Weaveworld by Clive Barker

Title:  Weaveworld
Author:  Clive Barker
Pages:  584
Genre:  Fantasy / Horror
Publisher:  Poseidon, 1987
Series:  Stand Alone

Synopsis:  Here is storytelling on a grand scale — the stuff of which a classic is made. Weaveworld begins with a rug — a wondrous, magnificent rug — into which a world has been woven. It is the world of the Seerkind, a people more ancient than man, who possesses raptures — the power to make magic. In the last century they were hunted down by an unspeakable horror known as the Scourge, and, threatened with annihilation, they worked their strongest raptures to weave themselves and their culture into a rug for safekeeping. Since then, the rug has been guarded by human caretakers.

The last of the caretakers has just died.

Vying for possession of the rug is a spectrum of unforgettable characters: Suzanna, granddaughter of the last caretaker, who feels the pull of the Weaveworld long before she knows the extent of her own powers; Calhoun Mooney, a pigeon-raising clerk who finds the world he's always dreamed of in a fleeting glimpse of the rug; Immacolata, an exiled Seerkind witch intent on destroying her race even if it means calling back the Scourge; and her sidekick, Shadwell, the Salesman, who will sell the Weaveworld to the highest bidder.

In the course of the novel the rug is unwoven, and we travel deep into the glorious raptures of the Weaveworld before we witness the final, cataclysmic struggle for its possession.

Review:  This is the third time I've read this novel.  I borrowed it from the library and read it sometime in the late 1980's and was captured by the dark fantasy and hope that is this story.  I read it again about 8 years ago when I got a very good hardback edition to add to my collection and I still loved it, although not quite as much as I remembered.  I finished it again today and, while it's still one of the best dark fantasy novels out there, I think I've read it for the last time.  Some books just don't work for multiple re-reads and this is one of them, at least for me.

The magic is still there and I still want Weaveworld to be a real place, but I'm going to find a new home for this book.  However, I'm giving it the rating I would have given it the first time around, if I'd been rating books back then.  This story is well worth finding and reading, especially the first time around.

Rating:  9.5 / 10