I absolutely loved this collection from Barker! I wish he'd get away from fantasy and go back to horror. This collection proves that he is a major asset to the horror story loving community. The Body Politic is a great story in this book. It is about a man's hands having a "mind" of their own. Mr. Barker writes with such vivid detail that you feel like you are experiencing what the characters are.
Clive Barker, the most exciting new master of horror today, unleashes a world of powerful eroticism, violence and uncontrolled desires. In these five brilliant tales, human hands tear themselves from their masters to start a bloody revolution; a knotted string unravels darn hungering nightmares; in a Texas motel, the living and the dead make love; a palace is built to lure Satan back to earth; and a powerful aphrodisiac creates ghastly sexual urgings.
Great book. All the stories were such a pleasure to read and so well done.
The back cover blurb and the reviews by the likes of Steven King made me expect a lot from this book. Unfortunately it failed to deliver. The stories were well written, and the ideas were mostly unique, but they did not evoke the fear and horror that I was expecting - I actually laughed my way through two of them.
An interesting read, but not the book to chose if you want something really terrifying.
An interesting read, but not the book to chose if you want something really terrifying.
"The Inhuman Condition" contains 5 stories by Clive Barker, extreme horror writer. The back of the book gives glowing statements by Stephen King ('Clive Barker...is great...He's an original.'); Ramsey Campbell (...most important new writer of horror since Peter Straub); George R.R. Martin (He is something new, something unique, a powerful and powerfully disturbing new voice...). For me, I found Clive Barker a great decadent mind; a writer who can't hope to reach Straub's status; and his writings powerfully disturbing. I don't care for the kind of extreme horror he presents in any of his writings. At times I'm fascinated by Barker's work but only in the sense that someone can have such a perverse mind. But for many readers, Barker is original enough to be enjoyed.
