Every single one of the supporting characters of Clive Barker's Abarat books, as well as the (immensely cool) setting itself, is infinitely more interesting than the protagonist. She's a Lost Princess, and we've all seen it before, but she travels with a version of the Horned Man who has a separate and separately conscious head on each antler spine, and is being courted by the King of Pain as he chases her through an archipelago in which each island is literally a personification of an hour of the day (as well as one for the Mysterious Twenty-Fifth Hour).

Unfortunately, she is so awful, so truly fucking flat and boring, and the plot is so lousy that I can't possibly recommend the books. It's a damn shame.