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Book Review: Clive Barker’s Next Testament by Mark Alan Miller

Next Testament

Clive Barker’s Next Testament by Mark Alan Miller
Based on the BOOM! Studios graphic novels by Mark Alan Miller and Clive Barker
Earthling Publications, 2017
ISBN-13: Not Available
Available: Limited, Deluxe, and Lettered versions (direct order from Earthling Publications here)

Is there truly a God? If there is, what is he like?  Why would he put up with the hell on earth for the past millennia, and what would he think of what humanity has become? Clive Barker and Mark Miller have posited these questions in The Next Testament, and answer them in a fascinating tale.

Clive Barker’s Next Testament is a novelization of  BOOM! Studio’s graphic novel series of the same name. While Miller has written the actual novel, Barker’s touch is everywhere here: he drew the artwork both for the cover and interior, which is typically disturbing and splendid. With an introduction by the iconic F. Paul Wilson, readers are in for a special experience.

The story itself is horrific and bombastic, bleeding weird imagination all over the place. In the scorching desolation of the desert, billionaire Julian Desmond is driven to uncover a truth that has eluded humanity for ages, something he doesn’t quite understand himself.  Desmond digs up a strange structure in the middle of nowhere, falling into a darkness that feels like nothing he’s ever imagined. There he meets Wick, a man covered in myriad colors, but not in tattoos; a true illustrated man. Wick claims that he is God, the one true being who sculpted the world, and that he needs to witness what has happened to his creation.

Readers may wonder why he needed to be released from this structure and who locked him up… but not for long.  When Wick is introduced to the modern world, he is enraged, and his actions are those of an Old Testament deity. Julian’s son Tristan and Tristan’s fiance Elspeth may be the only ones with a chance of stopping this destructive god.

Miller and Barker’s creation is brutal, in the fashion of Barker’s classics, such as Books of Blood and Hellraiser. The Next Testament is bloody, unflinching, and unhinged in its free-flowing swath of “hell-on-earth”. This is classic hardcore horror with a philosophic bend to it that will draw Barker’s faithful, but introduce many more to the talents of Miller. The Next Testament is a welcome, and recommended, return to the horror that readers have been craving.

Contains: graphic gore, extreme violence

 

Reviewed by David Simms

Posted on May 26, 2017 by , 1 comment

Book Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell by Paul Kane

Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell by Paul Kane

Rebellion/Solaris, 2016

ISBN: 9781781084557

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Sherlock Holmes and Cenobites sound like a combination that would be truly awful together, but I have to say, Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell blew my assumptions out of the water. With an introduction by Barbie Wilde, I was put at ease.

The book opens with a man solving the Lament Configuration. That man is Sherlock Holmes.

It’s 1895. Moriarty is declared dead, and Holmes miraculously survives the tumble off the cliff in his final adventure. Holmes and Watson are engaged by Laurence and Juliet Cotton, newlyweds with a strained relationship, to investigate the disappearance of Laurence’s brother, Francis. Their investigation leads them to look into a series of unusual missing persons’ cases, in which the missing parties vanish in impossible ways. One man disappears from a locked room, the only traces left behind being the faint scent of vanilla.

This is just the beginning of an investigation that will draw the pair into contact with an organization whispered about and known only as ‘The Order of the Gash.’ Clues lead the sleuth and the doctor to an underground club that services the most depraved of the upper crust of society, a sinister asylum in France, and the underworld of London. They encounter shady operators, meet old acquaintances in the strangest of circumstances, enter a world of depravity and pain, and make dangerous associates—the Cenobites, from hell.

Kane, previously editor of the tribute anthology Hellbound Hearts, clearly has a familiarity with and love of the Hellraiser universe. In this book, in addition to new Cenobites, Kane includes storylines and characters from Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart, as well as the Hellraiser films.  I was pleasantly surprised to also find an authentic Holmes feel and pacing that shows a familiarity with the characters and style of Holmes’ stories. Kane was able to keep with the atmosphere and period sensibilities of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s style while still creating the feel of Clive Barker’s world of Cenobites–  and he makes it work. Recommended. Reader’s advisory note: Fans of both Sherlock Holmes and Hellraiser should enjoy this. Other horror/Holmes crossover titles include Sherlock Holmes: The London Terrors and others by William Meikle, and Gaslight Arcanum, edited by Kim Newman and Kevin Cockle.

Contains: mentions of body horror, allusions to sexual activity and gore

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker


Posted on August 31, 2016 by , Reply

Book Review: The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker (audiobook)

 

The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker

St. Martin’s Press, 2015

ISBN-13: 9781250055804 (Hardback)

ISBN-13: 9781427261571 (Macmillan audiobook)

Available: Hardback, Macmillan audiobook, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible edition

The Scarlet Gospels marks Clive Barker’s long awaited return to adult horror fiction. This novel has a long history, and he’s had fans on tenterhooks since the 1990s when he first hinted at this work in progress. The story revolves around two of Barker’s iconic characters, Harry D’Amour, his tattooed implacable investigator of the supernatural, and the eloquent Cenobite Hell Priest, better known as Pinhead. Joining Harry is a group of magic users, the Harrowers, who help him along the way after Norma Paine is abducted by the Hell Priest and his misshapen minion, Felixson. Harry finds the Lament Configuration, that damned box, and is pulled into a Dante-esque mission put forth by the Hell Priest himself. At first it is unclear what the Hell Priest wants to do with D’Amour—kill him or use him. He needs a witness, an archivist, who will chronicle his usurping the throne of Hell. While there were of course several colourful characters to the story, the main action revolves around Harry and the Hell Priest. Most other relationships remain secondary.

The book was fast paced, and very cinematic at times, especially regarding gore, body horror, and the scenes in Hell. One of the best and bloodiest sections of the novel is the prologue, only matched by what he wrote in the Books of Blood series. The reader is introduced to the magicians who resurrect the magician Ragowski, one of their dwindling number that the Hell Priest tore apart. Ragowski reveals that the Hell Priest is killing all of them off after torturing information out of them as to the location of magical talismans and grimoires and collecting the world’s magic, but to what end? The violence is incredibly visceral and graphic, and the Hell Priest’s curses and speeches to the magicians are intelligently delivered. The prologue really drew me in and made me want to continue reading.

Despite Barker’s writing the Hell Priest as a departure from what we are familiar with most of the films, it was difficult not to imagine Doug Bradley’s face and voice overpowering my reading. If you are expecting the Cenobite from the films, you will be disappointed. This writing of the Hell Priest of the Order of the Gash relishes in the abuses and torments he puts his victim through, which seems like the complete opposite characterization from the distinguished, duty bound Cenobite from the first two Hellraiser movies, let alone The Hellbound Heart. The character in the films was more reserved, even reverent when visiting pain on others, as it was his duty.

I wish the novel would have been much longer, especially regarding the space devoted to D’Amour’s and the Harrowers’ journey through Hell, and the epic battle between the Hell Priest and Lucifer. My main complaint seems to be echoed by other Barker fans: while the book is good, it could have been much longer and given the reader a lot more content.

As a side note, the narrator of the Macmillan audio book version of the novel is John Lee. He pulls out some fantastic voice acting for The Scarlet Gospels.

As an avid Clive Barker fan, I recommend this book, but with reservation. Recommended for adult readers

Contains: Body horror, gore, graphic violence, rape, sex, implications of child abuse.

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

 

Posted on December 9, 2015 by , Reply
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