The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Great and Secret Show is an expansive, unpredictable, and unsettling work of horror fantasy involving a dream world and its relationship to our own. Like much of Clive Barker‘s work, it’s wildly imaginative, gets you thinking differently about the world we live in, and is generally a good read.
But while it’s worth spending the time with this long, meandering book if you know you like Clive Barker’s work, I wouldn’t recommend this for the uninitiated. Weaveworld and Imajica are similarly expansive works, but both are tighter and better written than this, with more compelling stories with more interesting characters.
There’s also a general, well, goofiness to this book. The bad guys are more whiny and annoying than scary. And some things are just so over the top it almost seems to become a parody. Clive Barker always tries to push the boundaries, which I love, but in this book he just crosses into silliness sometimes.