Customer Reviews

Sacrament

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In books like Weaveworld and Imajica, Clive Barker created
new a new mythology and reinvented the religious parable,
respectively. Now, in his most ambitious and creatively
daring book thus far, Barker departs from the tried and true
of the world of dark fantasy and delves deeper into the human
condition than he has previously explored. As admitted by the
author, Sacrament contains just enough autobiographical detail
to allow his readers further insight into his philosophies, which
this time around are far more reality-based and less abstract than
previous ventures. In telling the story of Will Rabjohns, a
famous wildlife photographer who has gained recognition through
capturing dark images of nature at its most disturbing and violent,
Barker relates a parable on the value of life, human and otherwise.
The antagonist of the story, Jacob Steep, is representative of
human nature at its most distructive. As a creature that has learned
to be a man by watching men, he carries the belief that man holds
dominion over beasts to the point that he has created a mission for himself
to destroy the last of every species of creature on the earth, to know God
by playing God. At the same time, Will Rabjohns personifies both the
good and bad in human nature: while he eventually discovers the
value of all life and the connections involved in the cycles of birth,life,
and death, at the same time he experiences the same bloodlust
as Steep when he is young and it is this same type of lust for violence
that drives him to the corners of the world to capture his photographic
images. Another, even deeper layer runs through the book as Will watches
friends and loved ones in his adopted home of San Francisco fall to the
twin curses of disease and excess.
Ultimately, Sacrament is a moving, intelligent, and deeply satisfying
novel of hope, renewal, and enlightenment.

I bought "Sacrament" a few years ago when it first came out in hardcover (at a bookstore in the mall in Pennsylvania where George Romero filmed "Dawn of the Dead"). I thought it would be cool to have a Clive Barker book that had breathed that air. But for some reason, I never read the book until just recently. I had read everything Clive Barker had written up to then and have now read all of his books except for "Galilee," which I plan to read soon.

"Sacrament" is a good book, and at times a very good book (there are occasional flashes of brilliance), but it never quite achieves the imaginative momentum to crest the "wonderful book" horizon as "Weaveworld," "Damnation Game" or some of the "Books of Blood" did.

I really enjoyed reading this book, but felt that the narrative meandered at times and the book probably could have been about 100 pages shorter. Barker does grapple with some deep and moving themes, however, and this book is definitely worth the read.

The protagonist, Will Rabjohns, a nature photographer, obsessed since childhood with bearing witness to the terrible end of things, is a well-drawn character that will illicit the reader's empathy and involvement in the story. Will must come to terms with what it means to be a living (and therefore mortal) creature in the world. He also comes to appreciate the pain and joy that come from realizing that we are responible for the creation of our own selves.

An entertaining and thought-provoking book. More grounded in the spiritual dilemmas of our world than many of Barker's other excellent fantasy tales.

Sacrament is the least read of Clive Barker's novels. It apparently only sold half the usual number of his books, and there is one simple reason for this: the protagonist is gay. In this day and age it is a real shame that readers have been put off by such an unimportant detail...

The story concerns Will Rabjohns, a wildlife photographer who is attacked by a grizzly bear and left in a coma. During months of unconsciousness he goes dreaming of his childhood in Yorkshire, where he met two enigmatic characters, Jacob Steep and Rosa McGee, who have lived for centuries in ignorance of what they are or how they came about, and have strange ideas about what the world is and their role in it. Will re-discovers how Steep shaped his life, and on waking from his coma is drawn back into contact with him again, as Steep goes about his murderous crusade. Steep, you see, has a perverse desire to make certain species of animals extint and hunts them with a satanic glee...

This, of course, is just the barest bones of the story. As ever with Barker's books there is a world of content on these bones: his sharply realised characters, his natural sense of pace, his prose approaches perfection here, his ability to tell his story with original, unpredictable scenes, and the nuggets of philosophy that his work always contains. It is in this last capacity that Barker has excelled himself with this novel. The nature of God, existence, life and death are examined with an intelligent, well-considered insight that I have never encountered before in any media anywhere else, including Barker's own. If that makes the book sound like a tough read, it isn't at all. Barker has an instinct for description that makes reading his stuff effortless; you don't so much read it as see it, and you glide through the pages so quickly.

For anyone whose mind is sharper than the average turnip, and can't help but wonder occasionally about whether or not there's a God and what life is for etc this is a book for you. It doesn't pretend to supply answers, of course, but throws up so many possibilities, and so many words of wisdom, that you absolutely come away with the parameters of your own mind stretched. I can safely say that you've never read a book like this before. There's nobody out there that mingles reality and fantasy like Barker, and gives a sense of there being more to the world than meets the eye.

If you're looking for a book with real weight, real imagination and intelligence, get your paws on this before you yourself become extint...

Not Barkers best....but Please people, hating a book because the main character happens to be gay...is so absurd..which by the way you find out in like the first three pages..If that offends you... flip through a book before you waste time reading it.. and then... keep your prejudice to yourself. Reveiwed by a heterosexual.

Writing a review for "Sacrament" is hard, because this is essentially a book without a genre. I found it in the horror section of the bookstore, but it isn't a horror novel, nor is it fantasy. It has elements of both, not to mention psycho-drama, love story, environmental message, essay on human sexuality, and so on. Believe it or not, all these jigsaw-puzzle elements combine to form a well-paced, vivid, and absorbing read.

The hero of the book, Will Rabjohns, is a gay wildife photographer who specializes in chronicling the death throes of endangered species, often to am excruciating degree. He seems to be just as adrift as the animals he records, fighting his own mortality and rejecting the natural rules of order and chaos. Then he's attacked by a polar bear and enters into a coma, where he revisits the turmoil of his childhood in England. It is at this point that three very supernatural characters makes their appearance: Jacob Steep, a mysterious fallen angel of a man who spends his days executing the last members of dying species; Rosa McGee, Steep's seductive companion, who is more of a predator than any polar bear; and Lord Fox, a talking, enigmatic red fox who makes cryptic visits to Will's bedroom in the dead of night. Will first met this odd trio as a boy. Now they've entered into his life a second time, and after he awakens from the coma, he is steered away from his old life to a voyage of self-discovery.

I won't discuss the plot any more; it would take more space than Amazon.com allows, and I don't want to reveal the book's various secrets. Let me just say that the narrative carried me all the way through and the conclusion left me thinking for a long time. There are many parallels between nature and sexuality, and no one can make you believe it like Clive Barker. He uses subtle things to provoke raw emotion and unease (despite its looming presence in the story, the word "AIDS" is never used once in the entire book), and I, for one, was captivated.

Some people may not like this book. Some will undoubtedly hate it. I enjoyed it immensely, and I'm recommended it to anyone brave enough to probe the dark corners of the human psyche.

A wonderfully different and more personal novel from Barker, in which a wildlife photographer is attacked and seriously wounded by a polar bear. While in a coma, he relives his life in England, and the lifechanging moment when he met up with a pair of immortal wanderers, one of whom seems intent on wiping out life on our world. When he awakens, the photographer returns to his roots, and soon finds himself crossing paths with the two immortals, and finds himself on a journey of supernatural proportion. Wonderful, human story with real emotions and real issues, wrapped up in a grand fantasy to delight and thrill the ages. One of Barker's best.

This book was totally absorbing, and among the finest I've read this year. The character developement is phenominal; Barker puts you into the main character's--Will Rabjohns's--head and gives you everything he's about. The story has strong elements of fantasy, but its close proximity to reality throughout most of it makes it strongly grounded and very plausible while you're reading it.

NOTE: If you are homophobic (meaning: if homosexuality offends you) don't read this book. This is partially friendly advice, but mostly that I don't want to here your closed minded crap on here.

Seamlessly blending the 'Supernatural Horror' elements that populate much of Barker's other written/filmed work ["The Damnation Game"/"Hellraiser"/etc.] with the 'Real-Life' horrors of the world today, including the envirornmental catastrophe/mass extinction currently happening on a daily basis and the AIDS epidemic, I think "Sacrament" may have trumped "Weaveworld" as Clive's best novel. It's scary as hell and yet resonating with the beauty and wonder of the world (now largely being decimated), and one of the best treatments of love and friendship in the face of a tight-knit community being eroded away by outside forces (AIDS in this case). The vivid writing immediately transports you to the scene itself, the fierce snowstorm or long grasses blowing soundfully in the wind, and the book has an ideal protagonist in the form of a wildlife photographer who chronicles the fate of endangered and moribund species, and chillingly appropriate villains in the form of a pair who hunts down the last survivors of near-extinct species for the express purpose of personally ending their kind's existance. Also mixing in a healthy dose of spiritualism, "Sacrament" is great on so many levels, but be forewarned: Barker outdoes himself on a couple of the grotesqueries, excluding of course "The Great And Secret Show", which got a bit too vile for my tastes. Unlike Secret Show, however, which was far more cynical and nastier than even the most violent and bizarre of Barker's movies, the depravities and crudities of certain villains in "Sacrament" compliments the story well instead of choking it in nihilism.

An excellent piece of literature both as a great horror/fantasy hybrid and as a look at non-fictional trends in the world today (extinctions, intolerance, AIDs, etc.) that threaten to crush us all.

This is probably an excellent book. Barker tackles more personal issues involving homosexuality and AIDS and the conflicts between men and women and the union of the two genders. Barker's writing is elegant as always, he has a strongly identifiable voice, which is, like with Stephen King's writing, undeniably his own. But this book lacks that Clive Barker "edge" that made The Books of Blood, Weaveworld and Imajica so astonishing. After an interesting beginning the story becomes bogged down in detailing Will Rabjohns' life. It starts to pick up again near the end but the conclusion is a bit of a let down as well. The House of the World is not nearly as imaginitive as Imajica's First Dominion, and it seems Barker tries to bring up ecological and environmental issues but abandons them in the end for issues involving the relationships between homosexuals and the relationships between men and women. Still the parts involving the characters of Jacob and Rosa are good, but Will Rabjohns is a bit of a bore, except when he's getting attacked by a polar bear, but everyone's interesting when they're getting attacked by polar bears, aren't they?

Clive Barker tells a compelling tale in the way that only he can. I love the way he bring in elements of mysticism into the lives of ordinary people and seeing how they react and adapt to it. The book doesn't have some of the wilder imagery associated with the Books of the Art, but it's similar in feel to these books. Barker has the ability to really pull the reader in to his story. He does this type of story better than anyone.