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.

For more reviews, check out my blog: Craft-Cycle

I love this series so much. Hilda is just adorable. 

As with the previous books, this one has a great story and great artwork. I really enjoy Hilda's character and the strange adventures she has. Everything about this series is fantastic. 

Can't wait to read the next book (especially since I haven't seen the corresponding Netflix episode yet so it will be a complete surprise).

I initially expected the worst thing about this book to be merely that nothing much happens, as it's a slice-of-life story about modern urban people. But some details about the characters don't quite add up or are not explained clearly, and there are also other small inconsistencies within the storytelling (simple things like a TV being turned off before a character leaves a room, but in the next scene the TV is somehow on again in the empty room without explanation). Despite that I was actually considering giving this an extra star at some point, mainly because I liked the relationship between the characters: five young men and women gathered together by circumstances to share an apartment in Tokyo. Although they say they are "playing at being friends", underneath that there seems to be something genuine between them.

But then the ending serves a unsettling twist which made me question what I had thought about the characters and their relationship. I guess that was probably the point of the whole book, to unnerve and disturb the reader, but it still didn't make me like it.