Did you ever get the feeling that there is something other than what seems "real"? A vague feeling of undercurrents in everyday life? That something lies beneath the surface, and yet cannot be seen, heard or touched? What if that something is a source of unimaginable power and yet we cannot know of its existence?
The real scary part — what if by being at a particular point in time or place you chance upon the existence of this seemingly endless source of power and worse, misery?
Clive Barker is a master of horror. He can weave stories around you while you are busy concentrating on something else — concentrating on something as dull as a post office clerk working in the middle of nowhere. Nowhere becomes somewhere for Randolph Jaffe the aforementioned post-office clerk. He becomes aware of something called "the art" which can help him gain access to a mystical sea known as "quiddity". To gain access to this source of supposedly infinite power, he calls upon Richard Fletcher to help him. Fletcher, through scientific (or other) means, is able to find a way through to the "art".
Here begins a battle for control of the art — a battle that calls upon huge resources of power and energy from Jaffe on the one side and Fletcher on the other...a classic good vs evil battle.
But, is that what this book is all about? Does it come down to that overabused concept of good vs evil? 
The answer: doesn't everything come down to that quintessential question? Choices must be made in life and sometimes those choices are black and white. What you choose defines you and if you are the source of great power, then it probably defines an entire generation, if not more. Barker is able to conjure up these ideas by having his chief characters fight it out over various realms of the real and unreal. But his genius is the fact that he doesn't leave the storyline at such a simplification.
Four teenage girls frolicking in a countryside are raped by the "spirits" of both Jaffe and Fletcher — to impregnate them so that their progeny can continue the battle. Yes, that's correct — both of them fall to the level of raping the young girls. Here's where the gray comes into the battle. No one side is "pure" anymore. They are both willing to do whatever it takes to win. Does the end justify the means? That is what both sides seem to believe in this tale...
Article comments
1 - Wilson Knut
I read the book when it came out ages ago. I'll have to check out the graphic novel.