Tesla Bombeck had many adventures in her life that were like stories. This connects people's lives and weaves them around each other. It's also about a dream world. ( )

too dull to finish ( )

Maybe I feel this way as I have not read the book that came before, but I really just couldn't get hooked to this. My mum recommended it to me and I tried my best but I have just dropped it to read the Hunger Games instead. Again, this was my first time reading anything by Clive Barker and I only learnt after I began the book that it was a sequel.

It started off slowly and I was really interested in the beginning but as it went on I lost interest. I liked the idea of Quiddity but I felt there could of been more to it before they started to destroy it and the people.

I liked Tesla a lot, but having not read The Great and Secret Show I didn't understand a whole lot of what was going on with her and her past. I enjoyed the conversations with Raul and how they had built some weird sense of friendship in the space they shared. But again, I never quite understood how he came to be there.

As for Pheobe and Joe, I cared very little for their relationship and the way it was played out in the book. I disliked Joe going to Quiddity and trying to gain power only to end up rather trapped there. He seemed to forget all about Pheobe very quickly and only seemed to remember when they met again.

As for Kissoon he seemed like a brilliant villain along with his Lix. (Those were disgusting) But I never really gained a good sense of the motives behind his actions.

Overall, I had no idea what was really going on but I carried on anyway. I suppose that is my own fault for not realising it was a sequel. Maybe one day I'll try reading The Great and Secret Show. ( )

Somehow I missed the fact that this was a sequel when I picked up this book. I only gradually picked up on that as I read, when the text kept referring to characters as if I should already be familiar with their histories and with past events. That, the large cast of characters and the disjointed nature of the writing left me confused and frustrated as I delved deeper into the book.

I must confess that I as hooked by a strong, interesting beginning, but I was quickly lost in a muddy sea of characters and events, feeling I was on the outside without some secret knowledge that would allow me to fully enjoy the book. Barker should probably have done a better job of making this a standalone novel, and the book’s cover should have done a better job of making clear that this was a sequel (in which case, I probably would never have started reading it in the first place). As it was, I was left feeling dissatisfied and like I had wasted a huge chunk of my reading time, once again convinced to remove Barker’s works from my reading list. ( )

Everville is less of a sequel to Barker's The Great And Secret Show than it is another story set in the same split-down-the-middle universe. The characters that survived the first book all make appearances, albeit in a confusingly randomized hierarchy. Tesla, the unlikely heroine is now the protagonist, while her partner Grillo and star-crossed lovers Howie and Jo-Beth are relegated to near walk-ons. This time, the dream-sea of Quiddity is not the destination, but a central scene, as new characters Phoebe and Joe criss-cross the dimensonal rift to find each other.Meanwhile, in the titular town, Owen Buddenbaum and Secret Show's Kissoon butt heads in pursuit of an icon buried underneath Everville's crossroads, where its been soaking up power like a ni-cad battery. Along the way, small-town secrets come to the fore, blood is squirted, guts flung about, and general hijinks ensue.The problem with most of Clive Barker's books is that they're too verbose; he could give Tad Williams a run for his money. One thinks that if Barker was a robot or didn't have to eat or sleep, his stories could potentially go on forever. As it is, Everville is resolved quite abruptly, as if Barker realized that he had gone about a hundred pages too far and decided to wrap things up before the reader got bored. ( )