Hellbound Hearts

September 29, 2009
This undistinguished anthology set in Clive Barker's imagined universe in which a puzzle box serves as the gateway to the realm of the sado-masochistic Cenobites ties in with the release of a remake of the 1987 horror film Hellraiser, adapted from Barker's novella "The Hellbound Heart." Unsurprisingly, these 21 stories are no more for the faint-of-heart than the materials that inspired them. While non-Barker fans may recoil at what often comes across as violence for violence's sake, even those who found some literary merit in the gory Barker novella may grow weary of a regular dose of torture, genital mutilation and bleak savagery. Not even a gifted and well-known author like Neil Gaiman ("Wordsworth," a tale in graphic form with artist Dave McKean) can do much with the theme of an innocent or a non-innocent stumbling on or seeking the fabled box and unleashing, accidentally or not, the horrific Cenobites. Other contributors include Conrad Williams, Tim Lebbon, Kelley Armstrong, Nancy Holder, Sarah Langan and Chaz Brenchley. Stephen Jones, who worked on the film Hellraiser, provides an introduction.