Rating: 
Summary: That's the Spirit!!!
Review: Coldheart Canyon is the first Clive Barker I have read in years, since Great and Secret Show. Barker's last few novels have garnered so-so reviews, and quite honestly have kept me at bay as far as reading his works.However, Coldheart Canyon proved too tempting to pass up. The novel delivers on all the levels that Barker is famous for...crossing the genres of horror and fantasy...graphic sexual indulgence, meticulous gore....detail after horrific detail is woven into a good old fashioned ghost story, set in Hollywood. Todd Pickett, Hollywood 'A-list' action hero, knows his star is fading, and his box office draw is showing it's age, as well as his looks. On the advice of the head of Paramount Studios, he sees a plastic surgeon for a face lift, which throws him into seculsion while the healing process takes place. Enter the home of Katya Lupi, a Hollywood mansion built in the first half of the 20th century for a movie star of the 20's. This 'Dream Palace' was once the site of Hollywood's most notorious orgies, where Men and Women, Men and Men, Women and Women, gathered together to indulge in their wildest fantasies, in a Hollywood that has all but been forgotten. Now, in the present day, not only does the house still contain elegant fixtures, furniture, and trimmings...it also contains Katya Lupi, still as young, vibrant, and luminescent as she was 80 years before. The secret of her 'Fountain of Youth?' A tiled room, transported from Romania in the 20's, piece by piece, by Katya's lover Willem Zeffer, that depicts a fabled hunt, in which a warrior Duke dared to slaughter the Devil's son, incurring the wrath of Lilith, the Queen of Hell. But upon entering this room, you are drawn in to the power it holds, and face the realization that it is more than just tiles and paint...it is a whole other universe...where anything is possible. Todd, along with his agent, the head of his fan club, and a few other Hollywood notables, are drawn into Katya's world, Coldheart Canyon, which is not only inhabited by her, but by the ghosts of several other Hollywood luminaries of yesteryear; Valentino, Barrymore, Clara Bow, Mary Pickford....to name a few. Each of whom were guests of her infamous 'parties', visitors to the tiled room, and whose spirit forms want nothing more than to cross the religious icons in the door thresholds keeping them outside in the canyon and gain access to the room, to feel its power once more. With as many twists and turns as the Pacific Coast Highway, Coldheart Canyon is entertaining from start to finish. Just when you think the story has reached a conclusion, Barker takes it a notch further. A classic ghost story, a capable thriller, and a good old fashioned Hollywood history lesson, Coldheart Canyon will haunt a reader for a long time after the last page is read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Real Teroraea of a Novel
Review: A formulaic combination of the author's tired world-hidden-in-something-innocuous device, and a profusion of dialog and sexuality of the most trivial kind -- which I can only guess is there to meet some kind contractual length obligation. The rest is made up of syrupy coprafluences about Los Angeles, its people, and the author's wanderings about the world in general. The 50-plus page cathardic epilog might have been necessary if the story were in the least bit frightening.
Rating:
Summary: Barker continues to outdo himself.
Review: Barker seems to know every word in the English language and exactly how to use them for maximum impact. His word-smithing abilities rivals his story telling, and both never fail to astonish me. I feel that is was understatement when Stephen King said, in a blurb for Weave-World (1987), "I have seen the future of horror and it is named Clive Barker. He is so good that I am almost literally tongue-tied. He makes the rest of us look like we've been asleep for the past ten years," and Peter Straub called it "...pure dazzle, pur storytelling...." In Barker's tales, where the middle of the book seems like it has to be the climax of the story, Clive is just getting started. I am in awe of his abilities and often re-read passages for the sheer enjoyment of his craftmanship. There are only three more words that need to be offered here: Read Clive Barker!
Rating: 
Summary: Solid, if Simple return of Clive
Review: Let me first say I am a big fan of Clive Barker. I love his novels, films, illustration, etc. However good certain bits of this novel are, other portions are a bit of a struggle to get through. Clive is in good form with the hallicuinatory fantasy world, depraved orgies, ghosts and their cross breed children...But the hollywood bashing, finger pointing, and the ending (I won't give it away except to say the whole thing seemed in turns neat and hokey) detracted from everything good about the book. So 3 out of 5. Because I'd much rather read an "okay" Clive Barker book than most everything else that is out there.
Rating:
Summary: Who in Hollywood [ticked] off Clive?
Review: Alas, Barker is going the way of Anne Rice, self reflexive to the point not only of using his own house as a setting, but his own face on the cover. Aside from some interesting dish on the inner workings of Hollywood, this is a mundane tale, shallow, predictable and it reads like a first draft. I found the use of real stars' names jarring, to say the least. While this may have been intended as some sort of tongue in cheek, insider joke of Hollywood, it came off more like Truman Capote with PMS.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping in parts..
Review: Clive Barker seems to have settled in to something a little more accessible with his last few books. The terror of his short stories and the all encompassing scope of his tomes such as Imagica and Weaveworld seem a thing of the past.
readers that were attracted to Imagica and the like might like to view those books as classics in themselves and not suppose that all of Clives novels reach such heights.
It seems to me that his outing of his sexual preferences have become the over riding themes of his work.
Coldheart Canyon had something of a Jackie Collins taint to it I felt. The characters seemed a little over emotional and not quite as coperal as in his previous works.
Long passages were something of a strain to plough though. I was particuly annoyed that he spent far too many pages releasing the grief of the death of his own dog within the pages of this book. I can understand the upset of loosing a close compainion but was it really nessary to layer this event onto the main character? In my opinion is was completely unneeded and diverted from the story to quite a large degree.
The ending of the story could of been wrapped up quite a few chapters before it finally did.
Clive Barker has peaked already i feel. Perhaps he should concentrate on making a *decent* movie of some of his earlier work.
Rating:
Summary: Fluff
Review: While a masterpiece of twentieth century literature like The Reach by Stephen King can be shrugged off
by the bilious sanctimonies of the ivy league café and their short term/confined influence, recent British migrants like Barker and Neal Gaiman ("one of the top post-modern authors") have shown a cynical aptitude in colonizing small but affluent markets "the business of horror" to quote Barker. So Even though he's a Hollywood millionaire who's not much read, despite his tacky writings and atrocious movies (Nightbreed, Lord of Illusions) progressives except him because he coddles their self-image. Barkers only contribution to the tradition of horror fiction has been to sicken it with a slippery self-consciousness outsourcing his flashy persona as the Jackie Collins like book cover here demonstrates.
Rating:
Summary: SK #1
Review: Clive Barker is the Liberace of schlock. Along with the rest of the L.A. to Vegas, Tarantino rodent trail.
Rating:
Summary: Clive Barker is a sick man
Review: At first I had some hopes for this story, but as the book went on it became stanger and stranger and then sicker and sicker. Clive Barker must be warped to even imagine such demoralizing sexual acts and views. If "Old Hollywood or New Hollywood" even faintly resembles the goings on in this novel we should burn the whole place down.
Rating:
Summary: I must be getting old.
Review: I enjoy Barker's imagination and reach, and even his sense of exquisite grotesqueness, and once this book got cooking, it had all of that Barker good badness that makes him so much fun to read. However, I found that the strange sex was layered on a bit too heavily in places-- and it wasn't terribly necessary to the plot, IMO. The best things about this book (loss, sadness, fear of aging, imaginary worlds) could have stood on their own without the explicit nature of the orgies. It also felt as though Barker got confused with the ghost portion of the story because there seemed to be too many plot holes and inconsistencies where the ghosts were concerned. Still, the best author still writing in the horror genre, I think.
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