Clive Barker - Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three

Pros: It will grab you like no horror story before

Cons: can mess with your head in the worst way

The Bottom Line: Shutttter.....

Review: Not to beat around the bush, but this book royally screwed with my head for a long, long time. I was unfortunate enough to have picked up one of the three books that make up the compilation, back when I was very, very young.

Reading Raw...

Pros: Great description and plots

Cons: A few stories fall flat - but only a few

Review: Clive Barker is an incredible visionary. He's an excellent writer with a powerful voice who has brought his unique conceptions of storytelling to the horror genre, and the "Books of Blood" are the works where he best displays his talent.
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Pros: Easy to read through, disturbing, quenches your curiosity, diverse, Clive Barker in his prime

Cons: This may be a bit on the sickening side for some readers

Review: Okay, I've been a big fan of Clive Barker ever since reading his brilliant work, Imajica. His style of writing be it horror, drama, or even children's stories, are a breath of fresh air. I was very excited to get my hands on a copy of Clive Barkers...

Pros: Short stories, quick read.

Cons: Some stories are really downers, but most are essentially thought provoking mayhem.

Review: This basically is a collection of short stories by one of this century's brightest horror writer of all. Granted he's English and granted that he's not as popular as King or Koontz, but for all, he has made an impressive mark in the works of fiction,...

Pros: A superb selection of frightening madness! I dare a horror lover not to love it!

Cons: None.

Review: Clive Barker's Books of Blood give us a glimpse into the extraordinary imagination that went on to create the fantastic voyages his later books take us on.

Each of the short stories in these books is as different from one another as night is...

Pros: Barker is a fantastic writer.

Cons: He doesn't always know when to jettison a bad idea.

The Bottom Line: I give it an above average instead of average because the good ones are enough to make up for the bad ones.

Review: Originally meant to be six volumes, when Clive Barker's Books of Blood short story collections came to America, they were published with the first 3 packaged as Books of Blood vols. 1-3, and vols. 4-6 were published as their own short story...

Pros: Exciting, Disturbing, Creepy, Great!

Cons: Repulsive if you have a weak stomach, some stories are really nothing special

The Bottom Line: An interesting, attention grabbing collection of short horror stories. Not for little children.

Review: "Books of Blood" were my second Barker (the first was "Weaveworld"). They held me from the first page and turned me into a horror freak. Believe it or not, before them I didn’t even like horror.

The very idea that all these stories, except for...

Pros: expands your horizons, man

Cons: pretty sick stuff

The Bottom Line: Gruesome and shocking, but hey, so's Eminem and Jerry Springer.

Review: I'm an avid Stephen King fan, but sometimes I make excursions to other horror authors' books just to check out the competition. The Books of Blood, bluntly put, scared the crap out of me. It had some pretty gruesome stuff in it, like monsters from the...

Pros: great imagery and suspense

Cons: difficult at times to read

Review: Clive Barker begins where H.P. Lovecraft leaves off. Weaving thick imagery with complex mythologies and histories, Barker immerses the reader in a tapestry of horror, always suggesting rather than telling. Sometimes challenging, the "Books of...