Clive Barker's Books of Blood: Volume One (Movie Tie-In)

Years ago, around '86 or '87 a friend of mine in High School turned me on to a then unknown Englishman by the name of Clive Barker. I was a complete Stephen King junkie at the time and this friend of mine said, dude, you gotta read this guy's stuff...he's un-f*cking-real! I kinda wrinkled my nose and shook my head. Read some no-name's book...pleeze. But I trusted this friend with his opinions and while browsing around one day at a local B. Dalton bookstore I came across a hardcover copy of In The Flesh by Mr. Barker on the under $5.00 table. What the heck. It bought it and read it and....Jeezus! The Forbidden still haunts me to this day. But that small dose of Barker was only the beginning. A few months later I had the luck of finding (on the same under $5.00 table in the same bookstore) a harcover copy of The Books Of Blood. Now, in England, The Books Of Blood were arranged in volumes I through VI by a little outfit called Sphere Ltd, but Stateside, they were broken up into Volumes I through III, The Inhuman Condition, In The Flesh and finally at the end of the novel Cabal. Anyway, I took the book home and started to read the short stories represented there one by one. Astonishing. Nothing I had ever read before would prepare me for what Clive Barker was up to. Never before had I witnessed such abominations, such cruelties, such acts of horrifying and engrossing carnal abberations. He scared me more than a little. Great God, where had this guy come from? Stephen King was praising him on the jacket of every book he printed and rightly so. This guy was the new messiah of the modern horror story. Nowhere had I read such raw, brutal and fresh ideas. Nothing cliche here. The stories encompassing all of the orginal Books Of Blood are awesome from "Midnight Meat Train" all the way to "How Spolers Bleed" at the end of Cabal. These stories are definitely a work of genius. All these years later and I haven't missed a Barker publication yet. Still, though, once in a while, I go back (as I do with Stephen King's earlier novels) and reread them. Books Of Blood is not for the squeamish and neither is Clive Barker. He wasn't afraid to eviscirate someone back then or to report pornographic couplings and he isn't afraid to do so now. Visionary. Imaginative. Original. The Books Of Blood rock on all levels!

Clive Barker did not want his Books of Blood broken up into individual volumes when they were published, yet that is what happened. Now, the first three volumes are available in one book, serving as the perfect introduction to Barker's unique style of horror. There are some really groundbreaking stories included here, alongside of a dud or two from Volume Two, but each and every story exhibits the genius and originality of its author's dark vision.The initial offering, The Book of Blood, stands out as a unique ghost story, but it also serves as a provocative abstract for everything Barker sought to accomplish with these stories. After this enticing introductory tale, we head below the streets of New York to sneak a ride on The Midnight Meat Train. This story is vintage Clive Barker, full of blood and gore. Barker isn't trying to drown the reader in blood as a means to hide any lack of skill on his part, though, because the skill is undeniably there for all to see. In The Yattering and Jack, a dark comedy farce, a poor demon does everything he can think of to make the unshakeable Jack miserable, driving himself almost mad in the process. I think of The Yattering and Jack as an amusing sort of Barker bedtime story. Pig Blood Blues forces the casual reader to once again don hip hugger boots for a trek into gore and depravity. At a certain school for wayward boys, the other white meat is not pork. Sex, Death and Starshine is a good story, touching upon the needs of the dead to be entertained every once in a while, but it lacks a certain oomph. Dread is a somewhat sadistic tale of one man's obsession with death. 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. Dread is a psychologically disturbing read, one which succeeds quite well indeed in spite of a rather pat ending. Hell's Event tells the story of a charity race, only this particular contest pits a minion of the underworld against human runners, with the control of the very government hinging upon the outcome. Next up is Jacqueline Ess: Her Last Will and Testament, a disappointing story in which the main character's special abilities to control the things and people around her wind up wasted. The Skins of the Fathers is not a bad story, but it is quite weird. 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 a 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. I love the unusual premise and the surreal quality of Son of Celluloid. The back wall behind the screen of an old movie theatre has seen so many famous lives projected upon it that the essence of those screen legends has germinated within it. The only thing needed to bring the screen personalitie

With Volume One of Books of Blood, Clive Barker burst upon the horror scene like a giant supernova exploding in space, mixing an obvious love for the more gruesome aspects of the dark literary arts with a vision and power all but unheard of. Stephen King said that the very future of horror was named Clive Barker. With that endorsement, such an eye-catching title, and a wonderfully horror-laden cover image (much better than the reprints of recent years), I simply had to have this book. An introduction by horror maestro Ramsey Campbell further fuelled my fires of interest. I was still rather new to the horror scene at that time, and while I knew even then that Barker was constructing stories unlike any I had ever read, it was several years later that I truly realized the astounding originality and creativeness of this man's genius. The initial offering, The Book of Blood, stands out as a unique ghost story in its own right, but it also serves as a provocative abstract for everything Barker sought to accomplish with these stories (and I should note that he originally wanted all of the volumes of Books of Blood to be published together in one book). After this enticing introductory tale, we head below the streets of New York to sneak a ride on The Midnight Meat Train. This story is vintage Clive Barker. While it is full of blood and gore, it is clearly not a case of gore for gore's sake. Barker isn't trying to drown the reader in blood as a means to hide any lack of skill on his part because the skill is undeniably there for all to see. This is a story that you will not soon forget. Barker really changes his line of attack in the next story, The Yattering and Jack. The Yattering is a demon sent to torment and destroy the sanity of a little nobody named Jack. In this dark comedy farce, the poor Yattering does everything he can think of to make the unshakeable Jack miserable, driving himself almost mad in the process. I think of The Yattering and Jack as an amusing sort of Barker bedtime story. Pig Blood Blues forces the casual reader to once again don hip hugger boots for a trek into gore and depravity. At a certain school for wayward boys, a monster resides in a pig sty on the campus farm, a menacing sow who thinks that pigs are more equal than humans; in this place, the other white meat is not pork. Sex, Death and Starshine is a good story, but it alone among these offerings seems to be lacking a certain oomph. The idea behind the story is fantastic, however, as it touches upon the needs of the dead to be entertained every once in a while. Easily, the most impressive story told in these pages is In the Hills, the Cities. The impact of this pioneering, bold, brilliant story is akin to that of Shirley Jackson's unforgettable tale The Lottery. Two male lovers touring the hidden sights of Yugoslavia become the reluctant witnesses to a sight few men could ever even conceive of when a unique traditional battle between the citizens of t

As one person who wrote a review for this, I am an avid horror reader. But, unlike that same person, I love this book. Chilling, though-provoking, and yes, even a little bit funny. These tales really get in under your skin, literally! I liked most of the stories, but some where not good. I shall now tell you about my favorite tales."The Book of Blood": A man opens the highway, and in doing so, gets these stories engraved on his skin. Pretty wicked."The Midnight Meat Train": A newcomer in New York. A man who kills on the subway for a higher power. Guess what happens? They meet(no pun intended). One of his grosser tales, with VERY VIVID descripitions(spelled it wrong, I think). The first story I read."The Yattering and Jack": A funnier story, with little gore. The Yattering(a demon) is assigned the least caring man in the world. The turkey scene is a classic!"Pig Blood Blues": A boy hangs himself in a barn, and still lingers about... Not his best story. the fact that they are putting it in the Books of Blood movie disgusts me. Still, pretty bloody."In the Hills, the Cities": Cities join in an old battle. Two, um, "lovers" see the battle. Quite possibly the bloodiest, not goriest, tale in the book. The first story by Barker I EVER read."The Skins of the Fathers": Demons. Mountain town. Nuff said. Pretty cool, with lotsa cool monsters."Jaqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament": A women can do things to men with her mind. Very erotic ending. Also, the man into women scene is not to be skimmed!"Rawhead Rex": An old monster gets loose in a village. The best monster story ever made! Half of the stories in the book! I would describe the other stories, but that would be to many words.To end, I say anyone who likes Koontz, rainbows, dolls, bedtime stories, and sweet dreams, should look elswhere. But if you like King, lightning, gory tales, and nightmares, read this! It will keep you up all night!

Clive Barker, the multi-talented Liverpudlian, supposedly was to be "the future of horror" (so said no less an authority than Stephen King) with the release of these first three "Books of Blood" way back in 1984. Turned out, however, that with his finely-honed pen, his gift for odd details, locales, and the powerful image, his penchant for mordant wit, the ambiguity with which he infused his stories (are there ever clear demarcations between those hoary old cliches Good & Evil in these tales?) and the sheer glee he took in subverting the genre turned off readers looking for a slice of American Gothic, a la Anne Dean Koontz, John Saul, and even King himself.I say, leave those authors for the housewives and dilettantes; Barker is the real thing, a writer whose work doesn't comfort, but disturbs. How could readers looking for the traditional horror fiction formula react to stories like "In the Hills, the Cities," "Sex, Death, & Starshine," or "The Last Will & Testament of Jacqueline Ess"? He doesn't want to frighten you so much as radically alter your perception of the world. The horror genre is too often reactionary as it tries to banish the monster, the alien, the seemingly terrifying. Barker wants transformation; his characters confront the darkness, and find themselves changed, often times for the better, when they embrace it (literally, in the climax of "Jacqueline Ess").Rather than recommend this to conventional horror fans, I say readers who like to challenge themselves should check these out--perhaps readers of Martin Amis or Julian Barnes or Jeanette Winterson, or Jorge Luis Borges, or Italo Calvino. Then again, maybe I'm wrong--Barker's work is graphically blood-drenched, which gained him a reputation in the mid-80s as a splatterpunk, which of course anyone who has read later, more mature works like "Weaveworld," "Sacrament" or "Imajica" will realize how inaccurate that is. I think Barker is nearly a poet of horror in these stories, with prose as elegant and vivid as any of those writers mentioned above, and I think he deserves a wider readership. Here, in this new trade paperback, he has written a great introduction, one in which he reveals how he has changed over the years since he wrote the "Books of Blood." It's a thoughtful, perceptive, funny, vulgar essay, classic Barker, and the visions you'll find within are no less wonderful. "Future of horror"? Thankfully not. Clive Barker transcends any genre, and remains untouchable.