Mister B. Gone » (Reprint)

A diversely talented and always chilling writer-artist, Clive Barker creates worlds that turn humanity's baser qualities inside out, hold them in front of a funhouse mirror, and transform them into the stuff of nightmares.

You hold in your hands not a book at all, but a terrifying embodiment of purest evil. Can you feel the electric tingle in your fingers as you are absorbed by the demon Jakabok's tale of his unintentional ascent from the depths of the Inferno? Do you sense the cold dread worming its way into your bloodstream, your sinews, the marrow of your bones as you read more deeply into his earthly education and unspeakable acts? The filth you now grasp has been waiting patiently for you for nearly six hundred years. And now, before you are completely in its thrall, you would do well to follow the foul creature's admonition and destroy this abomination of ink and paper before you turn a single leaf and are lost forever.

You have been warned.

The Washington Post - Bill Sheehan

Like the traditional bildungsroman, Mister B. Gone is, in the end, the story of an education. Jakabok's education culminates in a secret room where angels and demons hold clandestine—and intensely pragmatic—negotiations that he was never intended to witness and that lead to his imprisonment in the pages of this book. As he watches the "endless fish-market bartering" for the future of the printed word, he comes to understand the paltry commercial nature of the grand struggle between evil and good. In the process, he creates a vivid portrait of the embryonic forces that will ultimately shape the world. It's a satisfying conclusion to a subtle, surprising book. Within the modest canvas of Mister B. Gone, Barker, who rarely does anything predictable, confounds expectations once again, giving us one of the most resonant, provocative novels of his career.