Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

So delectable!! So flamboyant!! Gives American Horror Story vibes - ridiculous but just so good. I thoroughly enjoyed this spicy little thriller. Perfect distraction novel as you are fully captivated by the sexy hauntings and horrors unfolding. I do love Barker's ability to tantalize and horrify, his sexy scenes are exquisite. The last couple Barker novels I read (or, attempted to read, I DNF Mr. Begone and HATED Weaveworld) was a bit disappointing, but I enjoyed this one from beginning to end. Yes, it's weird af (ghosts mating with animals and producing terrible and virile hybrid offspring), but that's what makes it so enthralling!! I even shed a tear at the sad but sweet reunion at the end.I think this is my favorite Barker novel so far.

I started out thinking I wasn't going to like the book - but then it really got started and I loved it :)One of the things the story is about is a '20s era silent-movie actress. Her 'friend" has a room installed in her house made entirely of tile taken from a monestary in Romania. This tile, some 30,000 pieces, is supposed to have been built by Lilith, the wife of Satan, and it seems to have...ahem...remarkable qualities. The '20s era movie star, Katya, and all her friends and fellow stars are transfixed and transformed by the power of this room, known as "The Devil's Country." Everyone connected to the house and Katya seemed to be hedonists at heart - and "anything" goes in their search for pleasure.At this point the story skips forward to present day Hollywood, where star Todd Pickett makes the mistake of getting plastic surgery and suffers severe damage. He takes refuge from the press at the long abandoned "pleasure palace" of, Katya, an actress that he has never heard of. No one seems to live in the house, but then things change and we learn that there are many "someones" in the house - both dead and alive. Katya, being the evil person that she is, has many perverted people around her - it is very sexually explicit involving creatures you've probably never dreamed of.Add to this mix a fanatical fan of Todd Pickett. Tammy, who wants to discover "why" Todd is in hiding - she wants to save him from whatever is wrong - and you begin to see all kinds of layers to the story.

I just finished this... novel, if you will. It is long, but interesting and.... captivating.Perhaps it is the combination of my interests: old Hollywood and the occult, that intrigued me so much, but, regardless, I found this story something I was unable to part with, until completed.First, the plot of Barker's story is original to the extent that you will not be plodding into context that was predictable. The storyline harkens Richard Matheson's Hell House with the basis of occult activity permeated with overt and wild sexual activity. Unlike Hell House, ColdHeart doesn't just suggest the activity, but revels in the detailed activity, throughout. While the details sometime seem excessive, it rather fits the legends (or rumours) of Hollywood social "interaction" and, thus, works. However, it could have worked as easily with less.The story is well written. This is my first Barker read and I am impressed. The detail... the originality... the imagination: it far exceeds that of other modern, "horror" authors. The character development is truly fantastic, to the extent that the ending feels a let down.While I have read other reviews, critiquing the length; yes, if you are the typical, quick S. King-type reader, this book will overwhelm you, leading you to abandon it. Otherwise, stand by for an adventure from current Hollywood, back to old Hollywood, and back, again... It is worth the long trek.

Personally I am a fan of Mr. Barker for many reasons, but I am not a fan boy. I read this books years ago when it first came out and decided to read it again before writing a review.First this book is not the average thrill and kill book that people expect from a horror writer. For me this book is more about how fame, obsession and vanity are just as destructive as the sadistic pastimes of torture and murder. The writing is superb, the descriptions and imagery are vivid and evocative. Just as we have all come to expect from Mr. Barker.While the premise of Hollywood was not very appealing to me in the beginning, I did love the mentions of old Hollywood and the new twist on those stars who were taken too soon. Anyone who has watched any amount of reality TV in recent years knows that if Coldheart Canyon did exist it would be teeming with the plastic fame monsters who right now roam the streets of California looking for their next fix of stardom, drugs, sex or surgery.Also the Devil's Country/the Hunt for me was marvelous, if you have any imagination you can close your eyes and see the images for yourself. That is the one portion of the book that really sticks with me. Maybe that is also the most unnerving part of the novel. The idea that we are all trapped in a prison of our making constantly striving after that which will ultimately undo us.

I have always enjoyed Mr. Barker's writing and though Coldheart Canyon is a departure from some of his previous efforts, it is a wonderful departure! And a lovely ending with hope and peace, a rare find these days. Buy it, read it, enjoy it. And thank you Mr. Barker for all of your literary efforts, a fan. :)

Coldheart Canyon encapsulates everything that put Clive Barker on the map. It gross, vicious, sexy, horrifying and thought provoking. It sprang from his disillusionment with the movie industry. This may be his most entertaining novel.

I read this book thanks to the warning away of a commenter on Facebook! There is only one book in my life that i didn’t finish, because the content was too horrible, and it was a Clive Barker book, though i can no longer recall the title. I was much younger; my constitution for such things has toughened up over the years, so i thought what the heck?From page 1, meeting Katya and Zefer, i was hooked. This book did not disappoint. At the point when most other books would wrap it up on a neat little bow and call it done, the author kept going, driving forward to a far better end. This is one i will definitely talk again.

Coldheart Canyon looks at Hollywood circa 1920s and "present" 1990s. It shows how much the landscape has changed in that time and how little the people have changed. The descriptions are lush, erotic and terrifying all at the same time, especially of course when we are dealing with the fantastical monsters of Barker's imagination, spawned by The Devil's Country.What Barker does in this book is pretty extraordinary. He juxtaposes the fictional world of Hollywood (which people believe is real) with the nightmarish reality of Coldheart Canyon (which people believe is fiction). He describes vacuous stars and entitled movie producers with a mischievous venom that suggests he has met many of these people.There is a huge amount of dropping of famous names, although Todd Pickett the main male character is perhaps by necessity a fiction, as I imagine is the boarish movie producer who meets a violent but poetic end.

Ya había leído algo de Clive Barker. Es difícil encontrarlo en español, así que menos mal que me arreglo bien leyendo en inglés. Lo he disfrutado enormemente. Uno de los mejores autores en género fantástico/de terror que existe. Me encanta como le puede dar la vuelta a los temas y la gran imaginación que tiene.

Maybe folks with a greater tolerance for buckets of explicit and diverse sex would be fine with this book, but, lord, there's just so MUCH of it.I almost never close a book without finishing it, but I gave up about half-way through. In addition to the above, I found the characters unrealistic and inconsistent in their ... characteristics, and generally unsympathetic--pretty much all of them. Except Brewster--and he died really early on.I don't think I've ever rated a book as low as this, and I suspect that lowness (?) is partly a function of my disappointment in the fact that I'd expected more, way more, from Barker.