Coldheart Canyon (Paperback)

Barker has produced some of the most graphic, sensual (or if you prefer, sexual) writing I have encounted for many years. His inventiveness and insight into both male and female fantasies makes for some stimulating reading.

As always he is able to develop characters that engage the reader even though many of them are barely human. One feels that Barker has a personal grudge against the Holywood Dream Machine but perhaps it is just that he has a special insight behind the scenes.

This book is a must read and should appeal to many people who have not ventured into the disturbing world of Clive Barker.

I wasn't expecting 'Coldheart Canyon' - I was waiting for Galillee 2, the third book of the Art, and the first book of the Abarat Quartet, so to hear that Barker had released a new 'dark' novel, was a nice surprise.

Coldheart Canyon is a tale about a Hollywood Star who's coming to the end of his shelf-life. In a desperate bid to prolong his carreer, he opts for plastic surgery. However, when it goes wrong, he retreats to a recently-bought mansion which houses, amongst other things, an exquisitely-tiled cellar that contains more secrets than anyone dared imagine.

Qhile many authors are good at 'lifting the surface to reveal the rot', Clive usually goes one better, and also lifts the rot to reveal something even more fascinating and disturbing. Coldheart Canyon is no exception to this. It deals with the shallowness of Hollywood, and the disillusionment of discovering that the persona that celebrities portray is just a mask. However, this is merely the rot. The core of the story extends to the metaphysical and supernatural, and of the effects of selling your soul for the price of fame.

The book starts off fairly slowly (admittedly), focusing on the main character, Todd Pickett. The first chapter deals with Todd's declining career, and the loss of his dog. I was aware that Clive Barker's dog died, and I extend my sympathies for his loss, I'd even appreciate the fact that Clive does 'exorcise his demons' through his writing and artwork, but I felt that devoting a good chunk of the book to it was sheer indulgence. I don't want to sound harsh, but other authors also lose dogs, but if they incorporate their memories of that loss into a work of fiction, it should be somehow relative to the story, and not appear as a mini-novella that has no real place.

When the novel finally gets moving, we are back on (un)familiar ground. There is again, a strong creepy vibe that builds up as you read the story (another thing that Barker is good at), and before you know it, you're tearing through the pages....

All of a sudden, however, there is a sudden halt with a string of sex scenes, one after the other, with increaingly diverse and unusual positions and practices. I think I'm really too liberal to be squeamish or disgusted with any erotica in a novel , (and I must admit, it made more interesting reading than the chapter about the dog) but it just went on for ages, and I felt the balance between the erotic and the gratuitously pornographic lose itself. It got to a point where it became a bit boring. Barker has written short passages involving sexual imagery in many of his other books that have more erotic charge than this! (I suppose if I wasn't reading it on the tube at the time, I may have been able to appreciate it more.)
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU ARE EASILY SHOCKED, OR YOU FIND SEXUAL IMAGERY DISGUSTING!

Coldheart Canyon is not Barker's best work. It could have been improved on, but the book is still thoroughly enjoyable. I just don't think I'd read it again (even the sexy parts). It just doesn't have the same power as Imajica or Weaveworld, and the editors should have done something to control this. It would have got four stars from me if the above two 'unneccessary elements' that I comented on were left out.