by Clive Barker
2007 Harper Collins

Selection method: Wanted to find non-shitty non-Stephen King horror fiction. Failed.
First paragraph: Burn this book. Go on. Quickly, while there’s still time. Burn it. Don’t look at another word. Did you hear me? Not. One. More. Word.
First, page 2: What are you waiting for? You don’t have a light? Ask somebody. Beg them.
First, page 3: What’s the problem? Why are you still reading?
Most totally idiotic: …the book sat somewhere through the passage of many centuries in a pile of books nobody ever opened.

I was convinced that Mister B. Gone was young adult fiction, and that the library had misfiled it. It’s not, because Clive Barker thinks you are retarded. In fact, this is considered “metafiction”, which isn’t even a real word (see my feelings on “meta” in general) and I guess that is supposed to impress me. Instead of being impressed, I took up arson. And I was BAD at it.

I read through the first three pages of warnings about how evil this book is just to find out how shitty it could get. It didn’t take long, with the narrator revealing, “Yeah, I’m a demon.” Yeah, you’re a shitty book. Clive Barker must be taking writing lessons from James Patterson now. There was nothing compelling, suspenseful, scary, or macabre in those first pages. The only good thing I can say about it was that there were no spelling errors. And the cover design was nice, but that was the work of Mary Schuck, whose career is now ruined.

Even if Clive Barker were to claim this was young adult fiction, I would never let a child of mine read it. I wouldn’t want them to grow up thinking it’s okay to write this way. Clive Barker may have even sensed that this book was shitty, and so in a stroke of genius, spent three pages telling you to stop reading and burn the book, which is so meta my nuts just exploded from a hipster orgasm.

Don’t read this book. It is shitty. Put the shitty book down. Now. Burn the shitty book.

Other reviews: Fantasy Book Critic, What We’re Reading Now, No Room In Hell, Morbid Outlook

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