Book Review: Tortured Souls - The Legend of Primordium

On July 2001, McFarlane Toys released six action figures designed by English writer Clive Barker. Each toy was packaged along with a chapter of a novelette penned by Barker himself, detailing the character’s history and the world that they live in. This series of action figures was known as Tortured Souls and sought to convey what Barker described as ‘the use of flesh as canvas.’ The chapters would then be bundled together in a book titled Tortured Souls: The Legend of Primordium . Primordium is a city that is said to have existed before all other cities. It is a place of corruption and decadence, a place where the rich and powerful indulge in all manners of sins. An assassin named Kreiger kills a Senator on behalf of the criminal Duraf Cascarellian. However, Kreiger ends up running into the dead Senator’s daughter, Lucidique, who persuades him to try to strike back at the Empire that made his life so miserable. To do this, she leads him to the enigmatic Agonistes, an entity ru...