34 out of 34 people found this review helpful.
Haunted Hollywood by the other master of horror
Date of Review: Jan 1, 2002
The Bottom Line: Pick this up, you won't be disappointed. Though, there are very mature themes, so it's not for the prudish.
Clive Barker is one of my favorite horror authors, besides Stephen King. And like Stephen King, he is unfairly branded as "merely" a horror writer, when in reality he is extremely gifted at blending many different genres and constantly suprising us. With the wide scope of writing that he has done over the years, it is impossible to put a single label on him. And he's certainly done it again with Coldheart Canyon, one of his best books in years.
Todd Pickett is the all-american hero of Hollywood's blockbuster action flicks. But the years are starting to show and he's not getting the attention or the respect he once had. In order to counter his fading prettyboy image, Todd decides to go for plastic surgery. Unfortunately, the surgery goes horribly wrong and he needs a place to hide to recover.
Todd ends up renting an old mansion that belonged to silent film star, Katya Lupi. However, the house has a dark past and even darker secrets, including a gateway to a land known as "The Devil's Country". Even more shocking, he soon discovers Katya still inhabits the grounds, as timeless, seductive and beautiful as ever. But that eternal youth has come at a terrible price and Todd soon finds himself in battle with his very soul.
His only hope is the determination of his "number one fan", Tammy Lauper, who is the only person willing to stand by Todd at his darkest moment and rescue him from his own demons, as well as some horrific enemies. Whether Katya or Tammy win out, with Todd's soul in the balance, leads to a suspenseful story that is sure to suprise, delight and horrify at the same time in this perfectly crafted tale.
It is impossible not to get sucked into the world that Clive Barker creates here. He has the gift of blurring the lines between fantasy and reality and actually making it believable. Fantasy and horror can be one of the most difficult genres to write in because it's extremely difficult to create an entirely new world from scratch and populate it with unknown creatures without seeming goofy. And when it's done badly, the books turn out extremely painful. However, Barker seems to be able to turn out new worlds time and time again and making you see them clearly and he succeeds again with his creation of The Devil's Country in this book.
Being disappointed in Barker's last novel, Sacrament, which was a bit too dreamlike for my tastes without much of a tangible plot to sink your teeth into, I was happy to see this book focus much more on the character's actions. He creates compelling and believable characters and constantly suprises the reader with the next suspenseful twist in the story. People live and die, they grow and they sometimes fade, but they never give us time to get bored at all.
The only complaint I have with the book is that Barker could have easily ended the book much earlier than he did at the climax. However, he decides to write a prolonged, 100 page epilogue to try to put the entire story to rest and just seemed not to know when to stop writing. There is such a thing as too much closure, and I would have rather have been able to leave more of the ending to my imagination.
But overall, this story is absolutely brilliant. It's a new and disturbing twist on Hollywood's ghosts and it will be sure to captivate. This book definitely shows Barker at his top form.
