Robin Marx reviewed The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker
Review of 'The scarlet gospels' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
While this book was a page-turner and a nice return to form for Clive Barker, it’s a little light on plot and characterization.
The story brings together Barker’s occult detective character Harry D’Amour (probably most famous in his film incarnation, played by Scott Bakula in Lord of Illusions) and the demonic Hell Priest Pinhead, who was briefly introduced in the novella The Hellbound Heart and made famous in the Hellraiser movies. More interested in the human world than his colleagues, Pinhead arranges things so that Harry has no choice but to serve as Pinhead’s “witness” as the Cenobite enacts his master plan for Hell.
It was a bit of a disappointment seeing Pinhead reduced to a demon of middling influence in the Judeo-Christian Hell rather than a more dominating figure from the more enigmatic realm in the original novella and films. That being said, Pinhead is every bit as imposing …
While this book was a page-turner and a nice return to form for Clive Barker, it’s a little light on plot and characterization.
The story brings together Barker’s occult detective character Harry D’Amour (probably most famous in his film incarnation, played by Scott Bakula in Lord of Illusions) and the demonic Hell Priest Pinhead, who was briefly introduced in the novella The Hellbound Heart and made famous in the Hellraiser movies. More interested in the human world than his colleagues, Pinhead arranges things so that Harry has no choice but to serve as Pinhead’s “witness” as the Cenobite enacts his master plan for Hell.
It was a bit of a disappointment seeing Pinhead reduced to a demon of middling influence in the Judeo-Christian Hell rather than a more dominating figure from the more enigmatic realm in the original novella and films. That being said, Pinhead is every bit as imposing as fans of the character would hope. The geography and politics of Hell are also intriguing and mysterious, if a bit under-explained.
It was nice seeing Harry again, but the friends that join him on his journey into the underworld could have been fleshed out a bit more. Their banter and flirtations could’ve had a bit more weight if they had a bit more development beyond “tall gay tattoo artist,” “heavily tattooed aggressive woman,” etc.
I enjoyed Barker’s gruesome prose. A lot of his more recent work has been in the Young Adult genre or straying towards lightly supernatural lit flick, but there’s plenty of old-fashioned Barker blood-letting in this story. There’s also a lot of beautiful and evocative scenes, another Barker specialty.
This book could have been much more—apparently the manuscript was edited down quite a bit—but it was still nice glimpsing Barker returning to his beloved characters.
