Mister B. Gone, by Clive Barker

I read my first Clive Barker novel (THE HELL-BOUND HEART) 15 years ago in the back of Chris Gee’s Geo Metro on the way to see Guns N’ Roses and Metallica play in Kansas City. Since then, I’ve collected and read every past and current Barker novel (except COLDHEART CANYON which I read, but don’t own and can’t bring myself to pay money for) and with the exception of Stephen King, Barker’s next publications are the ones I most eagerly await. Which brings us to his latest, MISTER B. GONE.

In a June 2007 interview, Barker said of MISTER B. GONE, “The book works: it scares the bejesus out of people but it also entertains people and, I mean, you’re in the company of this individual who is really the dark half of me and, you know, it’s not a coincidence that I chose ‘B’ for his second name…”

Yeah well, I’m gonna have to disagree.

MISTER B. GONE is the life and times of the demon Jakabok Botch, a child from the Ninth Circle. Growing up under the torturous rule of his father, Botch starts to pen his revenge, writing on anything he can find and then hiding it away. When his mother one day finds his pages, she makes him burn them in the back yard, but his father comes home and Botch winds up in the fire himself. Horribly burned, he flees. His father, angry at having seen his own name among a scrap of burning page, chases Botch until both are trapped in nets. Someone from the World Above has set traps, fishing in a hole in the ground for demons. Botch cuts his father’s line, but is pulled up into the World Above himself where he is meant to be skinned and sold for profit, but he flees again and winds up, eventually, in the company of another escaped demon named Quitoon. From there, Botch and Quitoon set out on a life of torture, hellraising, and traveling all over the world in search of new inventions, machines with the potential to change the world. All the while, Botch is harassing the reader from the pages, imploring you to “Burn this book”. And if you don’t? He’ll cut you. It’s a simple thing, just burn the book. Of course we can’t, because we’re still reading it and we want to know what happens next. Trust me when I say what happens next is a lot of not much.

I’m not sure who Barker’s first readers were, nor what they were reading, but anyone who has their bejesus scared by this book probably isn’t much in the bravery department anyway. Or maybe I’m just immune. I’ve been scared a total of 5 times in my life by something I’ve read, and Barker‘s never been one of them..

MISTER B. GONE just plain didn’t work for me. I go into a Barker novel expecting certain things. There’s his overall plots which don’t change much from one novel to the next; average character discovers magical world hidden amongst our own and is swept up into a grand adventure (see THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW, WEAVEWORLD, IMAJICA, SACRAMENT, ABARAT). There’s his beautifully dense and flowing prose, which was virtually absent here as it’s not Barker himself narrating, but Jakabok Botch. There’s fantastic settings with amazing creatures, but MISTER B. GONE is set on Earth, during the 1300-1400s. It’s like someone had an idea for a book to BE the character, thinking threats of violence would work to chill the reader, slapped Barker’s name on the cover, and called it good. This is Clive Barker??? No way, it read more like Anne Rice. And that’s not a dig at Rice, I loved VITTORIO, but that’s the point, the era, the first-person narrator telling us their life story, sound familiar?

MISTER B. GONE was written very quickly while Barker was between drafts of the long-awaited SCARLET GOSPELS, and it reeks of “side project” as it doesn’t have the passion or the commitment I’ve seen in past novels. He doesn’t need to tell us he was in the middle of something when he wrote this, it already shows.

I just don’t know. I mean, I was all kinds of excited when I learned he had a novel coming out, a “return to horror”, and I bought it the day it was released. And this is what I get? I think I’m just gonna have to re-read CABAL or THE THIEF OF ALWAYS or something, I have to get this taste out of my mouth. No more “but first” books, Clive, please just give us THE SCARLET GOSPELS and remind us why we loved you in the first place.