SOURCE: Morgan, Chris. “Harrowing Horror.” Fantasy Review 8, no. 8 (August 1985): 16-17.

In the following review of Books of Blood, Volumes 4–6, Morgan describes Barker as a highly talented yet inconsistent writer.

Clive Barker is a young English writer who produces horror novelettes, generally supernatural, with contemporary settings and very graphic detail. Hardly a story passes without a maiming, a disembowelment or a gruesome death; the smells of blood and excrement frequently hang in the air. Sphere have seen fit to issue his work in trilogies of slim volumes, each containing four or five stories. (Volumes I, II and III [of Books of Blood] were issued simultaneously in the spring of 1984.) Barker is a highly talented writer—a natural writer rather than an experienced craftsman. Hence his stories vary from very good to very bad, though there is frequently an unevenness of style within stories, too. What he needs is a...