Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker

Category: 50 Books

5. Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker

I’ve never read any of Clive Barker’s stuff, and I think I’ve only seen one of his movies. (I’ve never seen any of the Hellraiser franchise, but I did see the first Candyman movie. It’s the only scary movie I’ve ever watched at an actual “sleepover”. Oh, the cliches I’ve lived. Oh, wait, I just IMDB-ed him and I’ll also admit to seeing Lord of Illusions, at the theater no less. My friend Nola had a huge tv crush on Scott Bakula at the time, and that’s the ONLY reason we sat through that piece of shit.) Anyway, Barker has written tons of stuff, and I’m always surprised by how much he’s written every time I’m putting away books at the library. Still it was never enough for me to want to actually read any of his books.

Then, a couple of weeks ago a patron returned his latest book, Mister B. Gone (and are you also thinking of Mr. B. Natural? because you know I am.) and the patron said that it was SO SCARY that she couldn’t read past the first page. Now this patron, she reads a lot. She usually reads only good stuff, and she’s made several reccomendations lately all of which have been good. So she says this book is terrifying… I gotta believe her. But I got curious. So I thought I would read the first page to see if it was, in fact, terrifying.

It wasn’t. In fact, it was kinda corny. It was insisting that you should burn the book because the evil within the book was so evil that it should be burned immediately without reading the book because EVIL! Like I said, corn. So I read the whole thing because it’s not very long and it’s easy to read. The narrator is a demon, and he’s telling his story and begging you to burn the book to put him out of his misery because he’s been bound to the book. It’s a neat idea, but the parts (and there are MANY) where he pauses to beg/insist/threaten you to burn the book become SO TIRESOME AND BORING that it kinda ruins the book. Really.

I did like the book though. I really liked the story. I just wish there had been more time spent on the story instead of all those pleas and threats to burn the book. Do you see how annoying it is for me to keep mentioning that the demon wants you to burn the book? Yeah, well multiply that times 20 and that’s what it’s like to read the book. Like I say, the story is great. It’s about this demon and the invention of well, the invention that will bring about the End of the World. I don’t want to give too much away because even though I could see what was coming I was happy about the invention and the story. Seriously, I LOVED the story.

It never got scary, and I told the patron that she should give it another go, because I don’t think she’d get scared reading it. Annoyed maybe, but scared? Nah.

 

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