As with all Clive Barker books, or to be fair those that I have read, the story begins going in one direction with a plot line you understand and can actually follow. Two chapters later you are following a plot line taking place when whats-his-name is a child!!! THEN THE TWO PLOT LINES INTERMINGLE!! and yeah, at that point I was still following, you know managing in probably more accurate, then you are thrown into some strange combination of the above where you are in his real life with flashbacks to all the other timelines you have witnessed thus far.
The basic premise of the story is a great plot line and it really has some great characters and some incredible twists and turns in the (very distorted and at times so hard to follow) plot. I really enjoy the fact that Clive Barker always creates really three dimensional villains. In this case two of them who you really can very VERY easily just despise with every bone in your body. put together the two, brother and sister/ though more accurately soul mates, live for the destruction of species and (at least it seems) the calm and normality of life.
One methodically wipes out the last two of a species keeping careful diagrams and recordings, while the other drowns herself in the affection and sexual interest of men, usually ending in a pool of blood and body parts. The two of them get involved in a little boy's life and from then on both are tormented with the very idea of their experience together and the affects that ensued in their separate yet entwined lives, drawing many similarities between the gay night life of San Francisco "back in its hay day" before the aids epidemic and the cruelty of the laws of nature.
God, I was sick of hearing about this book before I read it, sick of it while I read it, and now I am so sick of talking about it!
Though kudos Clive Barker, no matter how aggravating I find it, I continue to discuss it with a variety of people.
