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The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus

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The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus

By: Clive Barker
Narrated by: Bruce Donnelly
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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 Barker
Anthologies & Short Stories Classics Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction Adventure
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What listeners say about The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Just extremely mediocre throughout.

This is a real hard one for me as a lifelong fan of Clive Barker but I came into this hoping for another Imajica or Weaveworld, albeit condensed but instead I felt like I as listening to Neil Gaiman's retelling of Roger Rabbit.
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.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

absurdist comedy but not funny and poorly narrated

The most amateur production with no accents, intonation, or voices, any of which could have enrolled chest the thing tremendously!

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
Listener received this title free

Not for me

I must have blinked and missed the magic. Oddly, I've always had the same response to real circuses. I thought an imaginary one might carry more 'magic'. It didn't.

At a short 2.5hrs, this still felt very long.

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