09/12/2008
DAVID NIALL WILSON on Barker's new book:
Maximillian Bacchus is the ringmaster, ruler, guide and owner of what he
considers the greatest show in the world. Traveling with a Crocodile
named Malachi, a trapeze girl named Ophelia, a strong man they call
Hero, which is short for Hieronymus a clown named Domingo de Ybarrondo,
who paints in a wagon pulled by a giant “Ibis bird,” the troupe wanders
from adventure to adventure with mythic aplomb.
From the first story, in which Indigo Murphy, the best bird handler in
the world leaves the show to join in matrimony with the Duke Lorenzo de
Medici, to the fabled court of Kubla Khan, the magic never stops. You
will meet a young apple thief named Angelo with magic eyes, and an
orang-outang named Bathsheba, and a host of other amazing characters
with names and personas cut like a patchwork quilt from the mythologies
and dreams of the world.
Though written forty years ago, these pages are littered with the same
magical side steps that have always been woven into Clive Barker’s
fiction. Worlds not quit our own, and yet so real they ring with truth
and leave you wishing you could step from your mundane life into that
other place – into those caves of ice – if only long enough to catch
Maximillian’s show.
