Barker, Clive Books

The Living Dead

Stephen King, Joe Hill, George R. R. Martin, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Laurell K. Hamilton, Joe R. Lansdale, Poppy Z. Brite, Harlan Ellison

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

An Amazing Compendium 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

There are a bunch of good compendiums of short stories that have to do with horror topics, and even a few dedicated to zombies (the editor of The Living Dead even goes out of his way to list a few). But The Living Dead is probably one of the best rounded 'theme' anthologies I've ever come across. Each of the stories are solid and contribute to a rich tapestry of diverse zombie stories. No two are really alike and each one is well-chosen to really get to the reading audience. No matter what your taste, you will find something in this book that you'll like, I think, even if you're not a zombie fan. The author also takes the time to recognize that zombie stories are a wonderful way to address issues of a particularly sensitive nature and chose stories that have solid messages without being preachy, and are well-written in the process. There is no way to describe how much I enjoyed this book and I recommended it to many of my friends. Check it out, even if you're not much of a short story writer, each separate story is another chance to find something you might enjoy.

Editorial Review:

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!" From White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil to World War Z, zombies have invaded popular culture, becoming the monsters that best express the fears and anxieties of the modern west. Gathering together the best zombie literature of the last three decades from many of today's most renowned authors of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror, including Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, George R. R. Martin, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Joe R. Lansdale, The Living Dead covers the broad spectrum of zombie fiction.

Clive Barker's Books of Blood 1-3

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red." For those who only know Clive Barker through his long multigenre novels, this one-volume edition of the Books of Blood is a welcome chance to acquire the 16 remarkable horror short stories with which he kicked off his career. For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind. Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes:

I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.

Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago.

These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them. --Fiona Webster

Mister B. Gone

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 77 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Out of Hell and into Amazon 4 out of 5 stars.
16 of 19 people found this review helpful.

(Hardcover version)

When you read this review can you hear my voice in your head? How does it sound like? Is it someone you know? Well that is what I thought. You know you shouldn't read this review, but there you go doing it anyway, don't tell me I didn't warn you.

This unique book is both a story about a demon and a conversation with that demon all at once. My first paragraph is my feeble attempt at imitating what goes on in the book. In the book there are several requests to stop reading the book and burn it instead, and some of these requests are threats of torture and threats of eternal damnation if you don't burn the book. This gets a little tired after a while, but I found the concept of a demon both telling his gruesome life story and talking to you and threatening you all at the same time quite innovative and creepy.

The name of the demon is Jakabok Botch. He escaped the ninth circle of Hell in the 14th century. He has been with us ever since and if you buy this book he will be living with you too. He is ugly, severely burned, has two tails, he is hateful, and he likes to take warm baths in the fresh blood of infants.

I admit I did not think the book was very scary, but for me it was still a page turner. I found the book to be interesting and creative. I found the comparisons between the heartless barbarism of people in less enlightened times (as well as today) and that of demons in Hell enlightening. Earth looks a lot like just another circle of Hell in which we are our own demons. However, in this circle of Hell, there is a choice, a choice that the eternally damned demons do not have. Demons and Humans are so similar and yet so different.

An episode in the book that I found to be quite intriguing was the war and then the negotiation between the angels of heaven and the demons of hell over the written word at the time and place of Gutenberg's invention. This event determined our future and this book had a very peculiar place in this history.

With regards to Clive Barker I am a first time reader and contrary to what Publishers Weekly told me I still liked it. I should say that I have seen the Hellraiser movies and I've bought a pinhead mask for Halloween so I am not totally unfamiliar with Clive Barker, but I have never read a book of his before. If this book was among Clive Barker's worst then I cannot wait to check out the other books (I'll go for Hellbound Heart next). I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read something different and odd, but not as a good horror book.

Editorial Review:

You hold in your hands not a book at all, but a terrifying embodiment of purest evil. Can you feel the electric tingle in your fingers as you are absorbed by the demon Jakabok's tale of his unintentional ascent from the depths of the Inferno? Do you sense the cold dread worming its way into your bloodstream, your sinews, the marrow of your bones as you read more deeply into his earthly education and unspeakable acts? The filth you now grasp has been waiting patiently for you for nearly six hundred years. And now, before you are completely in its thrall, you would do well to follow the foul creature's admonition and destroy this abomination of ink and paper before you turn a single leaf and are lost forever.

You have been warned.

The Hellbound Heart: A Novel

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 63 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Books are always better than the movies 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I remember watching the 1st Hellraiser for the very first time not long ago. Now to many of you that seems kind of strange, but I'm only 21 and so I had no clue who Clive Barker was or what this story was all about.

After watching the movie I wasn't all that impressed. But I remember noticing that the film was based on a book called The Hellbound Heart, so I went and bought the book and was surprised to see it's small size. I glanced through the first couple of pages and found myself immediately hooked. I couldn't believe how clean and elicit the prose were in this novella. I couldn't stop reading it.

What I learned while reading this novella was this: It's true when they say that books are better than movies (I truly believe that!). This book is not only, at times, sickening to the stomach because of the powerful impact of imagery, causing some of the most horrifying moments in any story that I have ever read, but also pleasing to a reader's eye, because the writing style is just remarkable!

Barker has become one of my favorite writers. He's witty and descriptive; he's clever and dark; he's all around a great writer!

If you get a chance, or just want something entertaining to read that will also make your stomach cringe, grab this novella and read it. You won't regret it.

Editorial Review:

Clive Barker is widely acknowledged as the master of nerve-shattering horror. The Hellbound Heart is one of his best, one of the most dead-frightening stories you are likely to ever read, a story of the human heart and all the great terrors and ecstasies within.

Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 133 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

830 pages of nothing 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I like Clive Barker even though he veers from great to great stinker. The Imajica characters act in unimaginable ways. They seem driven by an unrealistic soul that is impractical and childish. The plot is driven by the characters' need for drama when none is needed. They become tedious and fastidious. The book is melodramatic and everyone is a drama queen looking for attention.

Editorial Review:

From master storyteller Clive Barker comes an epic tale of myth, magic, and forbidden passion -- complete with new illustrations and a new Appendix.

Imajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.

That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own, but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie 'oh' pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever.

Weaveworld

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 118 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Weaveworld 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

WEAVEWORLD BY CLIVE BARKER: A relatively early book in Clive Barker's career when he was still living in England, it is set within his hometown of Liverpool. Starting out seemingly normal with normal people, it immediately jumps to the mundane and insane. Weaveworld is a book that will delight, appall, horrify, and leave you thinking about the meaning of place and belonging somewhere.

The main character, Cal Mooney, is a person going nowhere fast in a dead-end job, until he comes into contact with this large rolled up carpet that is being moved from a house. Gazing into its intricate patterns, he sees more at work here, and discovers paradise for the first time. As the book develops and more characters are added, he discovers that the magically collected designs within the carpet is what is known as The Fugue: an ancient civilization and people who have lived since the beginning of existence but over time, after cohabiting with humanity, have lost numbers and suffered destruction. Over a hundred years ago The Fugue, using magic, picked the best pieces of their world and their people and wrapped themselves into the design of the carpet, safe and protected, until they will have a safer place to live in the future. Guardians were appointed over time to protect The Fugue, but now they are all gone. The Fugue's greatest enemy, The Scourge, was a menace while they were living in the world, but now lies dormant while they are in the carpet. That is until they are freed and begin to change the world around them; old enemies come out of the woodwork, and Mooney, along with the daughter of one of the guardians, Suzanna Parish, must work to protect and save The Fugue before it is too late. While not every question is fully answered, or every problem resolved, the book is still an incredible journey.

If you haven't read Clive Barker before, Weaveworld is the perfect introductory novel to his language, his incredible imagination, and horrors you never thought possible.
[...]

Editorial Review:

Clive Barker has made his mark on modern fiction by exposing all that is surreal and magical in the ordinary world --- and exploring the profound and overwhelming terror that results. With its volatile mix of the fantastical and the contemporary, the everyday and the otherworldly, Weaveworld is an epic work of dark fantasy and horror -- a tour de force from one of today's most forceful and imaginative artists.

The Thief of Always

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 130 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

.eraweB 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

A ten-year-old boy named Harvey, bored with his life, falls to the wiles of a seductively welcoming being named Rictus, and becomes a guest at a seemingly wondrous place called Holiday House. At Holiday House, each fun-filled day contains four seasons: and seasons at their very best. The springtime which comes each morning ushers in blossoming flowers and explosions of greenery; the summers that fill the afternoons are always those rare perfect kind one experiences but a few times in the school-less, cloud-less summertime of youth; the autumns that ripens as evening sets in sees the trees dyed with bright colors, as the air cools and the breeze smells sweetly of the bounty of unseen fields. And then winter takes over the night, cold, crisp, perfect for sleeping-in or sitting beside a crackling fire. It's all too good to be true---which of course it is.

Clive Barker's dark fantasy, part fairy tale and part horror story, is clearly intended as a vehicle for appreciative adults to rekindle some of the lost themes of childhood, when the world was simultaneously magical and threatening. In this the imaginative Liverpudlian nearly succeeds. The one serious flaw in The Thief of Always is the same one I've found in nearly everything Clive Barker has written, and that is...as best I can describe it...his story lacks a soul. I don't know any other way to put it. This registers in the ease with which Barker's characters can later be put out of mind, and the acceptance one experiences when something terrible happens to someone we've just spent the last however-many pages reading about. I know legions of Barker fans won't agree with me there, but I have always sensed that about Clive Barker's works, be it The Books of Blood, The Damnation Game, Weaveword, Cabal, or even here, in what was mostly a charming, dark little story.

The Thief of Always is good, it's just not THAT good. It's like a trip through a shattered looking glass; it's flat in a few spots, it's neither character nor plot-driven, and it rushes past far too fast in places where I found myself wishing we could linger. Where Bradbury or King might have gotten the dark fantasy elements right in a tale like this and rendered The Thief of Always an everlasting classic, Barker is just not up to the task.

Editorial Review:

Mr. Hood's Holiday House has stood for a thousand years, welcoming countless children into its embrace. It is a place of miracles, a blissful rounds of treats and seasons, where every childhood whim may be satisfied...

There is a price to be paid, of course, but young Harvey Swick, bored with his life and beguiled by Mr. Hood's wonders, does not stop to consider the consequences. It is only when the House shows it's darker face -- when Harvey discovers the pitiful creatures that dwell in its shadows -- that he comes to doubt Mr. Hood's philanthropy.

The House and its mysterious architect are not about to release their captive without a battle, however. Mr. Hood has ambitious for his new guest, for Harvey's soul burns brighter than any soul he has encountered in a thousand years...

The Great and Secret Show

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Interesting but ultimately flawed. 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"The Great And Secret Show" is a novel that is at turns fascinating, horrifying, and (unfortunately) disappointing.

The first part of the novel is great, with Randolph Jaffe slowly unravelling the mysteries of the secret society called the Shoal and the pathway to the Art, a type of magic that can allow one to enter the dreams of humanity.

After discovering the power of the Nuncio and being changed (along with Fletcher) we get some great scenes showing the scope of their battle through time and space, culminating in the Society of Virgins' fateful swim in the lake above the caverns.

After that point, however, things slow to a crawl. The final showdown between Jaffe (now "the Jaff") and Fletcher never materializes, and the terata and hallucigenia - their fevered creations - never really battle either.

The plot involving Howie, Tommy-Ray, and Jo-Beth fizzles without much resolution. In fact the whole last third of the novel is thrown into chaos by the arrival of new characters (Tesla, Grillo, Vance, Harry D'Amour) where none was necessary. Also, Barker inserts a twist which puts the Jaff on the side of "good" just as he was about to achieve his evil aims. This bizarre and unnecessary contortion of the story wrecks any suspense or momentum that had been building.

Barker introduces a new threat when his orginal baddie (Jaffe) would have been more than adequate. Tommy-Ray's plot also goes off the rails...it seems as though Barker completely lost control of the sub-plot and then just cobbled something together as best he could at the end.

The Art, when it does make its appearance, is quite anti-climatic. Quiddity is interesting, but Ephemeris turns out to be bland and unexciting, instead of the promised center of "the great and secret show". By that point, most readers will probably be daydreaming about other shows...network TV ones.

Brilliant premise, exciting start, but a last third which reminds one of a train running out of steam a long, long way from the station.

Editorial Review:

In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America.In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil. Carrying its readers from the first stirring of consciousness to a vision of the end of the world, The Great and Secret Show is a breathtaking journey in the company of a master storyteller.

The Reconciliation (Imajica, Book 2)

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Imagibore 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 15 people found this review helpful.

This book starts of very well, with lots of interesting idea's which you hope exspect to be explained more fully as you read on.

However the deeper you get into the book the more you notice how half baked it all seems, jumping from one outlandish idea to another, and contradicting itself at every turn (one example is: 'nothing disturbed her from this sleep, not even dreams' and then in the next sentance 'she was awoken from whatever dream she was having') it is full of contradictions which often made me shake my head in disbelief.

You are led to beleive that what the imagica 'is' will be explained in the fullness of time, but the conclusion to the story was the biggest flop in a book ive ever read, I wont give anything away, suffice to say that the imagica is never explained, I dont think the author even had an idea to start with.

The way men are constantly refered to as the 'destroyers' and women as something so much better is strange to start with, but as the author continues to press his 'point' home it gets bewildering, boring, and then quite worrying (does he hate his own sex so much he has to put them down in every other sentance?)

I think if Mr Barker had taken more time to develop his idea's and set the story out across more books (I never complain about buying a story that is set across 3 or even 6 different books!) it could of been a great and interesting tale.

Sadly it is a mix of half baked mix philosophy, religion and magic, in places it found it so boring I had to put it down and could only read small chunks at a time, by the time I was nearing the end I was skimming pages of seemingly pointless drivel trying to get to somthing substantial, which alas never came.

I cant recomend this as a purchase, rent it from the library but dont waste your money.

Editorial Review:

The magical tale of ill-fated lovers lost among worlds teetering on the edge of destruction, where their passion holds the key to escape.

There has never been a book like Imajica. Transforming every expectation offantasy fiction with its heady mingling of radical sexuality and spiritual anarchy, it has carried its millions of readers into regions of passion and philosophy that few books have even attempted to map. It's an epic in every way; vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. A book of erotic mysteries and perverse violence. A book of ancient, mythological landscapes and even more ancient magic.

Cabal

Clive Barker

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

why haven't you already read this book? 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Early Barker, stunning, beautiful, horrifying, terrifying, heartbreaking. All the things we love Clive for. If you haven't already read this book, why the heck not? If you have, read it again. And again.

Horror's New Breed 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Horror had run its course in the 90s when Silence of the Lawbs won an Oscar. Or did it? Clive Barker became the future of horror, these cheap paperback novels where you could see the pulp it was printed on. This contains the basis for the film Nightbreed; it was an international flop! Still had enough of a following to be known amongst movie and dark culture afficienados. However, while he may have been the latest in a long line of kings of horror in his late 1980s through the late 90s in his prime, with Clive Barker still around it seems society hasn't changed and some of us such as myself are even going backwards possibly, stuck in the late 80s- early 90s with our comic book menace, Vampirethe Masquerade role playing game, GURPS, LARP, etc. But it is still good to see someone so innovative for his time as to think of entirely original ideas like the Hellraiser franchise. Clive Barker has some originality- most cheerleaders need to get some fresh concepts, still stuck in the boring high school society that we got into this dark fantasy culture in the first place- out of rebellion.

Editorial Review:

For more than two decades, Clive Barker has twisted the worlds of horrific and surrealistic fiction into a terrifying, transcendent genre all his own. With skillful prose, he enthralls even as he horrifies; with uncanny insight, he disturbs as profoundly as he reveals. Evoking revulsion and admiration, anticipation and dread, Barker's works explore the darkest contradictions of the human condition: our fear of life and our dreams of death.