The moral and philosophical stakes are raised: actions have consequences in what must be a real, though alternate, world. By introducing Candy to what we have already seen, the solipsism of childhood is undercut: there is no room for this to be only a dream. What is inevitably lost is the first astonishment - the sense of awe as we step out of the Kansas house with our child-avatar into a Technicolor Oz.īut something is also gained. In other words, we do not fall down a rabbit hole into the magic kingdom with our protagonist: we know about the magic already, and have to wait for her to catch up. Unlike most classics of this kind, Abarat starts with a prologue in the fantasyland itself, tracking an incomprehensible conversation between three of its inhabitants, before we meet Candy.
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