The Great and Secret Show is an epic novel (and I rarely use the word epic). It's an epic of mythology born from Clive Barkers mind. It spans some 4o years and involves a huge cast of characters. It's a story of good and evil I suppose but saying that is a bit too reductive. It is about a tug of war of yen and yang, two energies necessary for the world to exist. And above all how these to forces effect the ever changing world they inhabit. To say more would ruin the story.

The ease with which these 600+ page passed by for me was simply incredible. It seems unfair to other writers that such a long book should feel so lean and concise. Unlike most books that cycle between multiple narratives, none of the various story lines seemed to just be filler--they all moved the story forward and had a reason for being there. The intricacy of all the moving parts of this story--its themes, its characters and its myth--are astounding.

This is now a favorite book for me and I think it's the best I've ever read from Clive Barker. I'd recommend it to those dipping their toes into horror, or those that love fantasy and maybe those that love metaphysical themes.

"As within, So Without, as the universe so the soul"

IMHO, I think Mr. Barker forgot archtypes have depths of meaning. Instead, I felt as if I had been slimed, as in the 'Ghostbusters' movie.

Everybody, for those of you who loved this, yes, the writing is the very image of literary writing and definitely covers a lot of the usual metafictional and metaphysical ground customary for an author seeking Truth while having fun, but with horrifically offensive graphic scenery. WAY too long, but the worst of it, for me, though, this was too much of a bad LSD/Old Testament pastiche and not enough Ancient Mediterranean wit.

I blame, you guessed it, the translation, but for a book lauded as one of Clive Barker's best, this was kinda long and dragging out. I wonder how I would rate it if I re-read it in its original language. For right now, it is closer to a 2.5 than to a 3. Eh.

I first read this book twenty years ago when I was a teenager. I don't think that I really understood much then about the world. Now that I reread it I think that Clive Barker really hated women when he wrote this. The way he describes women physically is not nice.

Kritiken zu Clive Barkers (guten) Büchern zu schreiben, finde ich persönlich immer sehr schwer. Zum einen bin ich ohnehin nicht besonders gut darin, Kritiken zu schreiben, zum anderen entziehen sich meiner Meinung nach Barkers Bücher jeder Norm. Was kann ich also großartig schreiben, um "Jenseits des Bösen" gerecht zu werden?

Zum einen sicherlich, dass hier ein typischer Barker vorliegt. Typisch insofern, als Horror und Fantasy eine echt lesenswerte Symbiose eingehen. Das gilt auch für die Sprache. Ich liebe es, dass Barkers Vokabular immer der Sache angemessen ist und er - ohne dass es peinlich wird - an genau den richtigen Stellen explizites Vokabular verwendet. Das dürfte für einige Leser manchmal schwer zu verdauen sein, mir gefällt es.

Zur Geschichte selbst möchte ich nicht viel schreiben, das haben die anderen Rezensenten sicher bereits getan. Nur so viel kann ich sagen: Aus meiner Sicht ist die Geschichte gut. Barker strafft an den richtigen Stellen, wird ausführlicher, wo es nötig ist, und das Buch langweilt nie. Es ist eine wunderschöne, grausame, beängstigende, lebensbejahende Geschichte mit einem Ende, das - ohne zu Frustration zu führen - Lust auf den nächsten Band der Reihe macht.

Hoffentlich kommt bald mal der dritte Band raus! Und hoffentlich versaut's Barker nicht!

Solid 5/5

This book made me realize that I don't think Clive Barker is very good at writing characters. His ideas are amazing (for the most part) but his characters are wooden and one-dimensional and he fails to really develop them at all.

This isn't a problem in Imajica (which I really liked) because the characters are less important in comparison to the world building and fantastical events that are taking place. Barker is more in his element describing fantastic worlds, creatures, and coming up with the rules by which that world functions. I think it also helped that the characters themselves are defined more by how fantastical they are.

Unfortunately, in the Great and Secret Show Barker doesn't have much in the way of fantastic events to fall back on, and he is left with a character centered story. The characters are, for the most part, uninteresting. Everything they do is entirely predictable because it is simply in line with the most obvious of their characterizations. There is nothing more to any of the characters than what is apparent on their first description.

The beginning of this book reminds me of an acid rock guitar solo (not a good thing). I get it. LSD is really mind blowing. But, basing a scientific discovery on one part genius and one part drugs is not interesting to me in the least. This seems like sort of a 70s thing. Are you hip to this plot device, man? It is like Deus Ex Machina for the cool kids. See [b:Vurt|430214|Vurt|Jeff Noon|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174681904s/430214.jpg|1383955] for a better example of a book that leans heavily on drug culture.

The middle is setup for the climax (which is itself just a setup for further books) and manages to be dull throughout.

A few things towards the end were interesting. I thought it would pick up when some of the characters end up in Quiddity, a sort of alternate dimension where we go when we dream, but probably 30 pages were spent on this and it was ultimately irrelevant. The descriptions and events in the time loop were pretty cool as was Tesla's ultimate solution to the problem in the book, but the rest I slogged through while being completely uninterested in any of the characters or events as they were taking place.

This book also reminded me of most of Stephen King's writing, fixations on "clever" labels for things, unnecessary sexualization of events, etc... I don't really like Stephen King when he isn't writing Gunslinger.

That is about it.

The end of the world. Metaphysical serums. Angels. Demons. etc. I wish I would have written it first.

It was OK I guess, but after 300 hunder pages I realized I am not even in the middle. I decided not to read further. It is at the same time imaginative and interesting, but kind of boring.