Rating: 
Summary: Clive Barker. Nothing more needs to be said.
Review: This book, number 5 of "The Books of Blood," contains two of Barker's most masterful tales, "Babel's Children" and "In the Flesh." How Barker can write fiction of this sort and still get lumped in with hacks like King and Koontz is something that angers me still. I recommend Barker's books not just to horror fans--and what horror fan, in 1999, has not read Barker; that's akin to a rock fan not ever having absorbed "Exile on Main St." or "London Calling"--but to more mainstream (argh, I hate that word, makes me think of Oprah and housewives and tanned cell-phoning yuppies and bouncy sorority girls) audiences who enjoy Borges, Calvino or Julian Barnes. Barker's prose is precise, poetic, and subtle; he's hardly the "splatterpunk" he's made out to be. Even today, he amazes me, years after I first read this collection. If you have any curiosity at all, which is probably why you ended up here, get this book, or any of his, and be prepared to enter a dark, evil, sensuous new world....
Rating:
Summary: Clive Barker. Nothing more needs to be said.
Review: This book, number 5 of "The Books of Blood," contains two of Barker's most masterful tales, "Babel's Children" and "In the Flesh." How Barker can write fiction of this sort and still get lumped in with hacks like King and Koontz is something that angers me still. I recommend Barker's books not just to horror fans--and what horror fan, in 1999, has not read Barker; that's akin to a rock fan not ever having absorbed "Exile on Main St." or "London Calling"--but to more mainstream (argh, I hate that word, makes me think of Oprah and housewives and tanned cell-phoning yuppies and bouncy sorority girls) audiences who enjoy Borges, Calvino or Julian Barnes. Barker's prose is precise, poetic, and subtle; he's hardly the "splatterpunk" he's made out to be. Even today, he amazes me, years after I first read this collection. If you have any curiosity at all, which is probably why you ended up here, get this book, or any of his, and be prepared to enter a dark, evil, sensuous new world....
Rating:
Summary: Blows Steven King to Hell
Review: This is my favorite collection of short horror stories from Clive Barker. I enjoyed reading this book as much as Books Of Blook-1. In my opinion, they went from best to worst-- but the 3rd book was still better than 99% of the "horror" out there. Free from the bondage of self-proclaimed horror books which are merely suspense (at best). This book should be required in schools nationwide...
Rating: 
Summary: 4 miniatures from a master craftsman
Review: This is subversive literature of the best kind. It targets and fires at male sexual identity, the educated upper middle class and the world's governing clan, turning them on their ear and leaving them the worst for damage. Barker is a great aesthete of the fantastic and an iconoclast that leaves no turn unstoned. Here are four short stories that show a master spellbinder at work:"In the Flesh": Cleveland Smith, recurrent criminal, is undergoing one of his usual stops at jail. Unable to leave the crime life, he studies, searching for the origin of sin. When a spooky new kid is put as his cellmate, he is placed on the threshold to the answers he is looking for... "The Forbidden": An English academic steps out from the Ivory Tower into the housing projects, and learns from the local gossip the urban legends of everyday violence and death. Yet she refuses to believe them. So the urban legend materializes for her own benefit, in the shape of the Candyman... "The Madonna": Two men, a racketeer and an ineffectual businessman, plan to turn an abandoned swimming pool spa into a recreational complex. But this two men, who go around displaying their confused manliness, are about to find how fragile their masculinity can be, and whether anything will be left of them afterwards... "Babel's Children": Vanessa Jape always refused to take the clearly signaled road. She just had to venture through the unmarked path. So it was no surprise she ended getting lost during her vacation at Greece. What she wasn't expecting, though, was finding the convent, the unusual dwellers therein, and the real rulers of the world... From gory horror to cosmic dread to a fable beyond classification, Barker is one of the best writers of dark fantasy you will ever find.
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