Rating: 
Summary: Que sera, sera...
Review: "Books of Blood" is the first book by Clive Barker, dating from 1984 - a collection of short stories of often violent and sexual content, most of them with a strong supernatural bent. I am glad to have discovered an author who has so fertile an imagination, and who apparently refuses to be pigeonholed and categorized, despite the fact that virtually all of his works, including stories for children, novels, short stories or plays, involve the otherwordly element to a smaller or greater degree. I appreciate the open-mindedness of the author. This particular collection does not feature a unifying theme, and the stories vary both thematically and with respect to the length, intensity and quality. Some of the stories are morbid, others violent, as the title might suggest to the potential reader, and yet others have explicit sexual content of the form I couldn't care less fo, i.e. rape, prostitution, homosexuality, cannibalism, ritual murder, you name it. It's a tough book to read, but despite the bloody or often dubious subject matter, these stories are sometimes fascinating. Barker has the unique ability to create the fantastic paralell worlds of imagination, only apparently resembling our own world at the strand of nightmares. If you have nerves made of steel, you might enjoy this book thoroughly. Sadly, the stories are very uneven, ranging from utterly horrible (and I do not mean horror here) to the ingenious, with many shades of gray inbetween. The best story contained in this volume is 'The Yattering and Jack', an indeed "knee-slapping hilarious" story of Jack and .... the Yattering, the poor demon. It's one of the best stories ever written, quite deep, no matter how you approach it, traditional and at the same time innovative, and most of all, incredibly entertaining. I can bet spruce needles against reindeer food that having finished this story you will whistle or hum "Que sera, sera..." for days, if not weeks, to come. In summary, a book well worth reading, a signal that a new, interesting author had entered the world of fiction in 1984.
Rating:
Summary: Clive's Best Shot At The Horror Genre....
Review: This Was The First Book I Read By Clive Barker.Since Then I've Gone On To Read All The Books Of Blood And "Imjamica", "In The Flesh" , "HellboundHeart"," And "WeaveWorld".Looking Back,It's Easy For Me To Say Books Of Blood Vol. 1 To 3 Is His Best Without Any Doubt. The Stories Contained In It (With A Few Exceptions) Are Very Solid,Which Is Very Refreshing Considiring Most Horror Writers Bog You Down With Endless And Unnecessary Details Of Every Situation.I'm Probably Not The Best Person To Judge Horror Stories Seeing How I'm Not The Type Of Person Who Gets Scared From Fiction,But I Can Say That Out Of All The Horror Iv'e Read These Are The Best From A Creative And Imaginative View Point,And They Will Keep You Reading Till The End If You're Looking For More Death,Blood And Carcasses Then You're Finding In King,Lovecraft,Koontz etc. Then These Stories May Be What You're Looking For On The Downside,Clive Barker Is From Europe,And The Writing Has A European Style Of Course,This May Not Be A Problem To You But To Me It Made The Stories Seem A Little Akward And At Times It Was Hard To Connect With Them. Another Negative To Me Was A Few Homosexual Situations In The Book, It Just Dosen't Seem To Fit In With This Book (this is a book about horror,not fantasy). All In All This Is A Refreshing Book To Fullfill Your Horror Needs.Btw,May Favorite Story Was "The Midnight Meat Train" Very Original And Imaginative Story By Clive.
Rating: 
Summary: Stunning...
Review: As one person who wrote a review for this, I am an avid horror reader. But, unlike that same person, I love this book. Chilling, though-provoking, and yes, even a little bit funny. These tales really get in under your skin, literally! I liked most of the stories, but some where not good. I shall now tell you about my favorite tales. "The Book of Blood": A man opens the highway, and in doing so, gets these stories engraved on his skin. Pretty wicked. "The Midnight Meat Train": A newcomer in New York. A man who kills on the subway for a higher power. Guess what happens? They meet(no pun intended). One of his grosser tales, with VERY VIVID descripitions(spelled it wrong, I think). The first story I read. "The Yattering and Jack": A funnier story, with little gore. The Yattering(a demon) is assigned the least caring man in the world. The turkey scene is a classic! "Pig Blood Blues": A boy hangs himself in a barn, and still lingers about... Not his best story. the fact that they are putting it in the Books of Blood movie disgusts me. Still, pretty bloody. "In the Hills, the Cities": Cities join in an old battle. Two, um, "lovers" see the battle. Quite possibly the bloodiest, not goriest, tale in the book. The first story by Barker I EVER read. "The Skins of the Fathers": Demons. Mountain town. Nuff said. Pretty cool, with lotsa cool monsters. "Jaqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament": A women can do things to men with her mind. Very erotic ending. Also, the man into women scene is not to be skimmed! "Rawhead Rex": An old monster gets loose in a village. The best monster story ever made! Half of the stories in the book! I would describe the other stories, but that would be to many words. To end, I say anyone who likes Koontz, rainbows, dolls, bedtime stories, and sweet dreams, should look elswhere. But if you like King, lightning, gory tales, and nightmares, read this! It will keep you up all night!
Rating:
Summary: A Bazar of the Bizare
Review: Barker is a very different horror-writer, than the more commercial succesful writers like King or Koontz. His writing is much more unnerving and surreal than his more popular colleagues.
His work is another world, a world of grotesque and twisted minds and bodies, a world of incredible depravity and senseles pleasure. It is certainly an aquired taste, and not for everyone. To some people it is simply too much.
The Books of Blood vol. 1-3 covers a wide range of depravity from ritual murder over cannibalism and to vengeful spirits. But the grotesque imagery is also what is attractive about the book. Like a carwreck, you want to turn away, but you can't. I think I can best describe barker as a mix between H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar A. Poe. A very, very unsettling combination to be sure. Books of Blood is definately not recomended for the faint of heart or as a bedtime story
Rating:
Summary: Gave Me Nightmares . . .
Review: Barker is one the greatest horror writers ever. This collection of stories proves it so. We weaves a world for you to invision so intriquitely that you can't help but want to sleep with a night-light on. The way he uses real-life scenarios, as in the story "Dread," and brings them to you through his words is literally amazing. His world of pure fantasy is rivting and mind-blowing. He is one of the greatest writers of all time.
Rating:
Summary: should have a warning label....
Review: because this is definitely not for the weak-minded. my favorite is probably the midnight meat train, though the rest are also incredible, in my mind that is the one that sticks out in my mind overall. the story about the two "giant humans" fighting is very, VERY creative and original. Barker is a real horror master.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect introduction to the dark genius of Clive Barker
Review: Clive Barker did not want his Books of Blood broken up into individual volumes when they were published, yet that is what happened. Now, the first three volumes are available in one book, serving as the perfect introduction to Barker's unique style of horror. There are some really groundbreaking stories included here, alongside of a dud or two from Volume Two, but each and every story exhibits the genius and originality of its author's dark vision. The initial offering, The Book of Blood, stands out as a unique ghost story, but it also serves as a provocative abstract for everything Barker sought to accomplish with these stories. After this enticing introductory tale, we head below the streets of New York to sneak a ride on The Midnight Meat Train. This story is vintage Clive Barker, full of blood and gore. Barker isn't trying to drown the reader in blood as a means to hide any lack of skill on his part, though, because the skill is undeniably there for all to see. In The Yattering and Jack, a dark comedy farce, a poor demon does everything he can think of to make the unshakeable Jack miserable, driving himself almost mad in the process. I think of The Yattering and Jack as an amusing sort of Barker bedtime story. Pig Blood Blues forces the casual reader to once again don hip hugger boots for a trek into gore and depravity. At a certain school for wayward boys, the other white meat is not pork. Sex, Death and Starshine is a good story, touching upon the needs of the dead to be entertained every once in a while, but it lacks a certain oomph. Dread is a somewhat sadistic tale of one man's obsession with death. His is a hands-on endeavor, as he seeks to look the beast directly in the eye by studying the effects of dread and the realization of imminent death in the eyes of his fellow man. Dread is a psychologically disturbing read, one which succeeds quite well indeed in spite of a rather pat ending. Hell's Event tells the story of a charity race, only this particular contest pits a minion of the underworld against human runners, with the control of the very government hinging upon the outcome. Next up is Jacqueline Ess: Her Last Will and Testament, a disappointing story in which the main character's special abilities to control the things and people around her wind up wasted. The Skins of the Fathers is not a bad story, but it is quite weird. A sometimes almost comical group of inhuman, bizarre creatures comes to a small desert town to reclaim one of their own, born five years earlier to a human mother. A puffed up sheriff and belligerent posse of townsfolk lend comic relief as much as tension to the story's plot of borderline absurdity. I love the unusual premise and the surreal quality of Son of Celluloid. The back wall behind the screen of an old movie theatre has seen so many famous lives projected upon it that the essence of those screen legends has germinated within it. The only thing needed to bring the screen personalities to life is a catalyst, which comes in the form of a dying criminal. The man himself is of no consequence, but he has within him a force possessing a single-minded drive to grow and thrive. Next up is Rawhead Rex, one of Barker's more violent stories. There are creatures that thrived on earth long before man helped force them to the brink of extinction, and things get pretty gruesome when one fellow unknowingly unseals the prison in which such a monster has been sealed for eons. Murder of a more human kind rests at the heart of Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud. This tale doesn't succeed completely in my estimation, and some might even find it oddly laughable, as the main character is an amorphous blob of a dead man's essence who reconstitutes the form of his human body in a death shroud. Scape-Goats is a little island of death story, the most interesting aspect of which is its viewpoint; it is not often that Barker tells a tale from the first-person perspective of a woman. The final story, Human Remains, offers Barker's typically unusual slant on the old doppelganger motif. I have saved the worst and best of the collected stories for special mention. New Murders in the Rue Morgue is by far the worst short story Barker has ever written. We are led to believe Poe's classic story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was based on fact, and now the modern representative of the Dupin blood finds himself mired in an extraordinary, eerily similar, and exceedingly ludicrous case of his own. On the flip side, the most impressive story told in these pages is In the Hills, the Cities. Two male lovers touring the hidden sights of Yugoslavia become the reluctant witnesses to a sight few men could ever even conceive of when a unique traditional battle between the citizens of two adjacent towns takes an unexpected and ever-so-destructive turn. If you want to know what the big deal about Clive Barker is, this is the story you need to read. Books of Blood immediately established Barker as a giant in the genre and should be required reading for all fans of extreme and intellectually challenging horror.
Rating:
Summary: The perfect introduction to the dark genius of Clive Barker
Review: Clive Barker did not want his Books of Blood broken up into individual volumes when they were published, yet that is what happened. Now, the first three volumes are available in one book, serving as the perfect introduction to Barker's unique style of horror. There are some really groundbreaking stories included here, alongside of a dud or two from Volume Two, but each and every story exhibits the genius and originality of its author's dark vision. The initial offering, The Book of Blood, stands out as a unique ghost story, but it also serves as a provocative abstract for everything Barker sought to accomplish with these stories. After this enticing introductory tale, we head below the streets of New York to sneak a ride on The Midnight Meat Train. This story is vintage Clive Barker, full of blood and gore. Barker isn't trying to drown the reader in blood as a means to hide any lack of skill on his part, though, because the skill is undeniably there for all to see. In The Yattering and Jack, a dark comedy farce, a poor demon does everything he can think of to make the unshakeable Jack miserable, driving himself almost mad in the process. I think of The Yattering and Jack as an amusing sort of Barker bedtime story. Pig Blood Blues forces the casual reader to once again don hip hugger boots for a trek into gore and depravity. At a certain school for wayward boys, the other white meat is not pork. Sex, Death and Starshine is a good story, touching upon the needs of the dead to be entertained every once in a while, but it lacks a certain oomph. Dread is a somewhat sadistic tale of one man's obsession with death. His is a hands-on endeavor, as he seeks to look the beast directly in the eye by studying the effects of dread and the realization of imminent death in the eyes of his fellow man. Dread is a psychologically disturbing read, one which succeeds quite well indeed in spite of a rather pat ending. Hell's Event tells the story of a charity race, only this particular contest pits a minion of the underworld against human runners, with the control of the very government hinging upon the outcome. Next up is Jacqueline Ess: Her Last Will and Testament, a disappointing story in which the main character's special abilities to control the things and people around her wind up wasted. The Skins of the Fathers is not a bad story, but it is quite weird. A sometimes almost comical group of inhuman, bizarre creatures comes to a small desert town to reclaim one of their own, born five years earlier to a human mother. A puffed up sheriff and belligerent posse of townsfolk lend comic relief as much as tension to the story's plot of borderline absurdity. I love the unusual premise and the surreal quality of Son of Celluloid. The back wall behind the screen of an old movie theatre has seen so many famous lives projected upon it that the essence of those screen legends has germinated within it. The only thing needed to bring the screen personalities to life is a catalyst, which comes in the form of a dying criminal. The man himself is of no consequence, but he has within him a force possessing a single-minded drive to grow and thrive. Next up is Rawhead Rex, one of Barker's more violent stories. There are creatures that thrived on earth long before man helped force them to the brink of extinction, and things get pretty gruesome when one fellow unknowingly unseals the prison in which such a monster has been sealed for eons. Murder of a more human kind rests at the heart of Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud. This tale doesn't succeed completely in my estimation, and some might even find it oddly laughable, as the main character is an amorphous blob of a dead man's essence who reconstitutes the form of his human body in a death shroud. Scape-Goats is a little island of death story, the most interesting aspect of which is its viewpoint; it is not often that Barker tells a tale from the first-person perspective of a woman. The final story, Human Remains, offers Barker's typically unusual slant on the old doppelganger motif. I have saved the worst and best of the collected stories for special mention. New Murders in the Rue Morgue is by far the worst short story Barker has ever written. We are led to believe Poe's classic story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was based on fact, and now the modern representative of the Dupin blood finds himself mired in an extraordinary, eerily similar, and exceedingly ludicrous case of his own. On the flip side, the most impressive story told in these pages is In the Hills, the Cities. Two male lovers touring the hidden sights of Yugoslavia become the reluctant witnesses to a sight few men could ever even conceive of when a unique traditional battle between the citizens of two adjacent towns takes an unexpected and ever-so-destructive turn. If you want to know what the big deal about Clive Barker is, this is the story you need to read. Books of Blood immediately established Barker as a giant in the genre and should be required reading for all fans of extreme and intellectually challenging horror.
Rating:
Summary: Original, well written cornucopia of the imagination
Review: Clive Barker here brings us an excellent collection of short fantasy and horror stories. In this book Barker shows us why he stands above his peers in terms of sheer imagination. You will not find any cheesy re-hashes of old themes in this collection, no vampires or conventional ghost tales. Barker obviously figures that if a story is worth the time invested to write, then it is worthwhile taking the time to do something new, something original.
As others have said here, the best of the bunch is 'In the hills, the Cities'. Once read, you will never forget this tale, it works as a standalone straightforward story, but also works allegorically. It carries you along as you wonder at the spectacles described in the story, you can almost hear the crunching noise as one of the Cities falls to the ground. The ending is one of the greatest things about this story, one of the main characters decide that after having viewed the spectacle of the walking city he might as well travel with it, and give up on life, knowing that no matter how long he lives he will never see anything remotely as interesting again. It is especially poignant that no matter how terrible the imagery of the falling city, it will never compete with the real horror that would descend on the balkans (which is were the story is set) a few years after it was written, the setting adds to the story's weirdness and credibility.
Another gem is the truly despicable Rawhead Rex, this tale is about a sleeping child eating giant accidentally released from it's imprisonment beneath the earth, which goes on a rampage in a small English town boasts some great writing. Barker shows his ability at conjuring up the most vivid of imagery with his deft use of words. Barker clearly takes a demented delight in subverting cherished norms in his stories, so here we have female genitalia replacing the cross as the most potent ward against the beast and we also have a priest converting to the worship of the beast as he takes his holy communion which comes in the form of a shower of the beast's urine.
Other particularly good stories include the Yattering And Jack, Sex Death and Starshine, Dread and The Skins Of The Fathers. Each of the tales in this book offer something different, something interesting and bizarre. If you like short stories (you do not even have to be a huge horror fan) i would strongly recommend this book to you.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent collection of stories.
Review: Clive Barker is quite simply the best Horror writer I have come across so far -although I have to admit my experience is limited. His short stories are at least as good as short stories written by stephen king. This book contains some most excellent stories, in my oppinion the best are: 'The Yattering and Jack', 'The midnight meat train', 'Hell's event', 'Skins of the fathers', 'New murders in the rue morgue', 'Rawhead rex', 'Jaqueline Ess; Her will and testament' and 'Confessions of a pornographers shroud' Hey, wait a minute, that's more than half the stories in the book. Oh well, just goes to show how good this book is! Each one of these stories is very well written and the concepts, although sometimes a little surreal, are all very good. I would recommend this book to any fan of the horror genre. A second omnibus is also available, I am looking foreward to reading it.
|
