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170 reviews for:
The Complete Clive Barker's The Great And Secret Show
Gabriel Rodríguez, Chris Ryall, Clive Barker
3.83 AVERAGE
170 reviews for:
The Complete Clive Barker's The Great And Secret Show
Gabriel Rodríguez, Chris Ryall, Clive Barker
3.83 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Just wasn't really grabbing me. Some of the concepts were interesting but the characters felt a bit distant and I didn't really feel invested in anything that was happening.
Clive Barker writes stories on a really grand scale when he's going for a novel. There is an enormous amount of world building that goes into it and it's fantasy at scale hard to conceive of. This isn't an exception, detailing the pursuit of mystical power by a lone man unsuited for it. The arc of his rise and fall is pretty great.
I don't like the coda setting it up for the ongoing saga of Trello battling evil, so I dock it a star.
I don't like the coda setting it up for the ongoing saga of Trello battling evil, so I dock it a star.
adventurous
dark
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A sprawling epic that drags the whole cast into the story, The Great and Secret Show has a hard time giving all of them the same level of intrigue, leading to an uneven experience.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Rape, Murder
If you ever want to do drugs but without the drugs, read this book.
The Great And Secret Show plays on beyond Quiddity - the sea of life - the vast dream-sea where one can only cross thrice in their life. Come along for the wild ride and see for yourself why it is that Quiddity must be preserved, at all cost.
I am honestly hungover from finishing this book. I'm still trying to get back to the reality where I was, before I started the journey. And perhaps I'll never truly get all the way back, for some pieces of me are still adrift within the Quiddity, lost in the grandeur of the stories that Clive Barker had woven here.
5/5 - knocked me off my socks!
The Great And Secret Show plays on beyond Quiddity - the sea of life - the vast dream-sea where one can only cross thrice in their life. Come along for the wild ride and see for yourself why it is that Quiddity must be preserved, at all cost.
I am honestly hungover from finishing this book. I'm still trying to get back to the reality where I was, before I started the journey. And perhaps I'll never truly get all the way back, for some pieces of me are still adrift within the Quiddity, lost in the grandeur of the stories that Clive Barker had woven here.
5/5 - knocked me off my socks!
I've read (and enjoyed) two of Barker's books before -- Imajica and Galilee -- and so I wasn't walking into this entirely blind. As with those two, this was a fantastical epic involving a lot of characters, death, sex, magic of various kinds, and travelling between ... times/realities/dimensions/worlds?
I'm going to be honest: Barker always seems to create worlds that are too big for his books. And even though this is the first of what I gather was a planned trilogy and ended up being a duology instead, it still feels bloated, like it's straining at the seams. There are whole characters and plotlines which could have been cut to create a more tightly-focused and, arguably, engaging book. But you don't read Barker for conciseness. You read him for the bizarre, visionary lens he places over the world you think you know, and this book delivered weird by the shipload.
That said: still wouldn't recommend it. If you are new to Barker, and willing to take advice from someone who's so far only read three of his books, I'd recommend either of the other two above this one. They're all overfull and they could all stand to be cut way the hell down, but I found the others more cohesive, overall, than The Great and Secret Show.
I'm going to be honest: Barker always seems to create worlds that are too big for his books. And even though this is the first of what I gather was a planned trilogy and ended up being a duology instead, it still feels bloated, like it's straining at the seams. There are whole characters and plotlines which could have been cut to create a more tightly-focused and, arguably, engaging book. But you don't read Barker for conciseness. You read him for the bizarre, visionary lens he places over the world you think you know, and this book delivered weird by the shipload.
That said: still wouldn't recommend it. If you are new to Barker, and willing to take advice from someone who's so far only read three of his books, I'd recommend either of the other two above this one. They're all overfull and they could all stand to be cut way the hell down, but I found the others more cohesive, overall, than The Great and Secret Show.
Imaginative, crass, long-winded story that tries too hard to be "edgy". Characters had no depth, every single one could've died and I wouldn't care at all. Halfway through I was curious about the resolution, but shortly after I just couldn't wait for it to end. It would've been a bad 300 page book, it was an awful 650 page book. Ugh.