by Clive Barker

This was my first Barker read, though I'm familiar with his work through the film, Nightbreed. There is no denying that Barker has a wild imagination when it comes to creating monsters!

Infernal Parade is shorter than most of his books. It's a series of short stories that are tied together with a theme, preparation for the Infernal Parade when the dead and demented invade the ordinary world. The one thing that is missing is that the book doesn't take us through to the actual manifestation of this parade, only the individual stories about some of the people and creatures destined to take part.

Barker manages to strike a balance with some of the more gruesome scenes in his stories so that every bit of torn flesh, every drop of blood spilled is relevant to the story at hand and never crosses into the gratuitous. This is a rare skill!

The individual stories each had their own morbid fascination. There were no duds among them. As much as I'm sensitive to Horror stories that involve murder and gore, Barker's treatment of the material just makes me want to read more of his work. The plots were original and imaginative at a level seldom seen in this genre.

by Clive Barker

This story was the basis for the movie, Nightbreed, which I've seen many times. Normally I don't like serial killer stories, but the emphasis that interested me is the 'monsters' of Midian.

The story started out with the same premise as the movie; Boone is seeing a psychiatrist who shows him pictures of grisly murders and eventually Boone accepts that during his blackouts, he's committing these murders. But there is a supernatural aspect to it, a quest to find a place called Midian, where the monsters dwell. In a mental asylum, Boone meets another inmate who knows about Midian and gives him clues how to find it.

As I hoped, the book basically followed the same story as the movie, though the later parts were expanded and the book was able to better explain what happened underground. There were a couple of unexpected sexual scenes that didn't really advance the story, but most of it focused on the conflict between Midian and the local town police.

Towards the end there is some wonderfully contrasting prose, showing the beauty of the world of 'monsters' as opposed to the ugliness of the serial killer and the motivations that drive him. I think the ending was basically the same as the movie but the book allowed more explanation, so now I want to see the movie again with this deeper level of understanding.

Came in to update the currently reading list to reflect what I am actually reading these days. I finished this one. Click the link to read my full review of this.

Interesting.  The novel starts off slowly, but starts getting good once Dracula makes an appearance.