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A review by scottjp
The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker
1.0
The first thing that you should know is that this is not the epic you have been waiting for.
The story, as much as there is one: The Hell Priest (don't call him the P-name) has had enough. He wants to do his own thing, so he murders his order and cuts a swath through Hell on the way to his final destination. He wants detective Harry D'Amour to chronicle this fall and kidnaps one of his friends so that he has to follow him round.
The bulk of the novel is basically a long chase scene.
But worse than the lack of plot is the actual quality of the prose. The book starts out with a great prologue in which the Cenobite tracks down the last of a network of magicians and takes them apart in his own special way. It's a wonderful sequence, frightening and with a dark humor that doesn't detract from the horror. After that it goes straight to hell, metaphorically as well as literally. The writing, in particular the dialogue, becomes so atrocious that it feels like they dug up Richard Laymon, sat his remains down in front of a typewriter, and forced it to work without pay. But seriously, was most of this book ghost-written? That's how jarring the shift in quality and style is.
Barker has long expressed his hatred of the name "Pinhead" (and I don't blame him) but if this book was an attempt to reclaim the character, then it has failed. Being canon, it's done more to wreck his mythology than any number of bad direct-to-video movies could ever do.
The story, as much as there is one: The Hell Priest (don't call him the P-name) has had enough. He wants to do his own thing, so he murders his order and cuts a swath through Hell on the way to his final destination. He wants detective Harry D'Amour to chronicle this fall and kidnaps one of his friends so that he has to follow him round.
The bulk of the novel is basically a long chase scene.
But worse than the lack of plot is the actual quality of the prose. The book starts out with a great prologue in which the Cenobite tracks down the last of a network of magicians and takes them apart in his own special way. It's a wonderful sequence, frightening and with a dark humor that doesn't detract from the horror. After that it goes straight to hell, metaphorically as well as literally. The writing, in particular the dialogue, becomes so atrocious that it feels like they dug up Richard Laymon, sat his remains down in front of a typewriter, and forced it to work without pay. But seriously, was most of this book ghost-written? That's how jarring the shift in quality and style is.
Barker has long expressed his hatred of the name "Pinhead" (and I don't blame him) but if this book was an attempt to reclaim the character, then it has failed. Being canon, it's done more to wreck his mythology than any number of bad direct-to-video movies could ever do.