Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by mathewlreyes
Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three by Clive Barker
5.0
Books of Blood: Volume One
Total Rating: 4.7/5.
The Book of Blood. This basically acts as a framing narrative, and because we don’t get the framing wrap-up (which is at the end of Volume Six), there’s no sense of closure for the narrative. But I think that’s okay, ultimately. This is a quick story about a young man working as a fraudulent psychic and how he accidentally awakes the spirits of the dead, who (spoilers) carve their stories into his skin, which becomes this Book of Blood. A nifty story, surprisingly erotic, and appropriately gruesome. I don’t think there’s much here that redefines the horror genre, but as an opening salvo it does exactly what it needs to do. 4/5.
The Midnight Meat Train. This one is one of the most unsettling stories I’ve read recently. Ostensibly a tale about a run-of-the-mill serial killer who stalks his prey in the New York subway system, this one takes a turn for the wild and almost Lovecraftian bizarro. But by the time you enter the world of the supernatural, Barker has so tightly wound you up in the plausible horror of a serial killer that you buy the rest of what he’s selling. It’s a grim and brutal story with plenty of depth for those who want to take a more literary approach in their horror, but with enough zip and clean writing to be an engrossing story (I wrote enjoyable, did a double take, then searched for a more appropriate word) on its own. 5/5.
The Yattering and Jack. This story is so incredibly stupid, and I love it. What’s not to love? A frustrated minor demon of Hell. A do-nothing suburban husband with the outward personality of a ball of yarn. A battle of wills. On the heels of something heinously grim, this one is horror comedy at its best. There are gruesome scenes, and this one relies heavily on the ‘gross-out’ factor that Stephen King outlined in his non-fiction survey of the genre, Danse Macabre. But it’s so much fun. Who do you root for—the Yattering and its attempts to claim a human soul, or Jack and his attempts to defeat evil with the power of banality? Tough choices, but the ending doesn’t disappoint. 5/5.
Pig Blood Blues. One of my friends is very intensely in the ACAB camp and frequently talks to me about these issues. So I was conditioned to think that this story, before I started reading, had to do with a cop. But no, I told myself, surely it’ll be about an actual pig. Well, I was right on both counts, as this story involves a former police officer taking a job at a school and uncovering a bizarre pig cult that—well, to say more would spoil the story. But just when you think Barker has outdone himself in taking his stories down Loopy Lane, he takes a hard turn down the Batshit Cul-de-Sac. Seriously, I guarantee you that you will not be able to predict how this story ends, even going into the last paragraph. It’s a remarkably gruesome story and, though it lacks the fear factor of Meat Train or the humor of Yattering, its so grotesquely imaginative that all you can do when you finish is set the book down and marvel in what Barker has accomplished. 5/5.
Sex, Death and Starshine. Every story collection must have a dud; or, if the collection is just that high of a caliber, must have a story that is, if not a dud, shines a bit less bright than the rest. And despite its title, this is the story with that dubious distinction. But it isn’t a dud, not by any means. The most overtly sexual of the stories, this one concerns a theatre director as he learns the historic theatre he works in will be shutting down right after his production. But it seems that the theatre’s more ethereal residents are intent on having the final show go out unlike any other. It’s creepy, a bit goofy, sometimes sad, always entertaining. But it doesn’t quite have that spark that the other stories had. 4/5
In the Hills, the Cities. I’m not exaggerating when I call this story the most brilliant one of the collection. Not just the first volume, but the whole omnibus. What begins as a gay couple traveling through Eastern Europe, trading verbal jabs, cigarettes, and sex, culminates in one of the most unworldly endings I’ve ever read. This story alone should land Barker in the horror Hall of Fame. Cities rendered sentient; cities become Gods. Tens of thousands of humans collecting themselves into a whole that is beyond the sum of its parts, is something beyond what we can conceive of on this plane of existence. Something so ancient and terrifying that to see it is to either die of fright or yearn to become a part of it. The story unites the gruesome horror, the humor, the bizarre, and the melancholy of each of the preceding stories and, much like the cities that pull themselves together, becomes itself like a giant, towering over all that came before it. If I had to guess which story in this collection sealed the deal on Barker’s reputation, it’d be this one. 5/5.
Books of Blood: Volume Two
Total Rating: 4.4/5.
Dread. Perhaps it was because I was reading Plato shortly before I started reading this collection, but this story struck me almost as a Socratic dialogue. Only, perhaps a Socratic dialogue taking place in hell. This one explores the nature of dread, of fear, and posits some rather unsettling philosophical conclusions about the breakability of the human mind. To summarize it too much would be to spoil the story, so I’ll only say that this one is worth it for the delicious irony of the ending. Darkly humorous at times, sadistic in the execution of its ideas, this is one of the better ones in Volume Two. 5/5.
Hell’s Event. This one is probably my least favorite story in the whole collection. Possibly that’s because I read it on a long plane ride from Atlanta to Minneapolis, sandwiched between two men who had no inkling to give me a little space, and I was already in a foul mood due to the travelling—a 50-minute line in security, nearly missing the train from the hotel to the airport, etcetera. The day felt like Hell’s event, if I’m being honest. So maybe I wasn’t in the right headspace for this. But the story, where a corrupt British politician sets one of his demonic underlings to compete in a race to determine the fate of the human race, fell flat on me for the most part. There’s some gorgeous imagery, and fans of Dante’s Inferno will get a kick out of some of the depictions of Hell. And, as with all stories in this collection, the writing is superb. The worst of a Clive Barker story is still better than most of what you’ll get in the average collection, I think. 3/5.
Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament. If gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss were a short story, this would be it. And honestly, get it, girl. The story starts with a housewife, the titular Jacqueline Ess, attempting suicide as the only means of escape from a marriage in which she feels trapped. Don’t ask me how (hell, don’t ask Barker how), but in failing to complete the deed she somehow gains the ability to contort other human bodies by sheer force of mind. And the results are delightfully schlocky and gruesome. But there’s a heart at the center of the tale—and not just a beating, pulsating heart being squeezed to pulp—but an emotional core that drives Jacqueline’s narrative. Well worth the read. 5/5.
The Skins of the Fathers. I don’t know where to start with this one, to be honest. It’s weird. The opening scene is like a hallucinogenic trip, and that’s just the start of things. Like, how does the man come up with shit like this? The story isn’t particularly frightening, but what it lacks in scares it makes up for in the execution of concept. The tldr; there are monstrous, amorphous demon monsters living under a dessert. At one point in the past, they collective boned a lady while her husband watched. She had a kid by them. Now they want the kid back. There are some almost Western vibes to the story, with the angry townsfolk taking the role of collective cowboy off to rescue the damsel in distress, but as with all Barker stories, this one doesn’t go where you’d expect it to. 5/5.
New Murders in the Rue Morgue. Look, I love Edgar Allen Poe. I recognize the foundational place that the original story had both in his oeuvre and in the literary canon. But I can’t say it’s my favorite of his. Detective fiction just ain’t my thing. But this story is a perfectly fine homage to the original. It retreads old ground in new ways, but at times feels a bit slapped on to the end of the collection. Under a less skilled pen, the story might have fallen totally flat for me. But Barker believes in the story, has a clear passion for the source material, and the result is a pretty good read with an appropriately gruesome ending. 4/5.
Books of Blood: Volume Three
Total Rating: 4.7/5
Son of Celluloid. An homage to the golden era of cinema and memories of the silver screen that we collectively share, this one is a strong start to the third volume. A murderous criminal with an equally murderous tumor is on the run from the cops and finds his way into the dingy basement of an old movie theatre. There he dies, and there his tumor takes on a life of its own, drinking in the energy of the audience—their fears, laughs, joys, tears. It collects them, develops a life of its own, and then turns the cinema into its own personal buffet. Honestly, at this point the weird is par for the course with Barker, but no matter how far into the bizarre he goes, you’re along for the ride—and hey, at least this one gets a happy ending for its human protagonist. 5/5.
Rawhead Rex. A big dick with teeth attacks a gentrified village. That’s really all you need to know. I mean, it’s right there in the name. Rawhead. Raw. Head. Rex. Get it? No? Well, reading the story you will. Ol’ Rexy has a head shaped like a moist and spongey glans. He masturbates at least once, probably more, in the course of the story. I mean, what the actual, ever-loving fuck was Barker thinking when he wrote this? There’s a scene involving the golden shower from hell that will haunt my nightmares for years to come. Honestly, there’s nothing else can I say about this clusterfuck of a story, except that it’s the best one in Volume Three. 5/5.
Confessions of a (Pornographer’s) Shroud. If you like revenge stories with a taste of the flippantly bizarre, then this is the one for you. I’ll lay out the scene: boring dude accidentally works for the mob. Boring dude discovers this. Boring dude stupidly confronts them. Boring dude is framed as a sex pest by the mob, becomes slightly less boring and goes on a killing spree. Mob doesn’t take kindly to this, tortures him to death. Boring duded becomes a less boring ghost and possesses a literal white sheet of cloth. If M.R. James’s Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come to You, My Lad kicked off the stereotypical white-sheet ghost’s popularity, surely this story builds upon that legacy in as bizarre and gruesome a way as possible. And oh, how gross and delightful the revenge is. 5/5.
Scape-Goats. In which rich kids have sex on a yacht, and the yacht lands on an island that smells weird. I don’t know what exactly Barker was going for here, but this one didn’t work for me as much as the others. I don’t think it missed the mark for me as much as Hell’s Event did, but it’s certainly close. There’s some gruesome bits and some eerie bits, but this isn’t his best effort, in my opinion. I think the concept of an island possessed by hundreds of dead, drowned sailors had a lot of potential, but just didn’t go in the direction I’d have liked. 3.5/5.
Human Remains. Be gay, do crimes. If any story in this omnibus fit the bill of that saying, this is it. We follow a bisexual prostitute as he stumbles into a dark ritual involving a Roman statue, or some creature bearing resemblance to a statue. A classic tale of the Doppelgänger with a queer twist, this one began eerie, almost scary, but slowly became melancholy. I felt as though I were drained of my own soul after finishing it, and I think that’s what Barker intended. There’s a lot of smart commentary about humanity and how easy it is for us to lose it here. 5/5.
What I really admire about this, and the collection as a whole, is how it isn’t afraid to center the lives and stories of those on the margins—especially the margins of the 1980’s. This doesn’t mean they get happy endings, and Lord knows if you’re reading this for ‘Rep,’ then you’re not going to get it. The humans here are flawed, are heroes and villains alike. Seldom do they get ‘happy’ endings. But they’re stories that are an important snapshot of the 1980’s. They have that untamable factor, that thing you can’t quite nail down, that elevates a story from ordinary to extraordinary, from creepy to horrifying, from smart to brilliant. Overall the ratings of the three volumes averages to 4.6. I think that’s more than enough to round up to 5. Also, In the Hills, the Cities gets a clean 10/5 score, so there, 5/5 for the whole collection.
Total Rating: 4.7/5.
The Book of Blood. This basically acts as a framing narrative, and because we don’t get the framing wrap-up (which is at the end of Volume Six), there’s no sense of closure for the narrative. But I think that’s okay, ultimately. This is a quick story about a young man working as a fraudulent psychic and how he accidentally awakes the spirits of the dead, who (spoilers) carve their stories into his skin, which becomes this Book of Blood. A nifty story, surprisingly erotic, and appropriately gruesome. I don’t think there’s much here that redefines the horror genre, but as an opening salvo it does exactly what it needs to do. 4/5.
The Midnight Meat Train. This one is one of the most unsettling stories I’ve read recently. Ostensibly a tale about a run-of-the-mill serial killer who stalks his prey in the New York subway system, this one takes a turn for the wild and almost Lovecraftian bizarro. But by the time you enter the world of the supernatural, Barker has so tightly wound you up in the plausible horror of a serial killer that you buy the rest of what he’s selling. It’s a grim and brutal story with plenty of depth for those who want to take a more literary approach in their horror, but with enough zip and clean writing to be an engrossing story (I wrote enjoyable, did a double take, then searched for a more appropriate word) on its own. 5/5.
The Yattering and Jack. This story is so incredibly stupid, and I love it. What’s not to love? A frustrated minor demon of Hell. A do-nothing suburban husband with the outward personality of a ball of yarn. A battle of wills. On the heels of something heinously grim, this one is horror comedy at its best. There are gruesome scenes, and this one relies heavily on the ‘gross-out’ factor that Stephen King outlined in his non-fiction survey of the genre, Danse Macabre. But it’s so much fun. Who do you root for—the Yattering and its attempts to claim a human soul, or Jack and his attempts to defeat evil with the power of banality? Tough choices, but the ending doesn’t disappoint. 5/5.
Pig Blood Blues. One of my friends is very intensely in the ACAB camp and frequently talks to me about these issues. So I was conditioned to think that this story, before I started reading, had to do with a cop. But no, I told myself, surely it’ll be about an actual pig. Well, I was right on both counts, as this story involves a former police officer taking a job at a school and uncovering a bizarre pig cult that—well, to say more would spoil the story. But just when you think Barker has outdone himself in taking his stories down Loopy Lane, he takes a hard turn down the Batshit Cul-de-Sac. Seriously, I guarantee you that you will not be able to predict how this story ends, even going into the last paragraph. It’s a remarkably gruesome story and, though it lacks the fear factor of Meat Train or the humor of Yattering, its so grotesquely imaginative that all you can do when you finish is set the book down and marvel in what Barker has accomplished. 5/5.
Sex, Death and Starshine. Every story collection must have a dud; or, if the collection is just that high of a caliber, must have a story that is, if not a dud, shines a bit less bright than the rest. And despite its title, this is the story with that dubious distinction. But it isn’t a dud, not by any means. The most overtly sexual of the stories, this one concerns a theatre director as he learns the historic theatre he works in will be shutting down right after his production. But it seems that the theatre’s more ethereal residents are intent on having the final show go out unlike any other. It’s creepy, a bit goofy, sometimes sad, always entertaining. But it doesn’t quite have that spark that the other stories had. 4/5
In the Hills, the Cities. I’m not exaggerating when I call this story the most brilliant one of the collection. Not just the first volume, but the whole omnibus. What begins as a gay couple traveling through Eastern Europe, trading verbal jabs, cigarettes, and sex, culminates in one of the most unworldly endings I’ve ever read. This story alone should land Barker in the horror Hall of Fame. Cities rendered sentient; cities become Gods. Tens of thousands of humans collecting themselves into a whole that is beyond the sum of its parts, is something beyond what we can conceive of on this plane of existence. Something so ancient and terrifying that to see it is to either die of fright or yearn to become a part of it. The story unites the gruesome horror, the humor, the bizarre, and the melancholy of each of the preceding stories and, much like the cities that pull themselves together, becomes itself like a giant, towering over all that came before it. If I had to guess which story in this collection sealed the deal on Barker’s reputation, it’d be this one. 5/5.
Books of Blood: Volume Two
Total Rating: 4.4/5.
Dread. Perhaps it was because I was reading Plato shortly before I started reading this collection, but this story struck me almost as a Socratic dialogue. Only, perhaps a Socratic dialogue taking place in hell. This one explores the nature of dread, of fear, and posits some rather unsettling philosophical conclusions about the breakability of the human mind. To summarize it too much would be to spoil the story, so I’ll only say that this one is worth it for the delicious irony of the ending. Darkly humorous at times, sadistic in the execution of its ideas, this is one of the better ones in Volume Two. 5/5.
Hell’s Event. This one is probably my least favorite story in the whole collection. Possibly that’s because I read it on a long plane ride from Atlanta to Minneapolis, sandwiched between two men who had no inkling to give me a little space, and I was already in a foul mood due to the travelling—a 50-minute line in security, nearly missing the train from the hotel to the airport, etcetera. The day felt like Hell’s event, if I’m being honest. So maybe I wasn’t in the right headspace for this. But the story, where a corrupt British politician sets one of his demonic underlings to compete in a race to determine the fate of the human race, fell flat on me for the most part. There’s some gorgeous imagery, and fans of Dante’s Inferno will get a kick out of some of the depictions of Hell. And, as with all stories in this collection, the writing is superb. The worst of a Clive Barker story is still better than most of what you’ll get in the average collection, I think. 3/5.
Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament. If gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss were a short story, this would be it. And honestly, get it, girl. The story starts with a housewife, the titular Jacqueline Ess, attempting suicide as the only means of escape from a marriage in which she feels trapped. Don’t ask me how (hell, don’t ask Barker how), but in failing to complete the deed she somehow gains the ability to contort other human bodies by sheer force of mind. And the results are delightfully schlocky and gruesome. But there’s a heart at the center of the tale—and not just a beating, pulsating heart being squeezed to pulp—but an emotional core that drives Jacqueline’s narrative. Well worth the read. 5/5.
The Skins of the Fathers. I don’t know where to start with this one, to be honest. It’s weird. The opening scene is like a hallucinogenic trip, and that’s just the start of things. Like, how does the man come up with shit like this? The story isn’t particularly frightening, but what it lacks in scares it makes up for in the execution of concept. The tldr; there are monstrous, amorphous demon monsters living under a dessert. At one point in the past, they collective boned a lady while her husband watched. She had a kid by them. Now they want the kid back. There are some almost Western vibes to the story, with the angry townsfolk taking the role of collective cowboy off to rescue the damsel in distress, but as with all Barker stories, this one doesn’t go where you’d expect it to. 5/5.
New Murders in the Rue Morgue. Look, I love Edgar Allen Poe. I recognize the foundational place that the original story had both in his oeuvre and in the literary canon. But I can’t say it’s my favorite of his. Detective fiction just ain’t my thing. But this story is a perfectly fine homage to the original. It retreads old ground in new ways, but at times feels a bit slapped on to the end of the collection. Under a less skilled pen, the story might have fallen totally flat for me. But Barker believes in the story, has a clear passion for the source material, and the result is a pretty good read with an appropriately gruesome ending. 4/5.
Books of Blood: Volume Three
Total Rating: 4.7/5
Son of Celluloid. An homage to the golden era of cinema and memories of the silver screen that we collectively share, this one is a strong start to the third volume. A murderous criminal with an equally murderous tumor is on the run from the cops and finds his way into the dingy basement of an old movie theatre. There he dies, and there his tumor takes on a life of its own, drinking in the energy of the audience—their fears, laughs, joys, tears. It collects them, develops a life of its own, and then turns the cinema into its own personal buffet. Honestly, at this point the weird is par for the course with Barker, but no matter how far into the bizarre he goes, you’re along for the ride—and hey, at least this one gets a happy ending for its human protagonist. 5/5.
Rawhead Rex. A big dick with teeth attacks a gentrified village. That’s really all you need to know. I mean, it’s right there in the name. Rawhead. Raw. Head. Rex. Get it? No? Well, reading the story you will. Ol’ Rexy has a head shaped like a moist and spongey glans. He masturbates at least once, probably more, in the course of the story. I mean, what the actual, ever-loving fuck was Barker thinking when he wrote this? There’s a scene involving the golden shower from hell that will haunt my nightmares for years to come. Honestly, there’s nothing else can I say about this clusterfuck of a story, except that it’s the best one in Volume Three. 5/5.
Confessions of a (Pornographer’s) Shroud. If you like revenge stories with a taste of the flippantly bizarre, then this is the one for you. I’ll lay out the scene: boring dude accidentally works for the mob. Boring dude discovers this. Boring dude stupidly confronts them. Boring dude is framed as a sex pest by the mob, becomes slightly less boring and goes on a killing spree. Mob doesn’t take kindly to this, tortures him to death. Boring duded becomes a less boring ghost and possesses a literal white sheet of cloth. If M.R. James’s Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come to You, My Lad kicked off the stereotypical white-sheet ghost’s popularity, surely this story builds upon that legacy in as bizarre and gruesome a way as possible. And oh, how gross and delightful the revenge is. 5/5.
Scape-Goats. In which rich kids have sex on a yacht, and the yacht lands on an island that smells weird. I don’t know what exactly Barker was going for here, but this one didn’t work for me as much as the others. I don’t think it missed the mark for me as much as Hell’s Event did, but it’s certainly close. There’s some gruesome bits and some eerie bits, but this isn’t his best effort, in my opinion. I think the concept of an island possessed by hundreds of dead, drowned sailors had a lot of potential, but just didn’t go in the direction I’d have liked. 3.5/5.
Human Remains. Be gay, do crimes. If any story in this omnibus fit the bill of that saying, this is it. We follow a bisexual prostitute as he stumbles into a dark ritual involving a Roman statue, or some creature bearing resemblance to a statue. A classic tale of the Doppelgänger with a queer twist, this one began eerie, almost scary, but slowly became melancholy. I felt as though I were drained of my own soul after finishing it, and I think that’s what Barker intended. There’s a lot of smart commentary about humanity and how easy it is for us to lose it here. 5/5.
What I really admire about this, and the collection as a whole, is how it isn’t afraid to center the lives and stories of those on the margins—especially the margins of the 1980’s. This doesn’t mean they get happy endings, and Lord knows if you’re reading this for ‘Rep,’ then you’re not going to get it. The humans here are flawed, are heroes and villains alike. Seldom do they get ‘happy’ endings. But they’re stories that are an important snapshot of the 1980’s. They have that untamable factor, that thing you can’t quite nail down, that elevates a story from ordinary to extraordinary, from creepy to horrifying, from smart to brilliant. Overall the ratings of the three volumes averages to 4.6. I think that’s more than enough to round up to 5. Also, In the Hills, the Cities gets a clean 10/5 score, so there, 5/5 for the whole collection.