As well as Barker himself, Neil Gaiman and Christopher Fowler come from the same era and deal with similar subject matter, although with slightly differing approaches in each case. I'm a huge fan of Barker, but then again, I'm a huge fan of the transatlantic fantasy/horror mash-up movement that germinated in the eighties. There's an underlying reality to his writing that means I can't take the violence - I can deal with a high degree of horror where I know it's fantasy and can't happen IRL, but he gets too close to the bone for my taste and so that's why I only read the one book just before the posters of Pinhead advertising Hellraiser came out (I have a mild phobia about pins on the face/eyes particularly), so that was also a huge turn-off. I can see how he's also a capable director as his writing is really vivid and I certainly prefer him to Stephen King in the horror genre for instance, because his build-up can start off really mildly and then wham you're slap-bang in a massively paranoid nightmare. What I didn't like at all was the inherent and non-stop malice and rabid insanity, although it was very well-written, but I guess that possibly may have struck too close to home with some of my own sub-conscious hang-ups around that time and I never read another of his books and haven't seen any of his book to movies efforts.

I've read Weaveworld and mostly enjoyed that for the interpretation of the hag, the mother and the maiden structure which was highly novel in that he came at it from an extreme horror angle where (Magrat and Agnes might enjoy this and perhaps Terry might have developed it more sanely) the Maid (Immaculata - great name! :twisted: ) eventually took on all 3 roles and was definitely Granny in the total and relentless evil with the brakes off style.

Son of Celluloid by Clive Barker