A review by rachelbohlen
The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker

4.0

How do I even begin to review this book? If you're thinking about reading The Scarlet Gospels, you're probably already a Clive Barker fan. If you're not, run, don't walk, to Wikipedia to get an idea of what you're in for. If you've read Barker before, you know what to expect: gore, gore, violence, scary scenes that you can't read before bed, alternate universes, and delightfully horrific characters. I can promise you that all of that is here. The Scarlet Gospels follows the return of two of Barker's iconic characters: Pinhead (but please don't call him that to his face) and Harry D'Amour. What follows is an adventure into and through Hell. If you're a fan of Barker's other works, you will enjoy this novel. The reason why I give this 4 stars instead of 5 is because I think that exploring too much of Pinhead's background takes away some of the horror from his character. The scariest thing is always the unknown, and a huge part of the appeal of his initial appearance in Hellbound Heart is that we DON'T know details about him--just that he's a crazy demon who likes to torture people. For me, this book "humanized" Pinhead in a way that I didn't really want. That being said, the book was still fantastic, and I think it's a must-read for fans of horror.