Customer Reviews

The Damnation Game

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

One thing is always true about Clive Barker's novels: He will disturb you.

"The Damnation Game" was my first experience with Barker, and is the first I've decided to read again. The surreal horrors conjured within these pages leaves me breathless. This novel delivers all the terror and stomach-turning prose that made Clive famous. The usual glurge from Stephen King about Barker being "the future of horror" adorns the cover, and King is right on the mark. However, be warned that Barker is NOT the future Stephen King; Barker is too unique to be sold as a contemporary author.

This novel features four key characters, and a wide assortment of supporting cast members. We have Mamoulian, also known as the Last European, the central antagonist of this tale. Also enter Joseph Whitehead, the thief, whom we come to know as the wealthy gambler / businessman who acquired his fortune through his MISfortune of dealing with a devil, aka Mamoulian. Martin Strauss, a convict who is living out his parole status on the Whitehead estate, is the newly acquired bodyguard of Whitehead. He is the lead in this tale, and the most likeable character out of a cast of unlikables. Carys, Whitehead's daughter, also lives on the estate, supplied with a never ending stock of heroin to keep her "happy" in Whitehead's home.

Mamoulian and Whitehead are old friends... or at least there is honor among these two thieves. Mamoulian is an ages-old gambler, and with a deal of the cards has ensnared Whitehead's soul. Whitehead has been enormously successful over the years since his deal with Mamoulian, but now it is time to settle old debts. Strauss is there for Whitehead's protection, but Strauss is revealed to be a gambler in his own right...

Barker makes readers squirm. There is a point in horror where most authors would stop, letting the reader's imagination decide how graphic the terror might be. Barker does not stop. His descriptions of grotesqueries and revolting behavior are unmatched, even among the "new school" of gross-out horror writers. Clive is poetic in his dismembering of mind and body. Clive is capable of making the most innocent aside comment seem like it moves mountains of flesh. The hideous deeds of Mamoulian and his unnatural employee Breer leap off the page and slap the reader with an unclean hand. Barker knows fear and loathing better than most.

"The Damnation Game" is very creepy to say the least. Many scenes are calculated for maximum emotional impact upon the reader, even those scenes which don't evoke any horror per se. Most people are brought up to refrain from speaking about certain things (taboos), yet Barker kicks that door aside so brutally and consistently that I can't help but be amazed.

This novel is a bit flawed, but the "flaws" play a significant part in the enjoyable experience of this book. Barker, I am convinced, does not share the same realities as the rest of humanity. Barker seems to effortlessly rip away the fabric of reality (most notably in "The Great and Secret Show"), and can throw the reader into a spiral of the bizarre. In "The Damnation Game", Barker uses his slithering imagination to explain the origins of Mamoulian and his supernatural skill for human suffering, but his explanations miss the mark; we do not get a clear picture of what the ancient Mamoulian really is. Terror of the unknown is a long-accepted practice among horror novelists, but since Barker attempted an explanation, the "terror of the unknown" factor gets thrown out the window. What we are left with is an unsatisfactory origin of Mamoulian, forcing me to reduce my overall rating of this book. Barker's anti-reality tendencies come home to roost; since he seems unable to perceive reality as most do, internal cohesion within his stories sometimes suffers. That is the case here.

Even without the origins of Mamoulian, I am left awestruck at the manner in which Barker verbally terrorized me. Some people have called Clive poetic in his debauchery; I am inclined to agree with them. This book is not for the faint of heart, but rewards your vigilance should you choose to continue your journey into darkness

To say that this book is good would be a terrible understatement to not only Clive Barker,but also to the Horror genre in the world today. The Damnation Game combines all the elements of a great story: Horror (Vile, Stomach-turning details), Passion, Disturbing visions, Fantasy, and most important, Imagination. I've been a Clive Barker fan for a little over a year, reading The Books of Blood, Sacrament, Galilee, The Great and Secret Show, and The Inhuman Condition, and with the exception of The Books of Blood, I think that this is one of his greatest books to date. Barker's imagery and details were so concrete..so real that I would shiver and sometimes have to stop reading for a minute or two so I could try to banish that certain vision or image from my thoughts. But, all along, the story was interesting, and very compelling to read. This book will have you at the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen next, and who these people really are...and you won't be disappointed.

The Damnation game is a roller coaster of terror. It contains some of Barker's most disturbing visions. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a millionare tycoon with the world at your feet? Who hasn't, but Barker puts a new spin on this old fantasy. Here the promise of power and riches comes with a terrible price and at a tremendous risk, yet the promise is real for those who dare to play the damnation game. After the close of WW2, in the fog shrouded rubble, Europe is a nightmare. In this blasted place there are no rules and no rulers. In this horrible setting one man, a thief has come to test his considerable skills against the master of life's darkest game. Years later another thief is released from prison and has been enlisted to serve an old dying man. This is no ordinary elderly man for he is one of the richest men on earth and the price of his wealth is about to come calling. Containing one of the vilest villians in literary history, the Damnation Game is a ghoulish feast for the senses.

This was the first Clive Barker book I'd ever read beside the Books of Blood. I think The Damnation Game has a very original plotline and an incredible force of vision behind it. The book is extremely well written and I enjoyed reading it very much because of its originality.

The plot is quite complicated, but the main storyline(or so I think) has to do with Marty Strauss, who is hired to guard a highly rich businessman with a sinister secret. When the Last European and The Razor Eater enter, we, as readers, understand that sinister isn't even the word. Marty undergoes a transformation into heroism and finds a rather unlikely romance. The Last European is a villian I find utterly intriguing. He's not scary in the classic monster sense, yet he has that, but there's a humanity to him that makes him all the more unnerving. As for the Razor Eater, well, maybe Hannibal will set another place at his table!

I really liked this book, though it's not for the timid, and I fully intend to read more Clive Barker books in the future. I suggest it to anyone who's in need of a good scare!

The opening of The Damnation Game is immediately engaging, with Barker painting a poetic vision of decay in post-WW2 Warsaw and introducing us to two characters we immediately want to know more about. The rest of the novel does not quite live up to this wonderful opening chapter, despite being consistently interesting and containing a number of suspenseful sections. Barker's unique, intoxicating style of near-psychedelic imagery is present throughout the book as well. The ending is somewhat ambigious, but this is not neccesarilly a flaw, though some readers might be dissapointed that some issues remain unrevealed. I myself didn't mind this aspect. So what is bad about the book? Nothing really, it's a good book, but overall it just lacks the mesmerizing spark of brilliance that I found in books like Imagica and The Great and Secret Show. Nevertheless, I reccomend it.

Two men meet in the ruins of WWII and play a game, which affects their ties for the rest of their lives. Years afterwards, one becomes a powerful business giant who must protect himself from the other, who wants to collect his prize, going back to the game. Gory, evil, supernatural and very darkly twisted tale of revenge and old debts. You will not be able to put it down.

Hang in there with me as I set an example here; it is going to get off topic of the book at hand for a moment, but there is method in my insanity:

"Did you read Clive Barker's first novel: The Damnation Game?" "Uh, huh. What's it about?" "It's about...well...um..."

This is not an easy novel to attempt to describe. Say I were asked to describe Stephen King's Salem's Lot; I could say it is about vampires who invade a small town. The listener knows about vampires and what they generally do (suck blood, and create new vampires); and they know how small town horror works (slow creeping suspense, as all the people in town everyone formerly thought they knew starts to turn evil. There is generally at least one outsider that is the center of this evil.) By identifying the basic concepts, the listener can put it together and get a good idea what the book is about...

But Clive Barker's debut novel is far too original to even attempt to describe in any concise space. The story is original, absorbing, and told with a degree of beauty and compelling a way only Barker could achieve--and apparently masterered in the very beginning.

I cannot tell you even vaguely what this book is about without telling you the majority of the plot, but I can tell you that it is not a book you will ever regret reading (and re-reading, and re-reading.)

Like many people I checked out Clive Barker because Stephen King had said "I have seen the future of the horror genre, and its is named Clive Barker." That was a good enough recommendation for me, and I picked up "The Damnation Game," which was Barker's first novel. Part One of the novel, "Terra Incognita," takes place in the ruined city of Warsaw during World War II where a thief dares to challenge Mamoulian the Cardplayer, the dark champion of life's darkest and most game. Apparently the game went well for the nameless thief, for when we jump to the "present" in Part Two, "Asylum," we meet millionaire Joseph Whitehead, one of the richest men in Europe, who is now locked up in the fortress he has built himself. Paroled from prison, Marty Strauss becomes Whitehead's bodyguard. Down on his luck for so long that he thinks things are finally breaking his way, but Marty has no idea what he has signed on for with this job. The final key member of the cast is Carys Whitehead, a heroin addict who cares about nothing but staying high and letting daddy foot the bill.

We understand that Whitehead is going to have to pay the piper for his wealth and power, and he has every reason to be terrified of what is going to happen to him when Mamoulian settles all accounts on behalf of his employer. Of course now we can see some foreshadowing of "Hellraiser" in the idea of playing a deadly game, but it would be a mistake to think we are talking about pro-Cenobites in "The Damnation Game." Besides, Marty has more going for him than simply the luck of being the narrative's hero, and that becomes part of the book's final equation. However, ultimately the plot of "The Damnation Game" is simply the framework for Barker to explore the darkest parts of his imagination and whip up memorable little vignettes to keep you up half the night. Your ability to stomach these scenes is going to be key to how much you appreciate this novel ("enjoy" would most definitely be the wrong word in this instance). Fortunately I read fast enough that I did not have a chance to wallow in the really dark parts, but when things get ugly in this book they get really ugly.

Beyond that there are a couple of distancing factors at work in Barker's writing, both of which are made clear in comparison to the works of Stephen King. First, Barker is a better writer in terms of the elegance of his prose, so there he dresses up his horror in much prettier language. Second, King's genius is that he puts his horrors in the every day world in which we live, while Barker has such a fertile imagination that he ended up writing novels that qualify more as fantasy than as horror. Actually, I can add a third point of contrast in that in that with King it is the idea of the story and with Barker it is more the execution of the tale, so to speak. That is why it is so much easier to describe a King novel (e.g., little girl can start fires and the government wants her as a super weapon, possessed car kills people) than a Barker novel (pick a book, any book). In the end I round up on this one because it made such a big impact on me and because it got me hooked on Barker. Given what follows there are few who would consider "The Damnation Game" to be a first-rate Barker novel, but the first descent into the lower depths of hell tends to stick with you. This one certainly did.

Marty Strauss, an ex-con, is always interested in a gamble. Chance and a bit of luck on his side sees him gain employment as a bodyguard for Joseph Whitehead, a wealthy man who also gambles, but gambles with the forces of evil in an ancient game that has earned him wealth, power and immortality... put at a price. Strauss is directed to protect his master from the servants of Lucifer as they come back to seek what is theirs. With the power to raise the dead the scene is set for a battle between gangsters and demons. This is Barker's first full novel outside of his Books of Blood short stories. It is an excellent introduction into his creative fantasy mind.

I bought this book out of my love for great horror novels, based on the Clive Barker I know and love. Having finished Sacrament, I thirsted for a new horror from Barker...I got it. There are so many plot twists and horrific images that I never would have imagined. I couldn't put this book down from the very first chapter and still didn't want to at the end of the last. Barker presents his own "intellectual" horror, as I like to call it, and this book is such a great example of his work, that I heavily recommend it to ANY and ALL horror fans, and some who aren't. If I had to pick one word to describe it...ENCHANTING. Even as the most awful images are presented to you, you can't look away, and have to turn the page.