Galilee

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book of 1998
Review: I can see why many Barker fans don't much care for this book. Barker's focus has changed from mainstream horror to more exotic things, with also a larger focus on his characters.

This is a brilliant novel. The Geary and Barbarossa background is so fleshed-out you may almost begin to believe the story really happened. Even though this book is 600 pages, I was almost pleading with the book not to end. Barker has set this book up for a sequel, and he'd better write it!

Rating:
Summary: Dallas meets the Munsters
Review: The Geary family are a bore. I think Barker's been watching too many soap operas because this book is a snooze. Does he really expect us to care about these characters? They're rich, good looking snobs. I'm supposed to get all teary because some billionare has a bout of diherrea? Poor little Rachael was told not to swear in bed. Awwww life's just not worth living. This is weak stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Clive's lost it...
Review: I have always been a huge Clive Barker and have bought every single book he's written without bothering to check what it was about: if it's Barker, it's good. All of his books were "unputdownable": you just had to know what happened next. That is, until "Sacrament". I didn't even finish it as I couldn't care less about the ridiculous main characters and the even more ludicrous and incoherent storyline. "Galilee" starts of promising but lacks everything an 6-700 page book needs to be interesting until the end: characters you give a damn about, a story line that has to have a semblance of coherence, interesting dialogues. As with "Sacrament", I stopped reading it halfway through, basically because I just didn't care how it finished.

Rating:
Summary: A long wade through literary treacle
Review: So that was it? The linkage between the families due to a few debts of honor the ageless Galilee had acquired. He couldn't let down the first Geary or his wife, but he could carry out multiple murders presumably indefinitely which left him morally bereft? Seems like the honorable thing to do was to tell the Geary's to forget it and avoid slaughtering countless innocents. In other words the reasons for the linkage were implausible given the make up of the Galilee character, especially given the experiences he must have had in over 2000 years of existence. Meanwhile the Gearys have no henchmen, for multimillionaires one would think a few thugs make be available to them, but no they do everything themselves, unlikley. The prevarication in the narration, the multiple allusions to future events infuriated me. The book was like wading through literary treacle. Painful, I shall not be buying the sequel. Good things....useful description, some good characterisations, but the central premise of the warring families does not have enough root cause.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't get any better.
Review: This has to be the best book I have ever read. The detail in which he decsribes the journal, it's as if Maddox is a real person writing a real journal. A must read for any Barker, or horror, fan. This has become my new Bible.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating book, but might be too hard for some to grasp...
Review: Clive Barker has done it again. And I love it when an author explores his horizons and goes in different directions with his writing. Galilee is a wonderful brilliant novel, filled with extrememly intelligent and well hidden symbolism. Example? Galilee the seaman, named for the sea on which Christ walked, and calmed the mighty storm. Galilee is a cross between a christ figure, Heathcliffe, and a lost Romeo. Also, the symbolism between the Geary's in the North and the Barborossas in the South is very well done...it goes along well, with all the references to the Civil War (Benjamin Franklin, the Diary, the truce between the two clans, the civil war weapons that Ludam((is that right?))plans to defeat the Geary's with, the location of the clans...and so on). Racheal is a kind of Joan of Arc in all of this...she is basically a heretic of the Geary's, thwarting them and doing her damned best to fight against them. But she is also like any Harlequin Romance heroine, weak and malleable and then tough and strong willed. But, because this book is so intricate, and the plot and much of what is needed to understand the book has to be found by the reader, many people will think all 600 and some pages are a waste of their time. The plot, the ideas and the characters themselves don't just jump off the page and slap you in the face...you have to get down in the dirt and dig around for them. I like to compare this novel to The Lord of the Flies, because the hidden symbols...so if you like Lord, then you'll probably like Galilee.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! A great introduction to Barker
Review: This book was bought for me as a present from a friend who is a massive Clive Barker fan and from the beginning I understood his enthusiasm. The book is so clever but not in an arrogant way. I became completley immersed in the book and read it for hours every day as I couldnt bear to put it down. I can't wait until the sequel is released... whenever that is!

Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding....Please hurry with the sequel Mr Barker!
Review: This is an excellent novel. While not his best it is a real page turner and it certainly has you gagging for the second and final instalment.

Rating:
Summary: First and last Barker I'll read; bad, pretentiously bad.
Review: The plot is made up of approximately 10 pages of silly premises related to a tribe of gods who somehow got hooked up with the Kennedys (hence the "warring families"). The remaining 627 pages are drivel. When you get to the answers to all the earth shattering questions he tries to set up (which come in a few coherent pages about 2 or 3 chapters from the end), you feel cheated . . . "I had to wade through 600 pages for that?" It would have been a decent 150 pg dime novel, but for the heft of it it should have at least conjured a coherent fantasy; it didn't.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful start, but got lost somewhere in the middle
Review: A great fan since "Weaveworld", Clive Barker has never disappointed me, both in his writing as in his movies. Reading the back sleeve of his latest "Galilee" I counted to buy his best book so far, but how wrong a person can be. After an intriguing start, a tantalizing idea about the two opposing families and promises about a possible clash of godly forces, I was left with turns in the plot, characters and storyline that almost completely put me off. Too bad that a beginning so impressive can grow so stale, and takes so many pages to do so.