riven010101's review
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
vertaren's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
skemble's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
jkaupanger's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
mikariah's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Weird as fuck. Compelling, though.
drew1013's review against another edition
4.0
This was a lot to take in, and even at 900 pages, it took me longer than I would have expected to get through this. There are reasons for that, but I want to go through all the wonderful things about this book before talking about detractors.
First, Imajica is very unique, which is what you get with Clive Barker. The structure of the Imajica itself, the creatures that inhabit it, and the pantheon are all unlike anything I’ve read before. And along with this uniqueness, we’re given a first-class ride through the world and its inhabitants via Barker’s prose. His style of writing lends itself nicely to fantasy, and his penchant for the bloody and brutal give the world he creates more weight and reality. It makes things feel dangerous, and Barker also ventures into the beautiful and transcendent with ease.
Everything is well done in the characters’ interactions with each other, their arcs to the end, etc. There isn’t anything to complain about in the nuts-and-bolts writing. All in all, the book is a satisfying trek through a fantastic series of worlds, with interesting characters.
Where the book began to lose my complete attention, and the reason I took much longer to finish it, was relatively early on as the Imajica began to be explored by our main characters. I suppose the most succinct way to put it is: there was no goal. Why did the characters go to the Imajica? The reason given was quite vague, a desire to understand, basically. The stakes were low for the main characters in terms of why they took on this “quest,” which again, can’t really be called a quest because there wasn’t a compelling story goal to be chased.
This was a major flaw for me, especially considering the book is a fantasy story that is largely framed around the exploration of the other dominions of the Imajica. Normally, there is a clear goal and the stakes are high, if not on a “save the world” level, then on a personal level. But at some point, the main character just kind of decides to go through the Imajica soon after finding out about its existence, with no real reason to do so other than curiosity. I like expedition/exploration stories, by the way, but this is not one. The main character is accompanied by a being who understands the Imajica and acts as a guide, so there isn’t a sense of discovery in that sense, only a sense of learning about an existing world. Basically, this is less “exploring a lost world” and more “look, you don’t know diddly about how things really are, so let’s show you around.”
**Light spoilers from here**
The main character (I’m going to stop calling him that, his name is Gentle) is also learning about his own abilities and about who he really is. In the abstract, this is classic fantasy stuff, the kind of stuff I really like. But in execution, this is not that kind of “you must learn the ways of the force if you’re to come with me to Alderaan” or “you’re a wizard, Harry” kind of things. The sense of self-discovery, including both Gentle’s powers and his emotional “evolution” (which is really more of a remembering than a transformation) are majorly undercut again by the fact that his guide (and eventual lover/partner) already knows the big secrets about Gentle, but has been sworn to secrecy. The fact that Gentle can produce these abilities isn’t really shocking to anyone around him because they either know something about him that he does not, or he is in situations where those abilities are shared/known by others. It kind of hobbles that discovery and sense of power and magic. Gentle never felt special to me in the classic fantasy protagonist sense, even though he was clearly meant to be.
Additionally, there are some major reveals about halfway through regarding the identities of the main characters as they relate to the other dominions. This reveal was very strange to me, and raised more logistic questions than it did add tension or mystery. There were more than a few “but wait, if that’s true then why—“ moments regarding these reveals, at least for me.
So overall, this book is more than worth the price of admission just to wander through this world from Clive Barker’s imagination. But for me, most of the important story threads were deflated quite a bit by the circumstances surrounding the main character. It didn’t have as much of that feeling of discovery, wonder, fantasy. It felt more like an amnesia story, with the main character (and therefore, the reader) being mostly out of the loop about what’s really going on and slowly relearning things. That kind of mystery can be great, but not when every discovery is essentially met with “oh hey, you remember that now, congrats.” That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it zeroes in on why I think the book lost a lot of it’s momentum for me.
First, Imajica is very unique, which is what you get with Clive Barker. The structure of the Imajica itself, the creatures that inhabit it, and the pantheon are all unlike anything I’ve read before. And along with this uniqueness, we’re given a first-class ride through the world and its inhabitants via Barker’s prose. His style of writing lends itself nicely to fantasy, and his penchant for the bloody and brutal give the world he creates more weight and reality. It makes things feel dangerous, and Barker also ventures into the beautiful and transcendent with ease.
Everything is well done in the characters’ interactions with each other, their arcs to the end, etc. There isn’t anything to complain about in the nuts-and-bolts writing. All in all, the book is a satisfying trek through a fantastic series of worlds, with interesting characters.
Where the book began to lose my complete attention, and the reason I took much longer to finish it, was relatively early on as the Imajica began to be explored by our main characters. I suppose the most succinct way to put it is: there was no goal. Why did the characters go to the Imajica? The reason given was quite vague, a desire to understand, basically. The stakes were low for the main characters in terms of why they took on this “quest,” which again, can’t really be called a quest because there wasn’t a compelling story goal to be chased.
This was a major flaw for me, especially considering the book is a fantasy story that is largely framed around the exploration of the other dominions of the Imajica. Normally, there is a clear goal and the stakes are high, if not on a “save the world” level, then on a personal level. But at some point, the main character just kind of decides to go through the Imajica soon after finding out about its existence, with no real reason to do so other than curiosity. I like expedition/exploration stories, by the way, but this is not one. The main character is accompanied by a being who understands the Imajica and acts as a guide, so there isn’t a sense of discovery in that sense, only a sense of learning about an existing world. Basically, this is less “exploring a lost world” and more “look, you don’t know diddly about how things really are, so let’s show you around.”
**Light spoilers from here**
The main character (I’m going to stop calling him that, his name is Gentle) is also learning about his own abilities and about who he really is. In the abstract, this is classic fantasy stuff, the kind of stuff I really like. But in execution, this is not that kind of “you must learn the ways of the force if you’re to come with me to Alderaan” or “you’re a wizard, Harry” kind of things. The sense of self-discovery, including both Gentle’s powers and his emotional “evolution” (which is really more of a remembering than a transformation) are majorly undercut again by the fact that his guide (and eventual lover/partner) already knows the big secrets about Gentle, but has been sworn to secrecy. The fact that Gentle can produce these abilities isn’t really shocking to anyone around him because they either know something about him that he does not, or he is in situations where those abilities are shared/known by others. It kind of hobbles that discovery and sense of power and magic. Gentle never felt special to me in the classic fantasy protagonist sense, even though he was clearly meant to be.
Additionally, there are some major reveals about halfway through regarding the identities of the main characters as they relate to the other dominions. This reveal was very strange to me, and raised more logistic questions than it did add tension or mystery. There were more than a few “but wait, if that’s true then why—“ moments regarding these reveals, at least for me.
So overall, this book is more than worth the price of admission just to wander through this world from Clive Barker’s imagination. But for me, most of the important story threads were deflated quite a bit by the circumstances surrounding the main character. It didn’t have as much of that feeling of discovery, wonder, fantasy. It felt more like an amnesia story, with the main character (and therefore, the reader) being mostly out of the loop about what’s really going on and slowly relearning things. That kind of mystery can be great, but not when every discovery is essentially met with “oh hey, you remember that now, congrats.” That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it zeroes in on why I think the book lost a lot of it’s momentum for me.
katokaitlyn's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This book is truly beautiful. While it’s absurdly dense (thus the .5 deduction), it makes some really astute claims about gender and the ways in which gender contributes to colonialism and nation-building. These observations are especially profound as they originated in the 90s. Other reviewers have noted some pretty hard to miss flaws in the book: the strangeness of Pie’s relationship to Gentle, namely. While I didn’t find this problematic, as the text seems to find a similar relationship between Judith and her “owners” throughout and critiques these relationships vehemently, I could see these moments as being deeply triggering and troubling. While the text is written by a man, I felt like the text fundamentally understood woman’s relationship to man and the ultimate goal of anyone aspiring to peace: harmony between all sexes and genders; harmony, indeed, that ultimately appears as a reunification sans highly masculine obsessive control rooted in imperialism.
crufts's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
This 1136-page brick was so long and tedious, I'm shocked I actually got through it. Here's a link to a photo of the brick itself: ＥＸＴＲＡ ＴＨＩＣＣ
Unlike another brick-sized book I've enjoyed in the past (the ~900-page Anathem by Neal Stephenson), Imajica doesn't do us the courtesy of introducing concepts slowly and gently. Instead we get whacked by a whole lot of fantasy jargon and a dozen characters all at once.
I didn't want to get lost, so I took the time to write a chapter summary at the end of each chapter. Even then, the plot was hopelessly complex and not very interesting.
I don't think I can express it much better than this other review by user themuffinjoke, so I'm just going to leave you with a link to that: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/7b220ed4-bb01-4e3c-91e7-805334791623
I didn't want to get lost, so I took the time to write a chapter summary at the end of each chapter. Even then, the plot was hopelessly complex and not very interesting.
I don't think I can express it much better than this other review by user themuffinjoke, so I'm just going to leave you with a link to that: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/7b220ed4-bb01-4e3c-91e7-805334791623
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Torture, Sexual harassment, Trafficking, Violence, Drug abuse, Sexism, Sexual assault, Body horror, Rape, Sexual content, Slavery, Toxic relationship, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Miscarriage, Pregnancy, and Vomit
There are even more content warnings than this. It's a very crude book.