Cabal

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I picked up this book expecting much better from Barker who, even with his less serious work is still a very effective writer. Unfortunately, this book was pure fluff. Basically, Boone, the main character, is convinced by his psychologist that he is a serial killer (guess who really is) and winds up having the law after him. He runs, his girlfriend follows him, his psychologist follows her, he becomes the messiah of a cult made up of monsters living in hiding under a graveyard in Canada after he is bitten by one of them, and there are battles with local villagers and the psychologist. This book can be read quickly in one afternoon and strikes me more as being one of Stephen King's weaker novellas or a movie treatment than a Barker novel (it WAS made into the movie Nightbreed). Even Barker's shorter works are more suspenseful and interesting. Still, it is fun, light reading, but if I wanted to experience a B-movie plot I would have rented a movie instead of spending the afternoon reading a book from someone I expected much better from.

Rating:
Summary: The Book is always better than the Movie
Review: I read this book years ago and loved it, thought it was one of Mr. Barker's best works. It was both scary and suspenseful at the same time. I couldn't put it down. Then I found out the movie was coming out ("Nightbreed") and couldn't wait. As always though - the book was better than the movie although for the most part the movie followed the book fairly well. If you are a true Clive Barker fan - this is a must read!

Rating:
Summary: We are all monsters
Review: Monsters have always played a large part in our collective subconscious. They lurk in shadows, under beds, at the ends of dark alleys. Monsters are always with us, in one form or another. Clive Barker realizes this. And Barker also realizes that sometimes, the monster we don't know is far more preferable than the ones we do.

CABAL is Barker's ode to the monster, not as a fearsome predator that only lives to destroy, but as a misunderstood creature that is alternatively loathed and envied. We despise the monster, because we wish to be one ourselves.

Boone is a young man who is teetering on the brink of insanity. While he has been getting treatment under the watchful guise of Dr. Decker, he is still far from unsure that he is well. And when Decker declaims Boone as a subconscious serial killer, with eleven confirmed victims under his belt, Boone decides that his only option is to find Midian, the place where the monsters play. What Boone discovers is an underworld of loneliness and despair, as the monsters of the world attempt to live their lives in peace, uninterrupted by the insanity of humankind.

Barker has always had a, shall we say, fondness for the darker impulses of man. In his BOOKS OF BLOOD series, and his novels THE HELLBOUND HEART and THE DAMNATION GAME, he presents the readers with individuals who truly live their lives on the edge, daring life, limb, and soul to satisfy their primal yearnings. In Boone, Barker has created another unsatisfied loner who craves acceptance, believing he cannot function in normal society. Barker understands the human heart, and isn't afraid to admit that not all desires are the same. But just because one person's desires may differ from another's, does not necessarily make that person wrong. It's all a matter of persepctive.

Barker plays this need of Boone for a family off his other two main characters, Lori and Decker. Lori, like Boone, also cries out for her desires to be sated. She desires Boone. And in a very touching love story, Lori proceeds to travel the paths of Hell in order to be with him.

Dr. Decker's needs are also front and centre, but his needs are admittedly not of the same vein as Boone and Lori's. Without giving too much away, Decker's needs are far more primal than Boone's, and more insidious in their rationality. Boone wants a family. Decker wants no more families, ever. Decker, rather than the monster-lover Boone, is the real evil, the calm that masks the storm.

But monsters are monsters, first and foremost. Barker is one of the more unusually vivid purveyors of the human condition, and his tale leaps from one grotesque to the next. CABAL contains some truly stomach-turning scenes, which is to Barker's credit. While he sympathizes with the monster, he knows that the monster must be true to itself in order to be complete. Like humankind, a monster must accept what it is in order to survive. And what a monster is, is a monster. And Barker does not shy away from the blood, gore, and vivisections that invariably follow such a creature.

Part of what has always made Barker such an interesting writer is his mixing of the profane with the sacred, his ability to juxtapose the horrible with the holy. In his stories, men find redemption as monsters. The evil are rarely punished, and the innocent cannot be allowed to survive. And somtimes, love can cross the boundary between life and death. CABAL is possibly the closest Barker could ever get to writing a flat-out romance novel. Boone and Lori go through the pits of Hell to be with each other. They travel the battlefield of the final confrontation between man and his demons. In the end, it doesn't matter who the monsters are; we are all monsters. How we come to accept it is what makes us human.

Rating:
Summary: Horror and History
Review: The scariest thing about this book is it's believability. I'm not talking about the idea of monsters that live in a hidden city, but the sheer inhumanity of the human characters.

Think about it. We had the Inquisition, World War Two and countless other examples of the destruction of anyone deemed different.

Well written and thoughtful in a chaotically poetic way that only the Master Clive can produce, this book gets the full treatment as far as I'm concerned.

Rating:
Summary: A Barker Classic
Review: This is a great fantasy novel from Barker (It is NOT one of his horror stories). The book draws you in with the great character protrayals. The ending was a little weak and I felt like he left it open for a sequel, which hasn't appeared yet. But all-in-all, if you liked Weaveworld or Imajica, you will like Cabal also.

Rating:
Summary: A Barker Classic
Review: This is a great fantasy novel from Barker (It is NOT one of his horror stories). The book draws you in with the great character protrayals. The ending was a little weak and I felt like he left it open for a sequel, which hasn't appeared yet. But all-in-all, if you liked Weaveworld or Imajica, you will like Cabal also.

Rating:
Summary: LOVING THE BREED
Review: This is my favourite Clive Barker novel. Out of all Clive's novels I've read, Cabel or as the films title Night Breed is called is exciting to me. I truely was addicted to this novel while reading it. Maybe it's the mystical element to it,the characters, the dialogue, the whole description of these characters within this world and what is happening to them, the main characters feelings.

All Clive's fan should definitely read Cabel.

Rating:
Summary: Sometime monsters have a human form...
Review: This is the first C.Barker book I've read and it still hold a dear place in my heart. The author creates a dark world, where good and evil is slightly different. The creatures of the night live beside us: the werewolf, the vampire, and the bogeyman. And they are an entirely different community, with their own laws, customs and lore. And they also have their enemies, who, although human in form, hide a monstrous soul.

In the dark underworld of the 'Nightbreed', we follow the heroin in her search of her dead lover, who proves to be not as dead after all. Together they defend the hidden clan from their pursuers, fulfilling an old Messianic prophecy.

I just wish Clive Barker would write a sequel to this excellent tale.

Rating:
Summary: Another WOW from Clive Barker
Review: Though it isn't as precise as say, The Inhuman Condition, nor as epic as say, Weaveworld, it is still a wonderful collection of stories to stir the imagination and haunt the dreams.

Cabal, the title story is great. It is a spellbinding vision of magic and horrific malice. Decker has to be one of the most vile villains of novel history, and I love the sympathetic picture that barker paints for his clan of people. The story flows too, I finished that thing in a flash. It just kept me turning the pages.

But, the real gems of this book are to be found in two of the stories that accompany the title novel. How Spoilers Bleed and The Last Illusion are both hair raising stories and I think the former is one of the very best short stories I've ever read. This is a great book!!! Barker rules!!!