From Bad Moon Books, Clive Barker's new novella THE ADVENTURES OF MR. MAXIMILLIAN BACCHUS AND HIS TRAVELLING CIRCUS reads less like Barker and more like Neil Gaiman ... and really weak Gaiman, at that.
The titular Bacchus is a rotund, bearded man who traverses the countryside with his roving band of freaks and performers. After a wedding in this extended family, the circus comes across a fork in the road, where an old man stationed there tells them one path leads to the fabled city of Xanadu, ruled by Kublai Khan; they decide to take that route so they can put on a show for him.
And so begins a loose caravan of stories that take place along the journey, which includes sparring with a rival circus, a clown venturing a little too far to the edge of the world, and adopting a young thief as one of their own. The thing is, these tales go nowhere, resembling padding awaiting a payoff, and one that never comes.
It may sound like a venture into Barker's ABARAT territory, but it's too enchanted with its own whimsy to be entertaining, and the language too precious ("the people of Parkgate brought milk and shrimps for the armadillo, whom they called Piers"). It doesn't intend to be a parody of itself, but it reads that way.
And no one gets their face hooked.
It wasn't until after I read the 90-page volume that I learned this was written in 1974 and is seeing print for the first time. That's a decade before Barker broke through with this BOOKS OF BLOOD, so that may explain why it doesn't read with the greatest of ease; at that time, he had found neither his voice nor his calling. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, this one's for completists only. —Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon or Bad Moon Books.
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