Coldheart Canyon

I am feeling impatient for my potato water to cool so I can mix the sponge for Rusleipa, Finnish sour potato rye bread.  Experimenting with sourdough starter is starting to pay off, but I haven't mastered reading the recipes ahead of time to be able to plan for 12-20 hour sponges.

So instead, it gives me time to discuss Clive Barker's novel, Coldheart Canyon.  I was hoping to read something I'd heard

of by him, but this was the one available at the library, so I gave it a try.

Coldheart Canyon turned out to be very readable, though a real mishmash of a Hollywood satire, a horror novel, and erotica.  The different genres weren't blended so much as arranged like a collage, one, then another, then back to that, then that. 

The characters were pretty strong, even the villains, which made this work.  It also worked against falling into genre cliches.  The cheesy erotica parts were a little too horrific, and the horror a little to funny, or sexy, and the bits of satire added a nice edge.

It's ostensibly a ghost story- fading Hollywood it boy hides out in an old mansion and gets drawn into congress with the undead.  But ghosts, the Devil, his goat-boy son, and monstrous animal-human hybrids, plus some magic spells, make for a grabbag of horror tropes.  Hard to say more without giving too much away...

The ending kind of dragged on, much like Salem's Lot, but this paid off a little.better in the Barker novel.  I will definitely have to check out some of his other titles, while I'm on a horror kick.