Books of Blood, Vol. 2

Rating:
Summary: Not the best one, but still...
Review: Clive Barker's 'Books of Blood' contain some of the best horror-short-stories ever written. Barker's talent to scare and impress you both with his literary genius is at his best here.

This second book is not as good as the rest, but especially the first one is really good. Still very good horror.

Rating:
Summary: his best
Review: DREAD, one of the best psychological dramas of the 90s. HELL'S RACE, what we are all experiencing, see existentialism for the basis. NEW MURDERS, what Poe might have followed up with if he hadn't had turned rabid.

Rating:
Summary: Better than Vol 1.
Review: Having read the first Volume of 'Books of blood' I was eager to find stories as good as 'The Yattering and Jack'. This book provides such stories. Apart from 'Dread' these are all first class. Dread is good, but the subject matter is a bit sadistic for my liking and the plot lacks Barker's usual imagination.

I think that this book is more consistent than the first volume of 'Books of Blood' and fully deserves five stars.

This is possibly the best collection of horror stories I have read.

Rating:
Summary: Very good read!
Review: It just goes to show you that everyone's tastes are different! I had to type a review because I thought that "Dread" was the best, albeit short, horror story that I have ever read. I read the book when it originally came out... it says 1987, I thought it was a year or two earlier than that. The Books of Blood were my introduction to Clive Barker. I have read other works by him, but I feel that the blood books were his best.

Rating:
Summary: Not Clive Barker at his best
Review: This second volume of Clive Barker's Books of Blood pales in comparison to the first volume, four of its five stories coming up short in my estimation. The book does get off to a rousing start with Dread, a somewhat sadistic tale of one man's obsession with death and the fear of it. According to the mysterious grad student Quaid, true philosophy, not what passes for philosophy in the universities, is a beast; everything really comes down to one thing only, which is fear. So begins Quaid's personal instruction course of Dread 101. 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, the closest two representatives of which are two of his "students." Dread is a psychologically disturbing read, one which succeeds quite well indeed in spite of a rather pat ending. From this point, the book is all downhill.

Hell's Event tells the story of a charity race, only this is no ordinary race. Once every century, this particular race pits a minion of the underworld against human runners, with the state and control of the whole government hinging upon the outcome. Much like Stephen King's The Long Walk, it does not pay to finish behind the winner, for truly to the victor go the spoils. Next up is Jacqueline Ess: Her Last Will and Testament, a story in which the main character's very special abilities for controlling her environment and those in it winds up wasted with little to show for the effort. The Skins of the Fathers is not a bad story, but it is quite on the weird side. 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 its 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. The final story here is New Murders in the Rue Morgue, and it is almost surely the worst piece of fiction Clive Barker ever wrote. The protagonist is a retired artist and, so we are told, descendant of M. Dupin. Yes, we are led to believe, Edgar Allan Poe's classic story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was based on fact and not fancy, and now the modern representative of the Dupin blood finds himself mired in an extraordinary, eerily similar, and exceedingly ludicrous case of his own.

Obviously, I don't consider Volume 2 of the Books of Blood to represent Clive Barker at anything near his best; this is not to say these stories (excluding New Murders in the Rue Morgue) are not worth reading, though. Dread is a fine piece of work, and the next three stories will hold your attention throughout, although they may well leave you feeling indifferent and more than a tad disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Not Clive Barker at his best
Review: This second volume of Clive Barker's Books of Blood pales in comparison to the first volume, four of its five stories coming up short in my estimation. The book does get off to a rousing start with Dread, a somewhat sadistic tale of one man's obsession with death and the fear of it. According to the mysterious grad student Quaid, true philosophy, not what passes for philosophy in the universities, is a beast; everything really comes down to one thing only, which is fear. So begins Quaid's personal instruction course of Dread 101. 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, the closest two representatives of which are two of his "students." Dread is a psychologically disturbing read, one which succeeds quite well indeed in spite of a rather pat ending. From this point, the book is all downhill.

Hell's Event tells the story of a charity race, only this is no ordinary race. Once every century, this particular race pits a minion of the underworld against human runners, with the state and control of the whole government hinging upon the outcome. Much like Stephen King's The Long Walk, it does not pay to finish behind the winner, for truly to the victor go the spoils. Next up is Jacqueline Ess: Her Last Will and Testament, a story in which the main character's very special abilities for controlling her environment and those in it winds up wasted with little to show for the effort. The Skins of the Fathers is not a bad story, but it is quite on the weird side. 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 its 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. The final story here is New Murders in the Rue Morgue, and it is almost surely the worst piece of fiction Clive Barker ever wrote. The protagonist is a retired artist and, so we are told, descendant of M. Dupin. Yes, we are led to believe, Edgar Allan Poe's classic story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was based on fact and not fancy, and now the modern representative of the Dupin blood finds himself mired in an extraordinary, eerily similar, and exceedingly ludicrous case of his own.

Obviously, I don't consider Volume 2 of the Books of Blood to represent Clive Barker at anything near his best; this is not to say these stories (excluding New Murders in the Rue Morgue) are not worth reading, though. Dread is a fine piece of work, and the next three stories will hold your attention throughout, although they may well leave you feeling indifferent and more than a tad disappointed.