Scan barcode
A review by ruxandra_grr
Imajica by Clive Barker
4.0
Imajica's the chonkiest book I've read in a long time and oh my goddesses, was it *a lot*. I loved and deeply felt so many moments (I wrote down so many quotes!! and notes), but there were things that quite pissed me off.
This, for me, is a dense novel that really examines the ego and myths of men, the archetypes of builder and conqueror and authority that makes order happen. The desire to own and subjugate. The obsession for order and leaving something as your legacy - but something that is built in your own image. It's also a book about how women are complicated and powerful in their own right (and it's not in a gender essentialism sort of way, either). Thus, I found the power dynamics, power structures and gender dynamics in the novel absolutely fascinating. On the other hand, it's well intentioned, but still quite terrible when it comes to race (more on that a bit later).
Another thing I very much loved is how in-the-body this book felt. There is a lot of horniness, good, bad and complex, sensual or disgusting or both. It felt visceral all the time and I loved the approach. It felt palpable and material and specific in lovely ways that are very compatible with me as a reader and (very rarely) writer. The prose is also pretty spectacular in many scenes, there are descriptions that are so imaginative and clearly rendered.
This is the story of two ex-lovers, Gentle (real name John Furie Zacharias, isn't that somewhat contradictory?) and Judith, who both have a peculiar thing in common: they only really remember the last 10 years of their lives. This all changes when Judith's husband, an entitled (almost with an actual nobiliar title!) rich dude named Charlie, hires someone to kill Judith, the assassin Pie'oh'pah. And yeah, that's when it all changes. This is perhaps not even 0.5% of the plot, but I will stop here, cause it is nice to experience it while going wtf all the time.
I just really loved Judith a lot, and there were points where I would say out loud go, Judith, go during moments of the plot. She is a difficult woman to root for though, in the year 2023, but I always really love those. She is someone who wants to be her own person and have agency, but somehow she still kind of ends up beholden to various men throughout the book and it can be frustrating, but also it felt truthful to me, the way women are socialized that a relationship with a man is the end all be all. But I think that this book makes it clear that relationships with men are also a way to gain proximity to power, which is pleasantly complex. (Not to mention the more specific white women being with powerful white men, who are English and engage in colonizer behavior).
"The way he talked about her, it was though she was something holy, and Athanasius loves holy women.”
“Let me tell you, I know Judith very well, and she’s no Virgin.”
“There are other kinds of sanctity among our sex,” Nikaetomaas replied, a little testily.
Also, when it comes to female characters, I loved that there was a wide variety of them and types of femininity depicted, and none of them fit neatly into the virgin/ whore/ mother/ lover categories. But yeah, the book does have a pretty heavy focus on reproductive issues, motherhood, there are many symbols and metaphors that are about fecundity and barrenness. I think the line was toed pretty ok, with one exception. There were scenes between female characters that I absolutely adored. Even if Barker had an annoying tendency all throughout this book of killing off really great secondary characters, and a lot of them were women. And the deaths felt most of the time like he didn't know what else to do with that character.
We also had a really affecting and lovely gay couple - Clem and Taylor, the latter one dying of AIDS near the beginning (?! I think, this book is long, so it's all relative) of the book. And Clem is for sure one of my favorite characters of the many.
Also, this very compassionate look at this group of homeless people in London, and a lot of various other political and social commentary moments that were quite good. Like at some point (before the middle of the book), there's a sort of revolution somewhere in the world and we hear from this bourgeois merchant complaining in a very contemporary way: “They’re nothing more than rabble,” the merchant said. “They’ve no care for property or person. Indiscriminate destruction, that’s all they’re good for! I’m no great lover of the Autarch, but he’s got to be the voice of decent people like me in times like this!
Barker does try (a bit feebly) to acknowledge racism...
But then we come to Pie'oh'pah, a Black genderqueer character, that for me was a pretty huge misstep in the narrative, even though I was quite excited in the beginning. No matter how you slice it, this is a character that is very often called a slave and a whore and also with the pronoun 'it'. And it's not Murderbot style, where Murderbot chooses that for its own reasons (that are clearly explained in the narrative). Although we get POV sections for a lot of characters, we don't get a lot from Pie and so there isn't much interiority there. Instead, this character is endlessly fetishized and used by others. If I were lenient, I'd say that Pie's relationship with Gentle could fit into a kink dynamic, but I'm not feeling lenient, because that's not a good enough explanation. I still have to think about this portrayal a lot, and it felt shitty, cause I kept waiting for something to change.
I don't even know if I can recommend this book, even though I loved a lot of it. The 90s of it all shows up in very unfortunate ways, particularly in pretty stereotypical racist portrayals of POC and also just a pretty big incidence of rape and a lot of interactions where consent is dubious (intentionally so, from a thematic standpoint). Also, as a content warning, there's, which is terrible and like very unnecessary, in my opinion, since the gender dynamics have already been established over and over, Clive Barker!
But also, in my opinion, most of these instances are not exploitative (even if they. are. excessive!!) and they do ask interesting questions about consent. There was one instance of sex when I literally could not tell if consent could be given by either of the participants under those circumstances. (
So yeah, what do you even rate such a complicated book? 3.5 rounded up to 4, for now. Pending the book club discussion next week, which is sure to be very interesting.
This, for me, is a dense novel that really examines the ego and myths of men, the archetypes of builder and conqueror and authority that makes order happen. The desire to own and subjugate. The obsession for order and leaving something as your legacy - but something that is built in your own image. It's also a book about how women are complicated and powerful in their own right (and it's not in a gender essentialism sort of way, either). Thus, I found the power dynamics, power structures and gender dynamics in the novel absolutely fascinating. On the other hand, it's well intentioned, but still quite terrible when it comes to race (more on that a bit later).
Another thing I very much loved is how in-the-body this book felt. There is a lot of horniness, good, bad and complex, sensual or disgusting or both. It felt visceral all the time and I loved the approach. It felt palpable and material and specific in lovely ways that are very compatible with me as a reader and (very rarely) writer. The prose is also pretty spectacular in many scenes, there are descriptions that are so imaginative and clearly rendered.
This is the story of two ex-lovers, Gentle (real name John Furie Zacharias, isn't that somewhat contradictory?) and Judith, who both have a peculiar thing in common: they only really remember the last 10 years of their lives. This all changes when Judith's husband, an entitled (almost with an actual nobiliar title!) rich dude named Charlie, hires someone to kill Judith, the assassin Pie'oh'pah. And yeah, that's when it all changes. This is perhaps not even 0.5% of the plot, but I will stop here, cause it is nice to experience it while going wtf all the time.
I just really loved Judith a lot, and there were points where I would say out loud go, Judith, go during moments of the plot. She is a difficult woman to root for though, in the year 2023, but I always really love those. She is someone who wants to be her own person and have agency, but somehow she still kind of ends up beholden to various men throughout the book and it can be frustrating, but also it felt truthful to me, the way women are socialized that a relationship with a man is the end all be all. But I think that this book makes it clear that relationships with men are also a way to gain proximity to power, which is pleasantly complex. (Not to mention the more specific white women being with powerful white men, who are English and engage in colonizer behavior).
"The way he talked about her, it was though she was something holy, and Athanasius loves holy women.”
“Let me tell you, I know Judith very well, and she’s no Virgin.”
“There are other kinds of sanctity among our sex,” Nikaetomaas replied, a little testily.
Also, when it comes to female characters, I loved that there was a wide variety of them and types of femininity depicted, and none of them fit neatly into the virgin/ whore/ mother/ lover categories. But yeah, the book does have a pretty heavy focus on reproductive issues, motherhood, there are many symbols and metaphors that are about fecundity and barrenness. I think the line was toed pretty ok, with one exception.
Spoiler
It felt so disappointing that Judith did not have an abortion, even though I understand what the purpose of all that was narratively, etc.We also had a really affecting and lovely gay couple - Clem and Taylor, the latter one dying of AIDS near the beginning (?! I think, this book is long, so it's all relative) of the book. And Clem is for sure one of my favorite characters of the many.
Also, this very compassionate look at this group of homeless people in London, and a lot of various other political and social commentary moments that were quite good. Like at some point (before the middle of the book), there's a sort of revolution somewhere in the world and we hear from this bourgeois merchant complaining in a very contemporary way: “They’re nothing more than rabble,” the merchant said. “They’ve no care for property or person. Indiscriminate destruction, that’s all they’re good for! I’m no great lover of the Autarch, but he’s got to be the voice of decent people like me in times like this!
Barker does try (a bit feebly) to acknowledge racism...
But then we come to Pie'oh'pah, a Black genderqueer character, that for me was a pretty huge misstep in the narrative, even though I was quite excited in the beginning. No matter how you slice it, this is a character that is very often called a slave and a whore and also with the pronoun 'it'. And it's not Murderbot style, where Murderbot chooses that for its own reasons (that are clearly explained in the narrative). Although we get POV sections for a lot of characters, we don't get a lot from Pie and so there isn't much interiority there. Instead, this character is endlessly fetishized and used by others. If I were lenient, I'd say that Pie's relationship with Gentle could fit into a kink dynamic, but I'm not feeling lenient, because that's not a good enough explanation. I still have to think about this portrayal a lot, and it felt shitty, cause I kept waiting for something to change.
I don't even know if I can recommend this book, even though I loved a lot of it. The 90s of it all shows up in very unfortunate ways, particularly in pretty stereotypical racist portrayals of POC and also just a pretty big incidence of rape and a lot of interactions where consent is dubious (intentionally so, from a thematic standpoint). Also, as a content warning, there's
Spoiler
the rape of a childBut also, in my opinion, most of these instances are not exploitative (even if they. are. excessive!!) and they do ask interesting questions about consent. There was one instance of sex when I literally could not tell if consent could be given by either of the participants under those circumstances. (
Spoiler
Judith being in her double's bed, believing herself to be dreaming Gentle and in fact having real sex with Gentle's double who thought Judith was her own double, his wife. Any opinions on that??So yeah, what do you even rate such a complicated book? 3.5 rounded up to 4, for now. Pending the book club discussion next week, which is sure to be very interesting.