Rating: 
Summary: A well told story
Review: Clive Barker tells a compelling tale in the way that only he can. I love the way he bring in elements of mysticism into the lives of ordinary people and seeing how they react and adapt to it. The book doesn't have some of the wilder imagery associated with the Books of the Art, but it's similar in feel to these books. Barker has the ability to really pull the reader in to his story. He does this type of story better than anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Barker's best??
Review: Ever since his very first linguistic efforts, the "Books of Blood", Clive Barker was a name one should look out for...his reputation for
both graphic and shocking horror and wonder-
ful, even heartfelt, prose was held up by his
following works.And now comes "Sacrament",
and with it a slight change in tone:
No more horror and purely fantastic elements
(though the finalé is quite bombastic, as usual)
but instead a terrific and poetical book that shows us a possible end of all animal life, but
also the danger we human beings are in:
AIDS.In this sense, the "bad guy" Jacob is
a metaphor for that terrible disease, or at least
can be interpreted as such.
And the tragic ending lingers on in our memory,
for a long, long time..
Rating:
Summary: Worship Worship Worship
Review: Guess what? The author of The Bible of Fantasy and Horror (check out my reviews of Imajica) has just done it again. A new world being created as you read. Strange. Weird. But very very real. A little bit of Imajica seems to seep through, but it is a completely different kind of book. Can't help reding once you started. Eat the pages. His ink seems to be some sort of hypnotizing kind of magical stuff. (Wow... that must sound like I'm in some kind of asylum, writing lines like that.) Anyway, it wouldn't hurt you to try reading it. I've done it, and see where I ended up..
Rating: 
Summary: Barker an exorcism of his personal life
Review: Having read all of his previous works, this mixture of mythical, magical and homosexual does not live up to expectations. It is a book that is never quite sure what it wants to be. Ecological champion? Homosexual confession? Mythological fanatsy? AIDS parable? . If your a Barker fan, its still worth a read, if not try reading 'The Damnation Game' first.
Rating: 
Summary: Not up to Barker's standards
Review: I am a huge Barker fan, but was slightly disappointed by "Sacrament". There was a poor mix of normality and 'Barkerism'; it seemed to me that Barker was confused as to whether he wanted to write a regular story or whether he wanted to divulge into his realm of fantasy/horror as only he can do. The characters were wonderful, however. Barker has a gift of making the reader become the characters, seeing the story through their eyes. Nevertheless, this book was not up to the standards Barker set for such epics as "Weaveworld" and "Imajica".
Rating:
Summary: Very good, if not quite wonderful
Review: I bought "Sacrament" a few years ago when it first came out in hardcover (at a bookstore in the mall in Pennsylvania where George Romero filmed "Dawn of the Dead"). I thought it would be cool to have a Clive Barker book that had breathed that air. But for some reason, I never read the book until just recently. I had read everything Clive Barker had written up to then and have now read all of his books except for "Galilee," which I plan to read soon."Sacrament" is a good book, and at times a very good book (there are occasional flashes of brilliance), but it never quite achieves the imaginative momentum to crest the "wonderful book" horizon as "Weaveworld," "Damnation Game" or some of the "Books of Blood" did. I really enjoyed reading this book, but felt that the narrative meandered at times and the book probably could have been about 100 pages shorter. Barker does grapple with some deep and moving themes, however, and this book is definitely worth the read. The protagonist, Will Rabjohns, a nature photographer, obsessed since childhood with bearing witness to the terrible end of things, is a well-drawn character that will illicit the reader's empathy and involvement in the story. Will must come to terms with what it means to be a living (and therefore mortal) creature in the world. He also comes to appreciate the pain and joy that come from realizing that we are responible for the creation of our own selves. An entertaining and thought-provoking book. More grounded in the spiritual dilemmas of our world than many of Barker's other excellent fantasy tales.
Rating:
Summary: I'm going to give him a second chance. But this is terrible.
Review: I bought sacrament expecting something grand
I didn't get something grand
I'm not sure if I got anything at all. The book starts very promising. A photographer in the North Pole. Interesting.
Oh he falls into a coma, and flash backs into his childhood. Pretty interesting story. Ok, I'm wrong. It's not really that interesting. It's incredibly clichéd. Maybe Barker thought if the main character was gay, it would make it original. It doesn't. But hey, it's got nice descriptions, and the characters aren't half bad either. I'll keep on going. Now there are some pretty disturbing scenes in here. But I'd expect that from a horror writer. Oh, he wakes up from the coma. Now it goes deeply into his personal and love life, which is totally and completely irrelevant to the main story. But hey, if he's gay, you got to put at least a hundred pages of gratuitous romance and sex scenes that does absolutely nothing in the end, don't you? Now this book keeps building up a huge mystery throughout the first two thirds of the book. That's ok, I actually LIKE that. But what I don't like is when it doesn't really solve anything. In other words, Sacrament is pretty much the most unfulfilling book I've ever read in my entire life. The problems aren't solved, they just seem to fade into the background. The whole super-natural element is totally unexplainable, and when it starts making a little bit of sense it disappears completely. I have nothing against having an established horror author getting in touch with his sentimental side (Hell, I actually prefer Stephen King without the gore), but if this is Barker's nice side, then by God man, HIDE IT! Too much filler(the main character's love life), too much build-up that wraps it up in the most disappointing pages in the history of literature (Domus Mundi and Rukenau do not live up to the hype established in the build-up, not by a long shot). I have Imajica sitting in my shelf, waiting to be read. I honestly hope that will be better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Insistent, haunting
Review: I couldn't stop reading the book. I *wanted* to, but I couldn't stop. The story would lurk there in the back of my mind, waiting, asking, 'Don't you want your own questions answered?' Sacrament was deeply engrossing in that it asks the questions that we all ask one time or another: What does life mean? And Clive Barker takes us into his own version of an answer
Rating: 
Summary: One for the fireplace!
Review: I do not enjoy reading books that start in one time era (present), move back 30 or 40 years and then resume back in the present time zone. Why couldn't it start at the begining and continue on?
My bigest complaint was I couldn't finish it. After reading approx. 33% of it it became apparent to my disgust that the lead character was a homosexual. Would it be too hard to forewarn a potential reader that the the book would have a very strong queer content to it.
Clive Barker is an author I will avoid at all costs!
I still have a repugnant taste when I even think of it (Sacrement)
Rating:
Summary: Sacrament is worth the money!
Review: I find it outrageous that just because this book's main character is a gay man, immediately people jump to to the assumptions that Mr. Barker himself is gay- well, so what if he is? It does not alter the fact that he is still a good writer. Sacrament, unlike his other two novels I read, (Weaveworld and The Damnation Game) is a far more credible tale, and more enjoyable. I was hoping that Sacrament would redeem Barker of his flop with The Damnation Game, and it did. A pat on the back of this Liverpudlian!
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