The Damnation Game
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- Publication Date: 1985
- Written by: Clive Barker
- Page count: 379
The Damnation Game was Clive Barker's first full-length novel, releasing not long after the conclusion of his Books of Blood short story series. Seeing as how that series blew me away on my first reading, I was super excited to see what he could do with a few-hundred-page novel. What I got was a pretty solid debut novel, featuring lots of Barker's trademark bloodshed and sexuality, but with a few rough spots that could be ironed out.
The book concerns a man named Marty Strauss who is serving a prison sentence for gambling and various other crimes. He is eventually selected to be the bodyguard for Joseph Whitehead, an extremely wealthy businessman who has a very odd past. He built his wealth by making a deal over a card game with a supernatural man / demon named Mamoulian, and after several decades, this demon has come back to collect on his debts. One thing that I enjoy about this novel is its pacing and the way that the story slowly unfolds piece by piece. We mostly follow Marty as he begins to unravel Whitehead's past and gradually gets involved with the mysterious upper class. The book can seem a little slow at first, but once it hits about the halfway point, the horror hits full-steam. The first half of the book shows that the seemingly affluent and classy are just as deviant and corrupt as the rest of us, and the second half of the book is the Books of Blood-esque violent romp of demonkind coming to wipe away something they created. If you like stories of rich assholes getting what they deserve, you'll probably get a kick out of watching Mamoulian tearing his former apprentice down piece by piece.
Despite the fact that the horror takes a while to unfold, when it hits, it hits very well. The most memorable character to me is the villain's sidekick known commonly as the Razor-Eater. We're introduced to him as he is hanging himself to escape Mamoulian's grasp, but Mamoulian resurrects him not long after death. In life, he was already a sadistic pain-freak who liked to swallow razor blades and has his belly/groin covered in piercings, hooks, and needles. After being revived, his pain threshold is completely removed, and he spends the rest of the novel slowly decomposing. Not only is he a slowly rotting walking/talking corpse, but he's also a cannibal and sexual deviant. He's not a likeable character in the slightest, but he's another very vivid example of Barker's hybrid of taboo horror and kinky sexuality. Honestly, the idea of a revived man slowly rotting would have made a great Books of Blood story on its own.
Sadly, there are a couple of problems I have with the book, too. One is the main character of Marty Strauss. I just don't find him to be all that interesting of a lead. I see what Barker was trying to do by making him relatable to Whitehead by also being a gambler and criminal, but other than that, I don't find much else to latch on to in terms of his character. Because of this, some of the scenes of Marty by himself can drag a little bit. There's also a spot near the climax where the book reverts to exposition to tell the backstory of Whitehead and Mamoulian's history together, and I would have preferred to have an actual flashback version of those scenes. I've never been a fan of key backstories just being told as stories between characters, in a sort of "As you know" way. Those are minor nitpicks though, and they really only started to appear to me on my second or third time going through the book. On a first reading, the ride of the story will likely have you not caring about that sort of thing.
While not perfect, The Damnation Game is still a pretty strong debut novel from Barker. He finally got to spread his wings and write the full-length story that he was building to with the later Books of Blood volumes, and you can tell that he was having fun writing the demonic characters and having them cause so much chaos. Surprisingly, Barker quickly moved away from straightforward horror in his novels after this, and instead pivoted into the world of dark fantasy. That may sound disappointing at first, but if you ask me, he only got better from here!