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Book Review of Mister B. Gone

Mister B. Gone
Mister B. Gone
Author: Clive Barker
Genre: Horror
Book Type: Hardcover
nantuckerin avatar reviewed on + 158 more book reviews


It's hard to resist a book that begins with the words, "Burn this book."

In Mister B. Gone, Clive Barker hits the ground running in the first sentences, spinning the tale of his main character, a demon that has been trapped in the pages of the very book the reader holds. Barker's narrator, a minor demon called Jakabok Botch, breaks from the telling of his story repeatedly throughout the story to urge the reader to destroy the book -- for their own good. Of course, destroying the book would actually unleash Jakabok on our world, and we don't want that, do we?

Clive Barker is quirky, there's no doubt about it. I think fans of his work will enjoy this story the most (I loved The Great and Secret Show, for example) but any curious reader will get caught up in the story of this strange and deliberatly unlikable character, who gets hauled out of the abyss and pulled through all the levels of hell before arriving in our world. It's not like anything I've ever read before, so it scores points for originality. I didn't love it, though.