The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus
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3 months free
The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus
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Narrated by:
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Bruce Donnelly
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By:
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Clive Barker
About this listen
Maximillian Bacchus is the ringmaster, ruler, guide, and owner of what he considers the greatest show in the world. Traveling with a crocodile named Malachi, a trapeze girl named Ophelia, a strongman they call Hero (which is short for Hieronymus), and a clown named Domingo de Ybarrondo, who paints in a wagon pulled by a giant ibis bird, the troupe wanders from adventure to adventure with mythic aplomb.
From the first story, in which Indigo Murphy, the best bird handler in the world, leaves the show to join in matrimony with the Duke Lorenzo de Medici, to the fabled court of Kubla Khan, the magic never stops. You will meet a young apple thief named Angelo with magic eyes, an orangutan named Bathsheba, and a host of other amazing characters with names and personas cut like a patchwork quilt from the mythologies and dreams of the world.
Though written 40 years ago, these stories are full of the same magical side steps that have always been woven into Clive Barker's fiction. These are worlds not quit our own, and yet so real they ring with truth and leave you wishing you could step from your mundane life into that other place - into those caves of ice - if only long enough to catch Maximillian's show.
©2009 Clive Barker (P)2011 Clive BarkerListeners also enjoyed...
Listener received this title free
That aside, the story pales in comparison to Barker's other tales and feels more like a cosy throwaway fairy tale rather than the work of one of modern fiction's darkest imaginations. At times it felt like he wanted to make it darker but always shied away from it and we end up with a forgettable Just-So like adventure of a circus.
A mediocre tale awfully narrated
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The stories I feel are very much a product of their time and maybe I'm being unduly critical but I just felt the stories to be more of a Aesop's Fables than a work of the titanic mind that created Weaveworld or the dark one that gave us Cabal.
Coupled this with a narrator who is perfectly good but unsuited to the book I was more than happy to reach the end and I certainly won't be revisiting this one.
Just extremely mediocre throughout.
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absurdist comedy but not funny and poorly narrated
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Listener received this title free
At a short 2.5hrs, this still felt very long.
Not for me
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