But there’s an idea about gender creeping around in the background. So, what niggled me about gender? Here’s Barker with this cool non-binary character and I’m mostly very excited and happy. Although its story is intrinsically tied to Gentle’s, Pie has its own history, its own tragedies and victories, and I think the character is well drawn. Overall, I like Pie and I cared what happened to it a lot, and for me, that’s what’s important. There’s a theme in the book that we love the people we love, not the people we ought to love, and that’s definitely true of Pie. (With the proviso that this is Barker, and you don’t read Barker if you don’t want a bit of freaky sex and psycho-sexual mess.)Īlthough Pie first appears as an assassin, it is a very gentle character-insightful, patient and wise, and devoted to Gentle for better or worse.

And, y’know, it may be problematic, and on the other hand, Pie is a gender divergent character who’s an object of desire in a cool and non-creepy way, so that’s quite nice. Pie is portrayed as exotic, and I guess that’s a little problematic (I’m writing about gender and I’ve already used the ‘p’ word *waves pompoms*), but I did overall enjoy how it was written. Only as he falls in love with Pie does Gentle begin to see Pie’s true form. Pie is a rare type of alien species who is androgynous and usually appears as whoever the beholder desires. I know people vary on how annoying they find “it” as a pronoun, and likely, if it really flips you out, this is not the book for you. Pie’s pronoun is “it” in the book, so that’s what I’m going to use. Imajica has a few queer characters, but I want to focus on Pie, because Pie is androgyne and I get very excited about the few rare non-binary characters I come across. Imajica both delighted me and annoyed me about gender, so here goes. Rather than attempt a review, which would likely be dissatisfying for such a huge and complex book, I thought I’d focus on gender, because, after leaving it to mull for a while, that’s what’s scratching at the back of my mind.

I’m hungry for horror fiction at the moment and particularly for queer horror fiction, which is why I picked up a copy. Clive Barker’s Imajica is an enormous multi-dimensional fantasy horror novel which mostly focuses on the story of three characters : Gentle, Judith and Pie ‘oh’ Pah.

Imajica by Clive Barker