[colubrid660]

Originally Posted by jenna26

They both have their strong points. Clive Barker is my favorite writer, I think he has often had the better imagination. And I find myself more disturbed by his writing.

Barker is gritty and raw as all hell. After reading a lot of Peter Benchley and King, I picked up "The Damnation Game", knowing that Barker was the guy behind Hellraiser. I gave it a shot. I turned out that this book was one of the most real and downright fucking gut wrenching books I have ever read. Not to gush about Barker too much, but his stories stick in your head, or at least mine. I still think about The Damnation Game, even though i read it a while ago.

But King is the best with it comes to characterization. Even when his plots are terribly derivative, his characters are amazingly real. I think he is better than a lot of people give often give him credit for.

I agree. Many writers fall somewhat short of characterization, but King never does. The same goes for Peter Straub. I am still trying to learn how they do it. By the second act of the book, you learn to love these characters, and thats a huge asset to a horror story.

He has his problems as a writer, but no author is perfect. And yes, I agree he is one of hell of a story teller. King has managed, a few times, to genuinely disturb me. IT is one of my favorite novels, and I agree with Doc Faustus, I think IT is one of the greatest horror novels written.

I disagree, but its a matter of opinion, and I respect that. I don't wanna argue to any length about it. I remember reading "It" and loving ...it. Its a great book, and I remember I was rather young and having people be like "oh wow, hes taking on It damn". It took a long time to read, but there were a lot of sections that could have been edited out to streamline the book a bit more, or maybe it could have used a bit more straight storytelling. Who knows? I personally enjoyed The Tommyknockers a bit more, although I admit that was overly long as well.

Not many books have gotten to me as much as Pet Semetary did, or as much as Apt Pupil. So I think he is a very effective horror writer, who has put out more than his share of great stories and novels, AND his share of those that just don't work.

Pet Sematary is amazing, and so is The Tommyknockers. Every writer puts out crap from time to time. I just read Floating Dragon by Peter Straub. Straub is an amazing writer. While the book wasn't crap per se, it just wasn't effective horror. I found myself plowing through it just because I was tired of reading it. I could name Stephen King books that are sub par too, namely his Castle Rock series (The Dead Zone to the Dark Half, although the Dark Half is alright). But they are never hard to read.