If you’ve never read the novella, fearful that it is just a retread of previous material, then have no fear. The story should be familiar if you’ve seen Barker’s film Hellraiser, but that’s where the familiarity ends. The Hellbound Heart deals with the results of singular plot, and sees it through to its bloody conclusion. It is a long novella, structured as a novel, with chapters and sections within the chapters, but it is not a short novel, that distinction typically reserved for more complex stories with concrete subplots. The Hellbound Heart, for the uninitiated, is a novella by Clive Barker, concerning one Frank Cotton and his search for eternal pleasure. Mistakenly, I figured the Clive Barker story at the end was just some quick novelisation of his movie Hellraiser. Tuttle was new to me, but I found her stories vibrant and refreshing, though a little ‘quiet’ for my tastes. At that time, Barker’s Books of Blood had already consumed my soul, while Weaveworld hit my mind like a battering ram. The collection featured Campbell, Lisa Tuttle, and Clive Barker. Having discovered Ramsey Campbell a few years prior, I was hunting collections of his short stories and hit the jackpot with this paperback. In 1989, I managed to find a rare paperback of Night Visions: The Hellbound Heart (originally published as Night Visions III: Dark Harvest), edited by George R.R.
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