SOURCE: Morrison, Michael A. “Visions of the Joyous Apocalypse.” Fantasy Review 9, no. 9 (October 1986): 19.

In the following review, Morrison asserts that the stories in The Inhuman Condition are adventurous but pale in comparison to the first Books of Blood trilogy.

The Inhuman Condition is aptly named. These five “tales of terror” from the first volume of Barker's second Books of Blood trilogy, tell of humans transformed into something more than human. It is their obsessions—sexual, religious, or intellectual—that drive Barker's protagonists to transformation, fulfillment, and doom. Although some of the characters are superficially drawn, their reactions are rarely stereotypical.

Take, for example, Jerome Tregold, the hapless test subject of an experiment in drug design that goes awry; suddenly inflamed with sexual cravings, he is compelled to a variety of vividly rendered excesses (“sex without end”) that presage the dawning of “The Age of Desire,” Like most of...