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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
Son of Celluloid - An escaped convict dies hidden in a movie theater and his body is never found. Over the years, his cancerous tumor takes the strong emotions of the theater audiences and becomes sentient. And then starts killing people. This story was pretty weird, even by Clive Barker standards, yet it still managed to bore me. It took me days to get through it and I wasn't impressed at the end.
Rawhead Rex - A seriously evil ancient monster is accidentally released from its underground prison and wreaks havoc on an English town. The beginning of this story didn't do much for me; after the last story, I was starting to worry this whole book would be a bust. But by the end I liked this one, even though there were a few parts I felt were there only for shock value (which I don't care for) and the actual ending itself wasn't all that special.
Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud - A Catholic guy is framed as the king of a porn cartel. He goes on a bit of a rampage and kills some of his enemies, but the remaining ones get their revenge and he is killed, too. But then he manages to possess a sheet... Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? It is, a little bit. This story is seriously dark comedy. I think it's my favorite in this book.
Scape-Goats - Four people get stranded when their yacht ends up beached on an uncharted island in the Hebrides. This island happens to be situated where the currents carry the bodies of all the people who drown at sea. DUN DUN DUNNNNN! This story wasn't as good as it sounds like it should be, but I didn't dislike it.
Human Remains - It's a doppelgänger story, y'all. I LOVE THOSE.
Rawhead Rex - A seriously evil ancient monster is accidentally released from its underground prison and wreaks havoc on an English town. The beginning of this story didn't do much for me; after the last story, I was starting to worry this whole book would be a bust. But by the end I liked this one, even though there were a few parts I felt were there only for shock value (which I don't care for) and the actual ending itself wasn't all that special.
Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud - A Catholic guy is framed as the king of a porn cartel. He goes on a bit of a rampage and kills some of his enemies, but the remaining ones get their revenge and he is killed, too. But then he manages to possess a sheet... Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? It is, a little bit. This story is seriously dark comedy. I think it's my favorite in this book.
Scape-Goats - Four people get stranded when their yacht ends up beached on an uncharted island in the Hebrides. This island happens to be situated where the currents carry the bodies of all the people who drown at sea. DUN DUN DUNNNNN! This story wasn't as good as it sounds like it should be, but I didn't dislike it.
Human Remains - It's a doppelgänger story, y'all. I LOVE THOSE.
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
slow-paced
The strongest of the three volumes I've read so far.
The quote on the cover of this book from Stephen King pretty much sums it up, something along the lines of Clive Barker "making the rest of us look like we've been sleeping". This collection of incredible shorts has nary a dud among them, with some 6 films being made to date from them. My favourite was 'In The Hills, The Cities' which I'll probably have nightmares about for the rest of my days. Comparatively, the shorts from King now seem to be a safety blanket with mostly wholesome resolutions. Not so much in the world of Barker, where everything truly is out to unsettle you, like all good horror should. In short, you can't do much better than this collection for short bursts of cold horror.
EVERYBODY IS A BOOK OF BLOOD:With this, Barker, though childless, proves himself the master of horrifying dad jokes.
WHEREVER WE’RE OPENED, WE’RE RED.
In my days I have read a lot of Stephen King, starting in my teens, and his short story collections ([b:Skeleton Crew|13440|Skeleton Crew|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1271861632l/13440._SY75_.jpg|1814], [b:Night Shift|10628|Night Shift|Stephen King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1342215309l/10628._SY75_.jpg|2454497]) were among my favorites.
[a:Clive Barker|10366|Clive Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1430330407p2/10366.jpg]'s stories put Uncle Steve's to shame.
Here we have another collection of captivating, meaty, lustful, almost artistic stories that, thirty-five years after initial publication, still manage to thrill and impress with their originality. Throughout each tale, you're never quite sure what to expect. My favorite was Rawhead Rex, a tale of an ancient primal figure, one-time ruler and devourer of humankind, now released into a world that has forgotten him and is woefully unprepared. Fortunately I have never seen the film adaptation:
...because that would have ruined the reading experience. The other four stories are equally haunting and memorable, with an undercurrent of sadness, loneliness, and loss of past glory.
dark
fast-paced
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is the first of the Books of Blood I've managed to snag a copy of, but I'll definitely be searching out the others. I've enjoyed everything else of Barker's I've read so far, but the story collection might be his better form of horror writing, as he seems able to pack much more visceral gore and much more horrific concepts in the shorter the format. (I don't think it's an accident that Hellraiser and Pinhead were born from a work as relatively short as The Hellbound Heart.)