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Don D'Ammassa (review date 1986)

SOURCE: D'Ammassa, Don. Review of Clive Barker's Books of Blood, Volume Two, by Clive Barker. Science Fiction Chronicle 8, no. 3 (December 1986): 50.

[In the following review, D'Ammassa maintains that the five stories included in the second volume of the Books of Blood are of uniformly high quality.]

Clive Barker has been widely touted as the British Stephen King, with some justification. This is the second volume of short fiction I've read [Books of Blood, Vol. II] by him, and it is certainly the highest quality original short story collection I've read in some time. The five stories are of uniformly high quality. My favorite is probably “Jaqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament”, a gory story of a woman who can physically alter the bodies of others. “New Murders in the Rue Morgue” is a fine pastiche, “Dread” is a story of a just revenge on a callous experimenter, “Hell's...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism
   1. Michael Morrison (review date 1985)
   2. Michael A. Morrison (review date 1985)
   3. Chris Morgan (review date 1985)
   4. Fleming Meeks (review date 1986)
   5. Douglas E. Winter (review date 1986)
   6. Ken Tucker (review date 1986)
   7. Michael A. Morrison (review date 1986)
   8. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1986)
   9. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1986)
   10. Cosette Keis (review date 1987)
   11. Elizabeth Gleick (review date 1987)
   12. Laurence Coven (review date 1987)
   13. Don D'Ammassa (review date 1987)
   14. Science Fiction Chronicle (review date 1989)
   15. Ken Anderson (review date 1989)
   16. Craig William Burns (essay date 1993)
   17. Gary Hoppenstand (essay date 1994)
   18. Linda Badley (essay date 1996)
3. Further Reading
4. Copyright