Rating: 
Summary: Generic House Wife Fiction with a Heart of Suck
Review: This book is generic housewife fiction. It's very unimaginative and boring. The book, which is over 600 pages longs, tells a story that can be told in a paragraph. The latter applies only to the first 300 pages. I couldn't finish this book because it's like being kicked in the face with a big boot that has a knife on it and that knife has an even longer, sharper knife on it.
The explanation for how the events that transpire in this book is so bad that it doesn't need mentioning. It's just a terrible, terrible book. It has a lot of sexual things so that losers can get excited and live vicariously through the book. There is a great deal of obscenities because it's not a clever book so there's no reason to not curse.
It's like a bad made for TV movie with poor special effects. It's on late because it's technically soft-core porn, but only technically.
What happens is, this guy somehow gets superpowers. The somehow in the book is getting drunk and walking in the desert. Then he meets another guy who makes a formula that gives them stronger super powers. One is bad, the other is good. They fight for a long time and end up falling in a hole. It rains. A lake is formed. Four girls swim in it and the two guys rape them so that they can have soldiers with physical manifestations because these two guys are ethereal. Out of the four girls, only three children come out and live. They grow up, the two guys escape from the hole and try to contact them. The super powers of the guys are that one, the bad one, can manifest monsters out of fears, and the other, the good, can make nice monsters out of fantasies. The two of them escape the hole and prepare for a great battle.
There are many characters in this book and each of them has a purpose. What that purpose is I will not find out because I stopped reading after the sentence, "Without thinking, he put his fingers, which smelled strongly of her sex, to his nose and lips." I exclaimed, "Whoa! Too much bad book for me," and quit, but I recommend you never begin, unless you like being kicked in the face with a big boot that has a knife on it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Masterpiece of Dark Fantasy
Review: "The Great and Secret Show" is one of the best books I have ever read. I've read many Barker books and while all of them are fantastic, this one is unbelievable. Barker intwertwines his magnificent use of prose with his uncanny knack for details. This book will not dissapoint!Barker is superior not only to other horror novelists, but most writers in general. He writes, but at heart he's an artist. "Show" is his finest work yet. It combines unforgettable characters, magic, the apocalypse, horror, and a disgruntled mailworker in a fantastic adventure story that will surely stick with you forever.
Rating:
Summary: mesmerization
Review: a powerful, eloquent work that coalesces mysterious events in the lives of strange, alluring characters.Written in the beautiful, haunting style of a brilliantly talented writer - one is made to realize that Barker is in a class all his own. I am mesmerized and perplexed to the point of absolute joy by his work!
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars, of course, but...
Review: Considering I love Barkers style, imagination, ability... (hmmm, obsessed fan I am not, I promise) and The Great and Secret Show definately showcased his talents (and fairly early in his career...) However, there is a good bit of gratuitous sex. I first read this book when I was 11... and I wouldn't let my 11-year old read it (if I had an 11-yr old!). If you are looking for something different, here's where you should start looking. This book is strange, imaginative, different... Just read it!!
Rating:
Summary: Thinking Man's (or Woman's) Horror
Review: GSS is a compelling mixture of stories that only a master like Clive Barker could pull together. Among the many stories a lucky ready will find in this book are star-crossed lovers (ala Romeo&Juliet), clashing forces of magic vs. technology, believeable characters with everyday concerns overcome by extraordinary events, "sins of the fathers", self-immolation, visits from ethereal porn stars and just to finish things off in style, a minor apocalypse that destroys the sunny California suburb of Palomo Grove. (By the way, this brief synopsis doesn't begin to cover a fraction of the characters and events in this book!) GSS is a challenging, thought-provoking book that will definitely appeal to people who love horror stories with substance.
Rating:
Summary: Thinking Man's (or Woman's) Horror
Review: GSS is a compelling mixture of stories that only a master like Clive Barker could pull together. Among the many stories a lucky ready will find in this book are star-crossed lovers (ala Romeo&Juliet), clashing forces of magic vs. technology, believeable characters with everyday concerns overcome by extraordinary events, "sins of the fathers", self-immolation, visits from ethereal porn stars and just to finish things off in style, a minor apocalypse that destroys the sunny California suburb of Palomo Grove. (By the way, this brief synopsis doesn't begin to cover a fraction of the characters and events in this book!) GSS is a challenging, thought-provoking book that will definitely appeal to people who love horror stories with substance.
Rating:
Summary: Wow.
Review: I consider myself a fairly slow reader, but I finished this book in about a week. It was not at all hard to read or understand. I could not put it down!! I almost called off work just to be able to finish the last chapter! It's a huge mix of everything possible (love, war - not your typical war either!, murder, sex, insanity, imagination, monsters, fears, dreams) and you never know what to expect! I really enjoyed this book. "Everville" is on my bookshelf waiting it's turn to be read.
Rating:
Summary: Wow.
Review: I consider myself a fairly slow reader, but I finished this book in about a week. It was not at all hard to read or understand. I could not put it down!! I almost called off work just to be able to finish the last chapter! It's a huge mix of everything possible (love, war - not your typical war either!, murder, sex, insanity, imagination, monsters, fears, dreams) and you never know what to expect! I really enjoyed this book. "Everville" is on my bookshelf waiting it's turn to be read.
Rating:
Summary: A master of seemingly inexhaustible gifts.
Review: I don't believe words alone can do justice to not only this novel, but the man responsible for its making. I read a Clive Barker interview several years ago where he says he loves working with big canvases- the bigger the canvas, the more possibilities there are to create, and create he does! There is a big, sprawling canvas set out before you here when you read this book. The characters pull you in with them, making you feel what they feel, see what they see, hear what they hear. The description of the other worlds, and the mysterious sea of Quiddity really hooked me. Perhaps its most redeeming value is the fact that so many different strands of ideas are tossed in and jumbled up that you think he will screw up, you think there is no possible way of ending this, not without calling for a Deus Ex Machina- but he has an ace up his sleeve that he lets slide out at the perfect moment, bringing the First Book of the Art to a close. What is very upsetting, though, is to know that Everville, the second book, is no longer in print. Which is why I am thankful I have found it through a used book dealer. The only other negative aspect of all this is to wait for the third installment to come out...and when it comes out, knowing that there won't be anymore of it.
Rating: 
Summary: Clive at his best
Review: I'm a big fan of Clive Barker. His imagination is abstract enough to make some people dismiss him with contept, while others like me take pleasure in the ability to wander through his world and explore whats on offer.
The aspects Clive puts in his books run through theologys religions and belief systems across the world, and in a way the reader can get under there skin in a world of fiction which can then be left as the book shuts, giving the experience without the complications which adhering to the systems that flow through his writting demand if you choose that way of life. Its escapism, in its best form. Alternative realities, normal people becoming... well, just Becoming.
Enjoy!
|
