first installment, the latest Abarat continues the adventures of Candy Quackenbush of Chickentown, Minn., as she explores the islands of the archipelago of Abarat, a mysterious parallel universe to which she was transported in the first novel. Accompanied by her faithful friend Malingo, Candy is pursued by the diabolical Christopher Carrion, a supernatural despot bent on the full conquest of Abarat. Carrion senses that something in Candy's secret past may hold the key to thwarting his plans for domination.

Barker's humor is in especially fine form: In one scene Carrion's henchman Leeman Vol, a disgusting creature with an affection for insects, loses some of the lice and worms living in his scalp (he calls them his "children"). When he bewails his loss, Carrion scolds, "Stop sulking! There'll be other lice, just as adorable."

And Barker's chilling touch as a horror writer is never too far away. In another scene Carrion uses his unearthly power to torture a miner. When the man pleads for mercy and an explanation for his punishment, Carrion answers unmercifully that he was picked because he was bullying another worker.

While a child's mind may nimbly arrange and organize the ever-rotating multiplicity of characters in this novel, it's likely to have a mild hallucinogenic effect on adult readers, but Barker's storytelling skill leavens the disorientation through occasional grounding views of Chickentown and its citizens' reactions to Candy's disappearance.

In spite of its otherworldly themes, Barker's world is profoundly moral in the best sense. Gay and lesbian Barker fans who buy this luxuriously printed volume for the children in their lives will appreciate the implicit messages of diversity's beauty and female empowerment, embodied by Candy. In a moving sequence, Candy and her mother meet in a dream, daughter assuring mother that she is alive and well; unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Candy doesn't spend her time whining that there's no place like home. She enjoys her adventures.

The text is illustrated with more than 125 original full-color paintings by Barker. And although the novel is marketed to young readers, the story is engaging enough that some adults may find themselves buying the first Abarat to read how it all started--and to prepare themselves for volumes 3 and 4.

Rowe's second collection of essays, Other Men's Sons, will be published by Mosaic Press this winter.

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