Rating: 
Summary: Sacrament is well-written and entertaining
Review: Sacrament is more grounded in reality than most Clive Barker books, but it does have strong fantasy elements. If you like Barker's writing style, you will enjoy reading this book. The hero is a gay man who makes a journey to find himself, and the truth, and all that, but Barker pulls it off and entertains us with his usual inventive characters and supernatural doings. A moving, well-written book.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read...
Review: Sacrament is the least read of Clive Barker's novels. It apparently only sold half the usual number of his books, and there is one simple reason for this: the protagonist is gay. In this day and age it is a real shame that readers have been put off by such an unimportant detail...
The story concerns Will Rabjohns, a wildlife photographer who is attacked by a grizzly bear and left in a coma. During months of unconsciousness he goes dreaming of his childhood in Yorkshire, where he met two enigmatic characters, Jacob Steep and Rosa McGee, who have lived for centuries in ignorance of what they are or how they came about, and have strange ideas about what the world is and their role in it. Will re-discovers how Steep shaped his life, and on waking from his coma is drawn back into contact with him again, as Steep goes about his murderous crusade. Steep, you see, has a perverse desire to make certain species of animals extint and hunts them with a satanic glee...
This, of course, is just the barest bones of the story. As ever with Barker's books there is a world of content on these bones: his sharply realised characters, his natural sense of pace, his prose approaches perfection here, his ability to tell his story with original, unpredictable scenes, and the nuggets of philosophy that his work always contains. It is in this last capacity that Barker has excelled himself with this novel. The nature of God, existence, life and death are examined with an intelligent, well-considered insight that I have never encountered before in any media anywhere else, including Barker's own. If that makes the book sound like a tough read, it isn't at all. Barker has an instinct for description that makes reading his stuff effortless; you don't so much read it as see it, and you glide through the pages so quickly.
For anyone whose mind is sharper than the average turnip, and can't help but wonder occasionally about whether or not there's a God and what life is for etc this is a book for you. It doesn't pretend to supply answers, of course, but throws up so many possibilities, and so many words of wisdom, that you absolutely come away with the parameters of your own mind stretched. I can safely say that you've never read a book like this before. There's nobody out there that mingles reality and fantasy like Barker, and gives a sense of there being more to the world than meets the eye.
If you're looking for a book with real weight, real imagination and intelligence, get your paws on this before you yourself become extint...
Rating: 
Summary: 'Sacrament' plays on the wounds of the heart...
Review: Some that never heal and some that we never knew existed. In reading this book many times I found myself becoming a part of Will Rabjohns. The main character is struck down by a wild polar bear and is in a coma for several months reliving his childhood encounter with two mystical creatures...Jacob Steep and Rosa McGee. These two figures stir him up from his muck of family life and edge his longing for adventure he did not know existed. What Will does not realize is that this adventure involves the darkest of mindplay and may in the end cost him his life. At 12 years old that is not something that is mustered. Will awakens from his coma to a newfound urgency to find Jacob and Rosa and solve the mysteries of his childhood adventures that made him the man he is today...a famous photographer of extinct wildlife. And ultimately finding the Tabula Rasa...a place he discovers is as magical and horrifying as the intracasies of his own heart. In the end you discover through the eyes of Will Rabjohn mysteries of your own and the want to linger there for eons.
Rating:
Summary: MY FAVORITE CLIVE BARKER BOOK
Review: The book begins with a character named will rabjons who photographs polar bears for a living, and you begin to think to yourself; "BORING" although this is in fact the building up of suspense for the greatest read you will ever experience. The book is like pulp fiction in the way that not all the story is in one time period i.e. the book begins when he is about 40 then later in the book he is in his childhood and by the end of the book he is back to the age of about 40, this is all done whilst giving the reader an experience like no other book will i.e. it has horror, suspense, dramatic, romantic [the only bad thing in the book], thrilling and supernatural storytelling throughout, the only downside is that there is softcore gay sex in the book which can make some readers turn away in discust, although there is only about two happernings of this in the book and it is worth putting up with for such a great read, I have nothing against gays so the fact that the main character was gay did not bother me although it has bothered many other readers which you will see if you read the other reviews of this book.
Rating:
Summary: One of the finest books I've read this year
Review: This book was totally absorbing, and among the finest I've read this year. The character developement is phenominal; Barker puts you into the main character's--Will Rabjohns's--head and gives you everything he's about. The story has strong elements of fantasy, but its close proximity to reality throughout most of it makes it strongly grounded and very plausible while you're reading it. NOTE: If you are homophobic (meaning: if homosexuality offends you) don't read this book. This is partially friendly advice, but mostly that I don't want to here your closed minded crap on here.
Rating:
Summary: Very Well Done
Review: This book was writen well enough to get me interested. I usually don't get into any sort of 'sci-fi' type of book...but this was done so artistically and it was so discriptive. The artist and poet in me latched onto that. It also makes you think! I read it a few years ago and it still has me thinking. Bare in mind it can be confusing so keep alert as you read it! I still can't believe I fell for this sort of book. Great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Barker shows his sensitive side
Review: This is probably an excellent book. Barker tackles more personal issues involving homosexuality and AIDS and the conflicts between men and women and the union of the two genders. Barker's writing is elegant as always, he has a strongly identifiable voice, which is, like with Stephen King's writing, undeniably his own. But this book lacks that Clive Barker "edge" that made The Books of Blood, Weaveworld and Imajica so astonishing. After an interesting beginning the story becomes bogged down in detailing Will Rabjohns' life. It starts to pick up again near the end but the conclusion is a bit of a let down as well. The House of the World is not nearly as imaginitive as Imajica's First Dominion, and it seems Barker tries to bring up ecological and environmental issues but abandons them in the end for issues involving the relationships between homosexuals and the relationships between men and women. Still the parts involving the characters of Jacob and Rosa are good, but Will Rabjohns is a bit of a bore, except when he's getting attacked by a polar bear, but everyone's interesting when they're getting attacked by polar bears, aren't they?
Rating:
Summary: Barker shows his sensitive side
Review: This is probably an excellent book. Barker tackles more personal issues involving homosexuality and AIDS and the conflicts between men and women and the union of the two genders. Barker's writing is elegant as always, he has a strongly identifiable voice, which is, like with Stephen King's writing, undeniably his own. But this book lacks that Clive Barker "edge" that made The Books of Blood, Weaveworld and Imajica so astonishing. After an interesting beginning the story becomes bogged down in detailing Will Rabjohns' life. It starts to pick up again near the end but the conclusion is a bit of a let down as well. The House of the World is not nearly as imaginitive as Imajica's First Dominion, and it seems Barker tries to bring up ecological and environmental issues but abandons them in the end for issues involving the relationships between homosexuals and the relationships between men and women. Still the parts involving the characters of Jacob and Rosa are good, but Will Rabjohns is a bit of a bore, except when he's getting attacked by a polar bear, but everyone's interesting when they're getting attacked by polar bears, aren't they?
Rating:
Summary: The book that made me a fan!
Review: This is the book that made me a Clive Barker fan. The way it combines fantasy elements (the Nilotic creature as a tangible manifestation of the human desire for spirituality) with social/environmental commentary (AIDS as a metaphor for the extinction of rare species and vice versa) turns a standard "man's perversion of nature" (ex. Frankenstein) story into something relevant, poignant and haunting. Sacrement has all the traditional visceral horror elements to please any horror fan (the polar bear attack is the most frightening sequence I've ever read in any book). But it goes a step further than most horror novels to provide the reader with one man's experience (both mundane and fantastical) that leads us to such a dark, yet marvelous, place. Well worth the time!
Rating:
Summary: The book that made me a fan!
Review: This is the book that made me a Clive Barker fan. The way it combines fantasy elements (the Nilotic creature as a tangible manifestation of the human desire for spirituality) with social/environmental commentary (AIDS as a metaphor for the extinction of rare species and vice versa) turns a standard "man's perversion of nature" (ex. Frankenstein) story into something relevant, poignant and haunting. Sacrement has all the traditional visceral horror elements to please any horror fan (the polar bear attack is the most frightening sequence I've ever read in any book). But it goes a step further than most horror novels to provide the reader with one man's experience (both mundane and fantastical) that leads us to such a dark, yet marvelous, place. Well worth the time!
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