THE DAMNATION GAME - Clive Barker

 


I'll repeat this every time I read a horror novel ... novel-length horror is difficult sustain.  There are very few names that stand out in this field because so few can doo this well.  Clive Barker is among those few.

Poland at the end of World War II. Our protagonist, unnamed, a thief, is looking for a man named Mamoulian - a gambler who never loses.

Move forward a few dozen years where Marty Strauss, a prisoner in the United kingdom, is offered early, supervised release. The condition? He will go to work for a wealthy recluse, Joseph Whitehead. How hard can it be?  It has to be better than rotting away in prison, right?

When Strauss finally finds himself in Whitehead's inner sanctuary he learns that Whitehead is trying to get himself out from an oath he doesn't think he even made in the first place with a certain Mamoulian many years ago. But is this nothing more than part of a (Damnation) game?

This book is a reprint, originally published in 1985, and apparently this was author Clive Barker's first novel. (I'm familiar with Barker but not what I would consider a huge fan so I'm not familiar with his body of work). One of the nice things about good horror fiction is that it doesn't really go out of style. As long as humans are reading it, the terror that it is universal to most people will continue to invoke horror.

Barker throws in a little bit of everything - cannibalism, incest, monsters, animal abuse - and the visuals vary from the swanky mansion with all its opulence, to rotting meat with maggots. It definitely has all the hallmarks of a first novel in which the author packs the book with all forms of horror with the hopes that something will stick with each reader.

The prose is delicious and it's Barker's writing style that keeps the reader interested, more than the story itself. The basic story is is quite interesting, but it gets a little lost behind all the splatter thrown up.

Barker is the creative behind the Hellraiser films (writer and director of the first film) and we can see some of what will come out in that first film here in this early novel. It is dark and gritty and that touch of the supernatural really keeps the reader on edge.

It is great to have this re-released so that a new generation of horror readers can experience this first novel by a horror master.

Looking for a good book? The Damnation Game is a new edition of Clive Barker's earliest novel and fans of the horror genre should make sure to put this on their reading list.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3-1/2 stars

* * * * * *

The Damnation Game

author: Clive Barker

publisher: Berkley Books

ISBN: 0593334973

paperback, 496 pages


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MURDLE VOLUME 1 - G. T. Karber

Image
 I enjoy puzzles of many different varieties. I had not heard of 'Murdle' before this but essentially this is a combination of the game of Clue and a Sherlock Holmes micro story. With suspects, possible murder weapons, potential locations, and/or motives plus some very brief hints, readers are meant to combine the logic of what's know with deductive reasoning to identify the killer (or killers?) in 100 different mystery word puzzles. I will admit right off the bat that I did not do all 100.  I didn't even do half of these, but I did so some random sampling through all the categories (Elementary, Occult Medium, Hard Boiled, and Impossible). I did not get any correct in the Impossible category (of course not ... they were impossible!) and only one correct in the Hard Boiled (of five). The Elementary puzzles were, as expected, pretty easy and the Hard Boiled only a little bit more difficult. Each mini mystery comes with a grid printed in the book to help the reader-detecti
Read more

THE YOUNGER GODS - Michael R. Underwood

Image
 Jacob Greene is a child of cultists - extremists with a deep connection to powerful gods.  To stay in good favor and receive great powers from these gods Jacob's family (both biological family and cult group family) must occasion a sacrifice now then. Jacob doesn't seem to question this (it's how he's been raised, after all) until the time he brings his best friend home to be brutally sacrificed. Jacob believes that his friend is a willing participant, honored to be chosen, informed of what was about to take place by Jacob's father.   Of course nothing could be further from the truth and the friend does NOT go willingly. This shatters Jacob's belief and has him question his faith and he leaves his family and cult in order to think things through. But it's not easy to escape powerful gods, and despite being in the city of New York, all signs point to the fact that the gods know where he is and that something big is about to go down. Although the description
Read more

THE RAVEN THIEF - Gigi Pandian

Image
 With Tempest Raj now a member of the company, Secret Staircase Construction (a company who, as their title suggests, builds mystery-themed, secret rooms inside homes) has finished their first job. Their client now wants to celebrate to kick off her new beginning - new home and new life now that she's divorced from her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property, led by Tempest's friend, Sanjay.   But during that séance, while all those gathered sat in a dark room holding hands, Corbin's dead body crashes the party, falling across the table in front of everyone. There were eight people in the room, and they were all holding hands, but all the evidence points to one of them being the murderer.  Suspicions point to Ash, Tempest's grandfather, because he was the only one with Corbin's blood on him. Of course, as a doctor, he was also the only one who checked on the body - wherein he acq
Read more