As a Constant Reader of Stephen King, sometimes I get a little worried that there might be a whole world of horror novels out there that I am missing out on, so, I did some research.
After digging deep into the r/books subreddit, it seemed apparent to me that I was truly missing out by having not consumed any of Clive Barker’s novels. Of course, I’m familiar with the name and a Pinhead fan (at least in a theatrical sense) so I thought I’d better give him a try. By all accounts, the best place to start on my Journey of Barker is the ominous-sounding Books of Blood. So I downloaded volume 1-3, and here we are!
What a bunch of crap.
My favourite part of this foray into Barker’s work was his introduction. He sounded like a suitably creepy and fascinating man, with an interesting life. He stated the books of blood would be not only scary, but a little bit sexy. Hell yeh! I was sufficiently amped!
Usually when I review a collection of short stories, I like to consider and rate each one individually, but this time… I cannot bring myself to do it.
I will do a quick retelling of the one that broke me though. It followed a couple driving through the back hills of Yugoslavia only to stumble upon an ancient ritual of epic proportions. Literally. As in, these two villages have a tradition of stringing their bodies together into a giant person and having a battle. It’s possibly the most preposterous idea I’ve ever seen in print…
Turns out, Clive Barker is not my thing, but I am glad I gave it a go!
1 rotten chicken carcass out of 5.
