Imajica

By: Clive Barker

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 37 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Imajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie "oh" pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension.

That dimension is one of five in the great system called Imajica. They are worlds that are utterly unlike our own but are ruled, peopled, and haunted by species whose lives are intricately connected with ours. As Gentle, Judith, and Pie "oh" pah travel the Imajica, they uncover a trail of crimes and intimate betrayals, leading them to a revelation so startling that it changes reality forever.

©1991, 2009 Clive Barker Ink (P)2015 David N. Wilson

Imajica is full of adventure, love, lust, power, g

Any additional comments?

This sweeping novel takes the reader on a fantastical ride through dimensions and the lives of intriguingly genuine characters.

Elegantly told, Barker's larger than life characters enchant and entertain.

Imajica is full of adventure, love, lust, power, greed and betrayal.

I listened to the audio-book and although getting through the book was an arduous task because of the length, the narrator did an excellent job conveying the characters, inflections, and keeping the story flowing.

I would recommend reading a physical copy just for the ease of referencing a previous chapter, reflecting and so on.

I did get distracted by the scope of this novel at times.

The Transformative "Assault of the Strange"

"He'd spent many lazy Yzordderrexian evenings on the roof of Peccable's house, watching the tail of the comet disappear behind the towers of the Autarch's palace, talking about the theory and practice of Imajical feits, writs, pneumas, uredos, and the rest."

The first time I began Clive Barker's epic fantasy novel Imajica (1991), I gave up after the third chapter. Why? Because I found the characters too unappealing for so a long book. It begins with Londoners John "Gentle" Zachariah Fury, a gifted forger of art and seducer of women, and Judith Odell, a beautiful woman whose occupation seems to be getting older, overweight, and wealthy men to fall possessively in love with her. But several months later I re-entered Imajica, persevered, started really liking Gentle and Judith as they began experiencing, learning, and changing, and ended up seduced by Barker's ambitious fantasy.

Barker's fertile imagination is by turns gruesome, sublime, beautiful, suspenseful, erotic, apocalyptic, magical, and comical. His fantasy develops his themes (about religion, drama, gender, love, freedom/servitude, reconciliation, transformation, responsibility, memory, identity) and feels relevant due to its philosophical ideas (e.g., everything from a mote to godhead being connected), political thrust (e.g., empire-building male elites feeling threatened), and mundane details (e.g., on the eve of Armageddon Judith shopping for deodorant).

The Imajica is "a single, infinitely elaborate pattern of transformation" comprised of five Dominions, of which earth, the Fifth, is "hard and unpoetic" and "unreconciled," cut off from the magical others, except for a few "despairing or inspired" magicians, poets, priests, etc., the vast majority of humanity being blind to the wonders next door. The plot concerns the coming 200th-midsummer anniversary of the Maestro Sartori's cataclysmically misfiring spell-ritual attempt to Reconcile earth with the other four Dominions. As the novel develops, Gentle and Judith are caught up in the conflict to prevent or foment a new attempt at Reconciliation. Lurking behind everything is "the Unbeheld Himself, Hapexamendios," the God of the Imajica, who long ago went through the Dominions killing deities (especially goddesses), until he got to the First, where he hid behind a veil and shut dead souls out.

While Gentle and Judith become interesting, the supporting characters are compelling: Charlie Estabrook and Oscar Godolphin (aristocratic brothers subject to toxic sibling rivalry), Kuttner Dowd (an urbane "divine pimp, perennial servant . . . actor chappie, and occasional murderer"), the Autarch of the Imajica (a builder of cities and committer of atrocities), Celestine (a former "bride of God" imprisoned in a cell for centuries), Little Ease (a simian cherub "chatterbox" hailing from a race of "apologists, bumblers, deserters, and cowards")--and above all the marvelous Pie 'oh' pah (a centuries-old protean androgyne assassin/whore/slave). After committing terrible crimes Barker's complex people may reveal a sympathetic vulnerability, and after taking responsibility for their actions they may make an appalling mistake.

Barker writes many scenes of potent fantasy, as when Gentle looks across a valley and senses the gaze of a double, or Gentle, Pie, and Huzzah arrive at Yzordderrex, or Celestine tells the circular story of Nisi Nirvana. For all his fantastic imagination (Nullianacs, the Pivot, the City of God, etc.), he remains socially aware. Clem and Taylor and AIDS could be a token gay situation played for a few tears and forgotten, but it becomes a plot engine and gives the fantasy novel a romantic and realistic core.

Barker's painterly, elegant, and versatile writing is a pleasure to re-read:

--"Such dust, every mote as wise as a planet from floating in this holy space."
--"Children wore ash today, and carried their parents' heads like censers, still smoking from the fires where they'd been found."
--"Amid the foliage on the higher branches were clusters of comet-ripened fruit, like zebra tangerines."
--"It made a laugh from its lightening, but there was more humor in a death rattle."
--"Consciousness went from him, and, uncaptained, he sank."

And his irrepressible humor is quite funny, whether in clever dialogue ("Death's put some strange ideas in my head") or witty descriptions ("Everywhere along the route faces were once more appearing at windows and doors like anemones showing themselves after being brushed by the underbelly of a shark").

Audiobook reader Simon Vance's silky voice and refined British accent are perfect for Barker's poetic and decadent fantasy. The majority of Vance's character voices are fine. His dusty, insane Celestine is wonderful; his superior, insecure Unbeheld unsettling; and his exotic, androgynous Pie appealing.

Flaws? Some mysteries remain unsolved at the end. And I wonder, why five Dominions instead of two or four? (Although the Fifth and the First are distinct, the middle three are confusable.) And Barker's early sales pitch for the Dominions ("teeming with wonders") may oversell them.

But his book is an impressive paean to the imagination (a Dominions curse is "May everything be as it seems to you"), magic ("the first and last religion of the world"), the unfettered spirit (religious readers may find the novel disturbing), and love (Imajica features as much graphic sex as violence, unlike most epic fantasy). The amnesia devices and exotic cultures recall Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle, the painterly descriptions evoke Peake's Gormenghast, and the assault on organized religion (and a male God) prefigures Pullman's His Dark Materials, but Imajica is Barker's own vision. Imajica is a spiritual and romantic epic fantasy, not a military epic one, being closer to Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus than to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Barker's quest is not to save the world from darkness or tyranny via violence, but to enrich the world by becoming a more understanding, caring, and imaginative person.

Definitely worth a listen!

Clive Barker has some wild imagination and it's a frightening, but enjoyable place to get lost.

Not just a novel, but rather an unparalleled spec

tackle force the ears of gigantic proportion. Nothing else is anything like it. It's unique.

Loved it

Loved it from start to finish. Visually stunning and a pleasure to the ears. Barker had an imagination that knows no bounds.

Good *for* a fantasy novel

The book is super epic and creative, but also sometimes not very credible. It's highly gender stereotypical-- both the "goddess" stereotype and the "woman who falls for abusive men" stereotype... also some of the "women who can't control their emotions" stereotype. The principal female character falls madly in love with either uninteresting or evil men over and over at the drop of a hat and for no apparent reason despite having reason to despise each of them. The frequent, lurid, sex scenes sometimes make the book seem like a romance novel, but they always quit just before I seriously considered putting the audio book on fast forward. Relationships between male characters, actual plot development, and description of place made up for the aforementioned claptrap and allowed this to remain a fun read.

good book

a lot to follow. interesting story. it was hard to track because of all of the characters and dominions. but a good book none the less

Review

Good book, couldn't stop reading it. Gave me closure at the end. Of course, not the way I wanted it to end. The narrator did an amazing job with every character giving each one thier own distinct voice. Easy to listen too.

great book, bad narration

If you don't mind the narrator mixing up the character's voices and a vocal range of an amateur this might be the listen for you. As an avid Clive Barker superfan I'm disappointed.

one of my favorite books

this beautiful story I read when was published many years ago. enjoyed this reading immensely