Clive Barker's Books of Blood 1-3

These stories serve as an introduction to Clive Barker. These were his first published works. Prior to this, he was writing stage plays. As a first effort of a writer, they are great. They evoke images, such as "In the Hills, the Cities", that stay with you for days. In the 80's, when these books were written, they were breaking new ground. Mr. Barker is able to conjure up horrific images without covering you in blood, for the most part.

I think that these stories will whet your appetite for the more mature works of Mr. Barker, such as The Great and Secret Show, and Everville.

As with many writers, some of the movie adaptations of these stories leave much to be desired. The best actually had Clive Barker involved, such as the original Hellraiser (the Hellbound Heart), Nightbreed (based on Cabal).

New readers, that have become jaded on the raw, in your face horror of the current writers, may miss out on some of the more subtle nuances in this freshman outing by Mr. Barker. He attempts, and mostly succeeds, in taking an everyday situation with ordinary people and sending out into the world of the horrific. Horror does not equal blood an gore but that feeling of dreading to turn the page to find out what happens next. Barker succeeds in this with these short stories.

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 personalities to life is a catalyst, which comes in the form of a dying criminal. The man himself is of no consequence, but he has within him a force possessing a single-minded drive to grow and thrive. Next up is Rawhead Rex, one of Barker's more violent stories. There are creatures that thrived on earth long before man helped force them to the brink of extinction, and things get pretty gruesome when one fellow unknowingly unseals the prison in which such a monster has been sealed for eons. Murder of a more human kind rests at the heart of Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud. This tale doesn't succeed completely in my estimation, and some might even find it oddly laughable, as the main character is an amorphous blob of a dead man's essence who reconstitutes the form of his human body in a death shroud. Scape-Goats is a little island of death story, the most interesting aspect of which is its viewpoint; it is not often that Barker tells a tale from the first-person perspective of a woman. The final story, Human Remains, offers Barker's typically unusual slant on the old doppelganger motif.

I have saved the worst and best of the collected stories for special mention. New Murders in the Rue Morgue is by far the worst short story Barker has ever written. We are led to believe Poe's classic story The Murders in the Rue Morgue was based on fact, and now the modern representative of the Dupin blood finds himself mired in an extraordinary, eerily similar, and exceedingly ludicrous case of his own. On the flip side, the most impressive story told in these pages is In the Hills, the Cities. 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 two adjacent towns takes an unexpected and ever-so-destructive turn. If you want to know what the big deal about Clive Barker is, this is the story you need to read. Books of Blood immediately established Barker as a giant in the genre and should be required reading for all fans of extreme and intellectually challenging horror.

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 two adjacent towns takes an unexpected and ever-so-destructive turn. If you want to know what the big deal about Clive Barker is, this is the story you need to read.

This first volume of Barker's horror-laden creations left no doubt in the minds of most horror fans that fresh blood had arrived to increase the vitality and further the maturing process of a genre always failing to win the widespread respect it deserves. While Barker's dark visions will not suit the taste of even some traditional horror fans, he more than deserves a choice seat at the table of the horror gods.

Ok, all horror/gore readers haven't read anything until they've read the Books of Blood. The story that sticks out most is "The Midnight Meat Train". God, who knew that murder, death, and gore could be described so well that you can actually see what is happening. You can almost feel the pain described in the stories. I know one thing this book is better than Stephen King. If you haven't read it then what the heck are you waiting for buy this book and read it. Just don't attempt to read it when you are all alone at about midnight inside a haunted house on Halloween. Trust me, I tried it and I didn't fall asleep until the next morning at about 9 AM.

Barker's style in The Books of Blood is second to none. No tale has ever intrigued me like the short story called "The Midnight Meat Train". Read it.
"Meat Train" is the first story in the Books of Blood (after a short introductory story), and it sets the stage for the masterworks to follow.
Think of it.....sometimes people ask themselves questions like....I wonder where the subway trains go after they stop running at the end of each night. Barker takes this simple premise and weaves a tale so terrifying and clever that I have yet to be more impacted by another piece of fiction.
The stories in Books of Blood are short but they say more than most stories 10 times thier size. This is the beauty of the short story and the genius of Barker's writing. This collection of all six volumes of the original Books of Blood is the best investment that a horror fiction fan can make. These books are modern classics that can be read and re-read. I doubt that I will ever tire of them. I love Barker's work even now. He has changed subject matter....he is no longer a horror genre author. His work is more based in fantasy now, however the tales are no less gripping.