I've read these many moons ago, and remember liking them very much. What Barker does with them is to take many well known horror tropes - the Golem, the Vampire, Frankenstein's monster, the Doppelganger, etc. - and rework them.
A number of them have spawned films, with The Forbidden becoming Candyman, The Last Illusion becoming Lord Of Illusions, and films called The Book Of Blood and The Midnight Meat Train also released, or in production, they are certainly proving fertile enough stories to cross media platforms. The Body Politic, mentioned above, has also been filmed, appearing as one part of Quicksilver Highway, the other story in that being an adaptation of Stephen King's Chattery Teeth from his Nightmares And Dreamscapes collection. I have a hazy memory of seeing Rawhead Rex, too, when I was very young.
In fact, I've also seen The Books Of Blood done as a play, which Barker himself flew in to Glasgow to see. This was back in 1999 when The Essential Cliver Barker was doing the rounds. In the play two stories were adapted: The Body Politic, again, and Jacqueline Ess: Her Will And Testament - not exactly two stories you could imagine done on stage, but both were done very well. That night, on talking about Thomas Harris' Hannibal he joked that Harris had ripped off one of his stories from the collection (Pig Blood Blues) for his book.
When I discovered Barker, The Books Of Blood was a breath of fresh air to all the horror I'd been reading. Notable stories for me are, once more, The Body Politic, Sex Death And Starshine, Jacqueline Ess; Her Will And Testament. There's probably a lot more (Down, Satan!I remember being the shortest story at about five pages, where the rest are about thirty to forty pages.). There's also a story in the first volume that is more comedy than horror too, The Yattering And Jack, but no less enjoyable.
