Rating: 
Summary: One for the millenium. Read it and weep!
Review: EVERVILLE is a remarkable book. Images of delicate beauty entwined with scenes of utter revulsion will leave you dizzy. Barker throws the reader from the sublime to the infernal and the way he does it is breathtaking. This is perhaps Barkers most extreme work,the peaks are higher than ever before,and the valleys deeper and more pitiless. A work of immense occult relevance,and for those of you not interested in that side of things, a brilliant story expertly told. It is the follow up to THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW and there will be one more book in the series that will complete the "ART" trilogy.
Rating:
Summary: Truly a Work of Art
Review: Everville is almost as good as the Great and Secret Show and I recommend it to everyone out there. Clive presents some great imagery and we meet old friends from Great and Secret Show. Looking forward to the sequel
Rating: 
Summary: Great Fantastic Book
Review: Everville is almost as good as the Great and Secret Show and I recommend it to everyone out there. Clive presents some great imagery and we meet old friends from Great and Secret Show. Looking forward to the sequel
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Everville is both horrifying and enthralling at the same time. Barker's characterization is the best. Clive Barker is defintely a literary genius
Rating:
Summary: "Everville" stands alone without its prequel.
Review: Everville was founded by a little pioneer girl, Maeve O'Connell. I didn't realize until I was well into the book that "Everville" is a sequel to "The Great and Secret Show" (which I never finished, much to my chagrin). The town of Everville houses the gateway between Cosm and Quiddity. The story jumps from Maeve's journey on the Oregon Trail to the 1990s and the town's current inhabitants. It takes not only a lot of pages but a skilled writer to keep all the characters (from both "The Great and Secret Show" and from the Everville township) straight; Barker does an admirable job. Kirk Reinart's cover art ... was what drew me to this book. I don't remember the last time that happened. What really struck me as I read was the parallel between Everville and some of the conspiracy theories I've recently heard. Does Barker know too much? or was he ahead of his time?
Rating:
Summary: "Everville" stands alone without its prequel.
Review: Everville was founded by a little pioneer girl, Maeve O'Connell. I didn't realize until I was well into the book that "Everville" is a sequel to "The Great and Secret Show" (which I never finished, much to my chagrin). The town of Everville houses the gateway between Cosm and Quiddity. The story jumps from Maeve's journey on the Oregon Trail to the 1990s and the town's current inhabitants. It takes not only a lot of pages but a skilled writer to keep all the characters (from both "The Great and Secret Show" and from the Everville township) straight; Barker does an admirable job. Kirk Reinart's cover art ... was what drew me to this book. I don't remember the last time that happened. What really struck me as I read was the parallel between Everville and some of the conspiracy theories I've recently heard. Does Barker know too much? or was he ahead of his time?
Rating: 
Summary: Everville, Starts off slow but picks up
Review: Everville, what can you say about this book? As I said it starts out slow during the epilogue but as familiar characters are introduced the novel gains speed at an alarming rate. A good novel but as with any sequel the first is always better.
Rating:
Summary: EVERVILLE: Leaves on the Story Tree
Review: EVERVILLE... the eternal city, the mythic point where this earth and the heavens meet, the "axis mundi," the crossroads of eternity and time, the sacred and the profane. Is Clive Barker the only author of these sore days who sees into these crossroads? Barker continually impresses me with each new book, both in the themes and characters he explores, the language he uses, and his subversion of the both the horror and fantasy genres. If I see one more book review or interview that refers to him as a "master of horror" I'm gonna explode! He's got more in common with a Joseph Campbell, a William Blake or a Dali than any mere horror writer. I think EVERVILLE is a very good book; but yes, I did get some smirks and sneers from my "literary" acquaintances. They don't know what they're missing! Barker's prose is as measured and musical as ever; this is the first book of his which, on several occasions, stirred me to tears. While reading it, I kept a pen nearby, underlining dozens of beautiful passages. The story flows effortlessly--which it needs to, as Barker understands, as Story is the only way things of consequence get told. As he writes: "And every life, however short, however meaningless it seems, is a leaf on the story tree." I think Barker did a pretty good job depicting "everyday" people in a small American town; a nice change from the distant misfits of his short stories and early novels. There is risk-taking here on his part, and yes, sometimes some of the Americana rings a tad false, and I was little let down by the literalization of Quiddity, but any writer who has the courage to revision Jesus, the Christ--the Christ of Dreams, and Dreaming--in the course of a "popular" novel, has my utmost admiration. Of course, anyone who's read IMAJICA knows Barker does not shy away from a radical spirituality. I love his depiction of reality as ever in flux, something malleable and always in transformation. As Joe Flicker asks himself, travelling through the Metacosm: "But when he slept here, and dreamed, was he entering yet another reality, beyond this one, where he might also sleep and dream?" Stories and dreams have always made and remade the world; we are never satisfied with Reality. Why else would we regale ourselves with tales and visions of resurrections and journeys, virgin births and sacred mountains, men of wisdom and women of purity? All of this is "the Great and Secret Show" we never tire of, and Barker seems to effortlessly reach behind the veil and pluck out our appetites, our perversities, our loves and our hopes, our desires to comprehend these mysteries. That, I think, is the Art: a skill to divine our souls. Buddenbaum, desiring communion with the "gods", expresses this eloquently: "to be free of every frailty, including love; free to live out of time, out of place, out of every particular. He would be unmade, the way divinites were unmade, because divinities were without beginning and without end: a rare and wonderful condition." The visions in this book! The creation of the Metacosm (a Jungian archetype if ever there was one) by Maeve O'Connell and Coker Ammiano--a whorehouse at the crossroads, negating the bluster about this nation being found on Christian values... Flicker in the Metacosm, and absorbed into the 'Shu (pieces of the Creator), then into the Iad, then a wandering spirit dreamed to glorious flesh by his lover Phoebe; the transformation of Tesla, and the glimpses she gives to D'Amour of stories to come; the Death-Boy cradling a child "to his burned body, whistling for the killing cloud to follow him"; Lucien's talk of us being "vessels for the infinite"; the description of the city b'Kether Sabbat, "shaped like an inverted pyramid, balanced on its tip." Yes, all those, and more, right this way....
This is an amazing book, a gripping read, an epic in the making of "four journeys" as Barker writes: "One to the dream world, one to the real; one to the bestial; one to the divine." It's a more than worthy sequel to 1989's THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW. Read this book carefully,! savor its elegance and ferocity of imagination, and you will be uplifted. EVERVILLE is a worthy addition to "the infinite branches of the story tree."
Rating:
Summary: EVERVILLE: Leaves on the Story Tree
Review: EVERVILLE... the eternal city, the mythic point where this earth and the heavens meet, the "axis mundi," the crossroads of eternity and time, the sacred and the profane. Is Clive Barker the only author of these sore days who sees into these crossroads? Barker continually impresses me with each new book, both in the themes and characters he explores, the language he uses, and his subversion of the both the horror and fantasy genres. If I see one more book review or interview that refers to him as a "master of horror" I'm gonna explode! He's got more in common with a Joseph Campbell, a William Blake or a Dali than any mere horror writer. I think EVERVILLE is a very good book; but yes, I did get some smirks and sneers from my "literary" acquaintances. They don't know what they're missing! Barker's prose is as measured and musical as ever; this is the first book of his which, on several occasions, stirred me to tears. While reading it, I kept a pen nearby, underlining dozens of beautiful passages. The story flows effortlessly--which it needs to, as Barker understands, as Story is the only way things of consequence get told. As he writes: "And every life, however short, however meaningless it seems, is a leaf on the story tree." I think Barker did a pretty good job depicting "everyday" people in a small American town; a nice change from the distant misfits of his short stories and early novels. There is risk-taking here on his part, and yes, sometimes some of the Americana rings a tad false, and I was little let down by the literalization of Quiddity, but any writer who has the courage to revision Jesus, the Christ--the Christ of Dreams, and Dreaming--in the course of a "popular" novel, has my utmost admiration. Of course, anyone who's read IMAJICA knows Barker does not shy away from a radical spirituality. I love his depiction of reality as ever in flux, something malleable and always in transformation. As Joe Flicker asks himself, travelling through the Metacosm: "But when he slept here, and dreamed, was he entering yet another reality, beyond this one, where he might also sleep and dream?" Stories and dreams have always made and remade the world; we are never satisfied with Reality. Why else would we regale ourselves with tales and visions of resurrections and journeys, virgin births and sacred mountains, men of wisdom and women of purity? All of this is "the Great and Secret Show" we never tire of, and Barker seems to effortlessly reach behind the veil and pluck out our appetites, our perversities, our loves and our hopes, our desires to comprehend these mysteries. That, I think, is the Art: a skill to divine our souls. Buddenbaum, desiring communion with the "gods", expresses this eloquently: "to be free of every frailty, including love; free to live out of time, out of place, out of every particular. He would be unmade, the way divinites were unmade, because divinities were without beginning and without end: a rare and wonderful condition." The visions in this book! The creation of the Metacosm (a Jungian archetype if ever there was one) by Maeve O'Connell and Coker Ammiano--a whorehouse at the crossroads, negating the bluster about this nation being found on Christian values... Flicker in the Metacosm, and absorbed into the 'Shu (pieces of the Creator), then into the Iad, then a wandering spirit dreamed to glorious flesh by his lover Phoebe; the transformation of Tesla, and the glimpses she gives to D'Amour of stories to come; the Death-Boy cradling a child "to his burned body, whistling for the killing cloud to follow him"; Lucien's talk of us being "vessels for the infinite"; the description of the city b'Kether Sabbat, "shaped like an inverted pyramid, balanced on its tip." Yes, all those, and more, right this way....
This is an amazing book, a gripping read, an epic in the making of "four journeys" as Barker writes: "One to the dream world, one to the real; one to the bestial; one to the divine." It's a more than worthy sequel to 1989's THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW. Read this book carefully,! savor its elegance and ferocity of imagination, and you will be uplifted. EVERVILLE is a worthy addition to "the infinite branches of the story tree."
Rating: 
Summary: A Sequel to be skipped
Review: First of all, I too was taken by whatever force compells Clive Barker fans to buy this book before The Great and Secret Show. It took me almost 200 pages before I was so hopelessly loss I went looking for help and found it in one of the greatest books ever written. Immediately after reading G&SS I re-read the boring intro and first couple hundred pages of Everville. By the end, Clive had managed to destroy better parts of his first book. Things that made G&SS great were the war between good (Fetcher and Tesla) and evil (The Jaff and Tommy Ray), the human-turned-god Jaff in trying to acquire more power is written to show how he falls prey to human nature and control, and the way Clive describes the dream sea is as a dream sea could possibly be. All three of these are lost in Everville. The war is no longer easily followed, characters are indeterminably sided with and against each other, human nature is ruled out as almost everyone is endowed with immortality and secret powers, and one of the things that really irritated me was Quiddity itself. In G&SS, those touching the dream sea are quickly transformed into a sort of "dream coral" but in Everville 2 characters have enough time to engage in a love tryst while sea creatures watch. I did finish this book, hoping it would answer at least some of my questions about The Art but the descriptions and explainations of this were much poorer than in the original book and I was left with a lot of empty spaces in my mind. Since I loved the first book, and cared little for the second, I guess my count is 1 and 1 and therefore I will wait patiently for the 3rd installment to be my tie-breaker.
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