Everville

Rating:
Summary: Tour de Force
Review: 'Everville' could possibly be the best work Clive Barker has ever written. Although considered a sequel to 'The Great and Secret Show,' 'Everville' will stand on its own for most readers. TG&SS provides some important background material on, for example, the nature of the conflict between the inhabitants of Quiddity (the Dream Sea) and the humans here on Earth. The book overflows with Barker's imagery, and he presents vivid depictions of the Dream Sea and its otherworldly menace, the Iad Urobros. His characters are fleshed out in the extreme, and many rank with some of the most memorable in all of literature: The orphan-Maeve O'Connell, the religious skeptic-Harry D'Amour, and the unspeakably evil men vying for control of the portal to the Dream Sea above Everville, Kissoon and Tommy-Ray.

'Everville' tells the story of a cosmic battle taking place on Earth for control to a portal to the Dream Sea, Quiddity. This portal is open on a mountain peak above the sleepy Oregon city of Everville, founded by an orphan, Maeve O'Connell, and her husband from Quiddity, Coker Ammiano. The battle for control begins when the portal is opened, and takes place across the entire United States, from Everville to New York, as forces struggle to either close the portal, or keep it open, for unknown to humanity, an unspeakable evil is moving towards the Cosm (the area of the universe inhabited by humans), the Iad Urobros, described as "Chaos itself." Throughout its broad course, 'Everville' documents this struggle, and the multitude of people (there are over 50 principal characters) involved in it. Another tour-de-force from Clive Barker!

Rating:
Summary: What's Next?
Review: As a young reader i really enjoyed this book by Clive Barker. I learned about TG&SS last year from a student teacher. She told me to read it and gave me a copy of the book. When I finally got around to reading TG&SS i couldn't put it down. When i was finished i asked my mom to go out and buy the sequel "Everville". I didn't think it could get better but it did. Clive Barker is a true genius and these two books prove it. One thing has been bothering me however since i finished Everville. What's Next?? There has to be more. If anybody knows which book it is (if it exists...) please email me at [e-mail]. thank you.

Rating:
Summary: What's Next?
Review: As a young reader i really enjoyed this book by Clive Barker. I learned about TG&SS last year from a student teacher. She told me to read it and gave me a copy of the book. When I finally got around to reading TG&SS i couldn't put it down. When i was finished i asked my mom to go out and buy the sequel "Everville". I didn't think it could get better but it did. Clive Barker is a true genius and these two books prove it. One thing has been bothering me however since i finished Everville. What's Next?? There has to be more. If anybody knows which book it is (if it exists...) please email me at [e-mail]. thank you.

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: "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: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Too Much Stuffing
Review: I've learned recently that I've fallen victim to the classic blunder of reading the sequel before the original (The Great and Secret Show), which I absolutely must read, by the way! And I blame possibly this error for my lack of stars for this particular Barker masterpiece! Yes, it is a masterpiece, chocked full of imaginative characters and prose so well written it hurts to put it down and go (eventually) to sleep. But it became clear after a while that more was happening than I could keep pace with, including references to places, events and characters to which I haven't been introduced (from The G and S Show). Sadly, it was harder to appreciate the story line because of the feeling of "missing out", and that's a concept that novels should try and eliminate or at least tone down (I strongly feel that each book should be an entity able to exist on its own; like the Patricia Cornwell - Kay Scarpetta novels). So I lost track for a few (hundred) pages of action and backtrack themes, and now I regret wholly not reading part 1 first. He should have at least made that note on the cover! But I grew to love the main characters, and I was drawn in helplessly for the first two-thirds of the story, intrigued as I've never been since reading Weaveworld! I'll probably alter this review after I read The G & S Show, but for now, it's confusing to read on its own.

Rating:
Summary: Almost (but not quite) as good as the first
Review: In Everville: The Second Book of the Art, Barker once again throws us into a mystical world of amazing possibilities. Like The Great and Secret Show the bizarre events are all the more fascinating because it's mostly set in our world (The general area of Oregon I grew up in, as a matter of fact). New characters are introduced and surprising fates await the characters from the first book. Also, the fascinating Harry D'Amour plays a much larger role. The book is filled with Barker's trademark mind-bending imagery and strange creatures. However, the book isn't quite as fast-moving as the first and drags on at times. Also, the world of Quiddity doesn't seem quite so mystical this time around. Fans of Barker and of the first book will still find it worthy to be on the same shelf as his other surreal epic fantasies.

Rating:
Summary: Almost (but not quite) as good as the first
Review: In Everville: The Second Book of the Art, Barker once again throws us into a mystical world of amazing possibilities. Like The Great and Secret Show the bizarre events are all the more fascinating because it's mostly set in our world (The general area of Oregon I grew up in, as a matter of fact). New characters are introduced and surprising fates await the characters from the first book. Also, the fascinating Harry D'Amour plays a much larger role. The book is filled with Barker's trademark mind-bending imagery and strange creatures. However, the book isn't quite as fast-moving as the first and drags on at times. Also, the world of Quiddity doesn't seem quite so mystical this time around. Fans of Barker and of the first book will still find it worthy to be on the same shelf as his other surreal epic fantasies.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't stand on its own
Review: Somehow, I missed that this novel was a sequel when I picked it up. I only gradually realized it as I read, when the text kept referring to characters as if I should already be familiar with their histories and should have had knowledge of prior events. That, the large cast of characters and the disjointed nature of the writing left me confused and frustrated as I delved deeper into the book. I must confess that I was hooked by a strong, interesting opening, but I was quickly lost in a muddy soup of characters and events, feeling like I was on the outside, lacking some secret knowledge that would keep me from fully enjoying the story. Barker should probably have done a better job of making this a standalone novel, and the book's cover should have done a better job of making clear that this was a sequel (in which case, I probably would never have started reading it in the first place). As it was, I was left feeling dissatisfied and like I had wasted a huge chunk of my reading time, once again convinced to remove Barker's name from my reading list.