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Title: The Great and Secret Show
ISBN: 1559941618
Author:
Clive Barker
Publicate Date: 1991-05
Publish: 1991-05
List Price: $15.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Audio Cassette
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Amazon Lowest Used Price: $1.63
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Interesting but ultimately flawed.
"The Great And Secret Show" is a novel that is at turns fascinating, horrifying, and (unfortunately) disappointing.
The first part of the novel is great, with Randolph Jaffe slowly unravelling the mysteries of the secret society called the Shoal and the pathway to the Art, a type of magic that can allow one to enter the dreams of humanity.
After discovering the power of the Nuncio and being changed (along with Fletcher) we get some great scenes showing the scope of their battle through time and space, culminating in the Society of Virgins' fateful swim in the lake above the caverns.
After that point, however, things slow to a crawl. The final showdown between Jaffe (now "the Jaff") and Fletcher never materializes, and the terata and hallucigenia - their fevered creations - never really battle either.
The plot involving Howie, Tommy-Ray, and Jo-Beth fizzles without much resolution. In fact the whole last third of the novel is thrown into chaos by the arrival of new characters (Tesla, Grillo, Vance, Harry D'Amour) where none was necessary. Also, Barker inserts a twist which puts the Jaff on the side of "good" just as he was about to achieve his evil aims. This bizarre and unnecessary contortion of the story wrecks any suspense or momentum that had been building.
Barker introduces a new threat when his orginal baddie (Jaffe) would have been more than adequate. Tommy-Ray's plot also goes off the rails...it seems as though Barker completely lost control of the sub-plot and then just cobbled something together as best he could at the end.
The Art, when it does make its appearance, is quite anti-climatic. Quiddity is interesting, but Ephemeris turns out to be bland and unexciting, instead of the promised center of "the great and secret show". By that point, most readers will probably be daydreaming about other shows...network TV ones.
Brilliant premise, exciting start, but a last third which reminds one of a train running out of steam a long, long way from the station.
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2: GSS
This book drones on for a while. But, it's not bad. And if I look back I suppose it was all needed to make the reader feel closer to the characters. A good read on a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG plane ride, and I mean long, like to China, then back to America.
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3: Good Epic, but Loses It Towards End
Randolf Jaffe works in the Dead Letter Office in Omaha, Nebraska where he stumbles across people talking about the Art, which is something that exists in another plane of existence. He learns about Quiddity, which is called a dream sea where people float in their minds when they are born, when they fall in love for the first time and when they die. He wants to find out about this Art, so he leaves to find out more about. This leads to a huge battle between good and evil in a tiny California town where the residents do not know what to make of bizarre creatures that impregnate virgins, feed off of people's fears and dreams, and the threat of huge creatures trying to break through the plane of existence to bring hell on Earth.
I tried to read this book many years ago, but didn't enjoy it back then. I think a lot of it had to do with that I loved when Clive Barker wrote about England in so many other stories. I was put off with almost all of it taking place in California since I did not view that as some exotic place and I became bored. I don't have that issue any longer, so I gave it another show in reading it.
I loved it this time. It is a very big book, but it is an epic story and it needs to be long. I love how when other authors write fantasy and they create an entire different world that does not take place in any sense of the real world, but Clive Barker created this world in the middle of the real world. There were extraordinary beings interacting with ordinary people, and I enjoyed reading their reactions.
My only complaint about it was after building up to what would be the final climax, there wasn't a great sense of urgency towards the end of the book. I didn't have my usual sense of trying to find out what was going to happen next, skimming over lines, forcing myself to go back and read slower so I wouldn't miss anything, but then going back to skimming so I could find out what happens next. Also, Barker has been very descriptive in other stories about horrors, but when he was trying to describe the huge, big baddies that were trying to break through, they didn't sound very gross or horrific.
Even with those complaints, it wasn't enough to destroy my overall enjoyment of the book. Also, the very ending gave hope to the sequel (Everville) and another epic adventure.
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4: Why do I read this stuff?
Like all his other books, Barker's stories stick with me and haunt my thoughts for a long time. He is a master storyteller! I always feel like I'm entering a strange dark world when I start one of his books and it takes me days after I've completed one to get back into the daylight. Fascinating. Can't take a steady diet of this author, but I do like enter his worlds every now and then.
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5: One of the best novels I've read
I have always enjoyed Clive Barker's writing. His writing is not necessarily "horror" in the Lovecraft sense of things. He is more mythical in his writings, and the horror that does come comes subtle and sublime. The Great and Secret Show is just that, all the myths and whispers that underline the American facade. It, and its sequel, work together to present the ideas that would happen if Carl Jung's writings became physical and tied intuitively with the United States across the decades and the peoples. The characters are not so black and white that you know exactly how they will react in the next scene, though there are some that could be classified as good and evil. If you want horror, pure horror, go for Stephen King. He is as good as it gets, when he hits the right book (such as The Stand, Salem's Lot, and the Dark Tower series). Clive Barker is more dark fairytale, tied together with the mythos of the United States. That is really what the Art series is about, in my opinion. There is only one problem with the Clive Barker books I've read, especially those proposed to be series. He doesn't seem to know how to finish his series. The Art series has been around for more than a decade and a half, and he still hasn't written book three, the final book in the trilogy. Same thing with the Galilee series, book two hasn't even hit drawing board from what I can tell...then there are several other series that he's started that don't seem to be completed. I think that it isn't that Clive Barker doesn't know how to finish, I think that his problem is that he has too good of an intelligence and imagination and he has trouble fitting the puzzle pieces together. Still. I highly suggest that the bright person out there read most of Clive's books. They are well worth the time and effort. I have to say that if I had to nail five books that have influenced my thoughts and considerations over the years, Great and Secret Show will be one of them.
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