cover image Clive Barker’s Next Testament

Clive Barker’s Next Testament

Mark Alan Miller. Earthling, $45 (332p) ISBN 978-0-9962118-2-6

Apocalyptic mayhem runs riot in this novel-length elaboration of a comic book series scripted by Miller and horror legend Clive Barker. Events are set in motion when explorer Julian Demond, under the influence of dreams that have long troubled him, stumbles upon a pyramid in a nameless desert land and liberates from it a being who calls himself Wick. Wick claims to be the biblical God, and he expresses his wrathful Old Testament temperament by slaughtering a dinner party, destroying Hollywood, and obliterating the American Midwest, all steps on a road to bringing back the bad old ways of the world. Meanwhile, Julian’s son, Tristan, and Tristan’s fiancée, Elspeth, travel across an increasingly unstable America landscape to Providence, R.I., seeking information in an old library that will help them put an end to Wick. The story is enlivened by spectacular scenes of carnage and destruction, but it’s thin on plot and character development. Its two-dimensionality makes plain how difficult it is to novelize a story designed for a graphic medium. (Apr.)