Customer Reviews

Books of Blood, Volume Three

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really enjoyed reading this book. Each story is very well written and has a good storyline and intersting characters. The themes of these stories are in some cases tried and tested favourites such as doppelgangers, buried monsters awoken and revenge beyond the grave. Others are completely new like the concept of an island made of the bodies of the drowned, and of a cancerous tumor continuing to grow after it's victims death and developing a twisted mind of it's own - as well as incredible powers over human perception.

This is among the best collection of short stories I have ever read, some of them even better than similar length stories by Stephen King. The books of blood are all excellent.

I would recommend this book to any fan of the horror genre, but I would even more strongly recommend that you buy the omnibus edition of volumes one to three.

I have now bought parts four to six and am looking forward to reading them. This second omnibus includes 'The inhuman condition', 'The last illusion' (On which the film 'lord of the illusions' was based), and 'In the flesh' -All released as separate mini-novels. The second omnibus is not available from amazon.com at present but can be found at amazon.co.uk.

This was a great book. Full of gore, humor and an intensity which makes you want to keep going. (Too bad the book is only about 400 pages though)

I have personally read the first two volumes of the "Books of Blood" and think the first one is the best. This particular volume follows suit to Barker's previous books, but is kinda of the same hack, dice, slice, squash, eat, destroy material that we have read in previous volumes. Barker is delightfully disgusting all the way through the novel in both detail and imagery. However I thought "Confession of a (Pornographer's) Shroud" was an excellent tail of venegeance on the author's behalf.

All in all, if you in enjoyed the series already I would recommend this book to complete the collection. If you HAVEN'T read the other two novellas then I would recommend the first volume over this one. In any case, you will get your money's worth.

the first two volemes were good, really good. In this volume, I guess Barker just wanted to finish off his Books of Blood. The only good story that stands out has got to be Rawhead Rex, but the others were just trying hard, but never getting there. If Barker was more successful in distributing his stories throughout the three volumes, I guess this one would have been better off. It still is a good read, though the stories don't really capture you as the ones in the first volume.

"Rawhead Red" is a classic short story which inspired a comic book and a movie version (don't see it), and is a must for Barker fans. The other short stories are so-so, although "Human Remains" is interesting. Pretty good.

I have now read the "Books of Blood 1-3" and although I enjoyed a few of the stories in #1, I felt that #2 was lacking and struggled to finish it. This third installment is by far the best of the 3 in that it has the largest number of high quality stories.

1 - Son of Celluloid - I wasn't a huge fan of this one, a murderer's cancer comes to life after his death in the back of a movie theater and takes on the persona of the films that cross the screen.

2 - Rawhead Rex - The basis of the film by the same name, this story had a lot of potential to have been a novella. I would have loved to have had more background and more indepth information in this story. As a short story it was violent, brutal and left the reader wanting more... very good

3 - Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud - peculiar revenge after death story. At first I didn't think I would like this one, but by the end it was pretty good. Not the strongest in the book but still and entertaining read.

4 - Scape-Goats - shipwrecked on an island build from the corpses of the dead, a young group of friends tries to survive what they cannot understand. This was another story that could have been made into a novella, I enjoyed it, but would have liked more background, more meat, more story. Again a very good read.

5 - Human Remains - the horror of vanity brought to life, what would you do to have your beauty remain forever? Would you be willing to give up your soul? The main character in this one was a huge turnoff to me, but it was still a strange and engaging story.

On the whole this is my favorite of the first 3 books of blood, highly recommended to lovers of short horror stories.

Clive Barker is all business in his Books of Blood Volume Three, and that business is sex and violence. There is no stray dark comedy piece along the lines of Volume One's The Yattering and Jack to be found in these pages. These five stories take us to realms of pain and bloody death, sometimes pushing the envelope on the new kind of dark horror Barker helped pioneer.

Son of Celluloid is by far my favorite of these stories. I love the unusual premise and the surreal quality of the piece. Basically, the back wall behind the screen of an old movie theatre has seen so many famous lives projected upon it that somehow the essence of those screen legends has germinated within its neglected existence. The only thing needed to bring the screen personalities to life is a catalyst, which comes in the form of a dying criminal. The man himself is of no consequence, but he has within him a force with ambition and a single-minded drive to grow and thrive. This driving force is cancer, and I find Barker's unusual appraisal of the silent killer to be a fascinating one. Next up is Rawhead Rex, one of Barker's more violent stories. There are creatures that thrived on earth long before man helped force them to the brink of extinction, and things get pretty gruesome when one fellow unknowingly unseals the prison in which such a monster has been sealed for eons. Murder of a more human (albeit post-human) kind rests at the heart of Confessions of a (Pornographer's) Shroud. This tale doesn't succeed completely in my estimation, and some might even find it oddly laughable, as the main character is an amorphous blob of a dead man's essence who reconstitutes the form of his human body in his own death shroud. Scape-Goats is a little island of death story, the most interesting aspect of which is its viewpoint; it is not often that Barker tells a tale from the first-person perspective of a woman. The final story, Human Remains, offers Barker's typically unusual slant on the old doppelganger motif.

All in all, this is a fine collection of stories. Son of Celluloid borders on greatness, Rawhead Rex helps sate the appetites of those seeking blood and gore, and the three accompanying pieces are more than capable of holding one's interest if not fascination from start to finish. This third volume, unlike its immediate predecessor, stands as a most worthy successor indeed to the genius displayed in Clive Barker's Books of Blood Volume One.

Clive is definetely the #1 in horror. Nobody can do this better than him. Including Stephen King. Masterpiece!! Read it now!!

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I used to enjoy his books, but with "Books Of Blood III" I suddenly realized what a pile of [junk] is this all about... This guy must be really sick to write such dement histories... He has no limits. In this book, a monster (Rawhead Rex) decapitates the head of a child, swallow it!

What kind of joy can one obtain by reading such kind of literature? None. It will only pollute your brain with blood, death, pain and depravity. I reazlize it only now, after reading a lot of Barker's books...