![]() On the heels of something heinously grim, this one is horror comedy at its best. A do-nothing suburban husband with the outward personality of a ball of yarn. ![]() What’s not to love? A frustrated minor demon of Hell. This story is so incredibly stupid, and I love it. ![]() ![]() It’s a grim and brutal story with plenty of depth for those who want to take a more literary approach in their horror, but with enough zip and clean writing to be an engrossing story (I wrote enjoyable, did a double take, then searched for a more appropriate word) on its own. But by the time you enter the world of the supernatural, Barker has so tightly wound you up in the plausible horror of a serial killer that you buy the rest of what he’s selling. Ostensibly a tale about a run-of-the-mill serial killer who stalks his prey in the New York subway system, this one takes a turn for the wild and almost Lovecraftian bizarro. This one is one of the most unsettling stories I’ve read recently. I don’t think there’s much here that redefines the horror genre, but as an opening salvo it does exactly what it needs to do. A nifty story, surprisingly erotic, and appropriately gruesome. This is a quick story about a young man working as a fraudulent psychic and how he accidentally awakes the spirits of the dead, who (spoilers) carve their stories into his skin, which becomes this Book of Blood. ![]() This basically acts as a framing narrative, and because we don’t get the framing wrap-up (which is at the end of Volume Six), there’s no sense of closure for the narrative. ![]()
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