The Scarlet Gospels
Clive Barker
St. Martin’s Press
$29.99 USD / Hardcover
Special Dust Jacket
362pp, ISBN: 978-1-250-05580-4
If you read this book you will go to Hell.
You’ll like such a damnation.
Clive Barker’s return to horror, as it’s touted, is as spectacular and intense as you’d expect, with gorgeous visions of dark corruption and bright flashes of darker salvation.
Hell’s Priest, the Cenobite, Pinhead to us yokels, is back with a vengeance, his ambitions as vaunted as anything Dante ever conceived.
Harry D’Amour is back, too, at his hellacious best, at his toughest, and at his luckiest. His struggles to confront and defeat the demons and worse that afflict him exceed anything he’s ever faced before.
Having enjoyed and admired Barker’s literary excursions away from straight horror, notably Coldheart Canyon and the Abarat sequence of books with art, I am glad to see his so-called return to horror is true-to-form and spectacular as always. A most visual writer, as his paintings attest, his work still throws off lava-bombs.
In The Scarlet Gospels, all his trademark moves are intact and lively. He’s lost no chops and gained quite a few along the way. This volume features a special dust jacket, illustrated on the inside with a Barker painting, and the layout of the book itself is evocative and sharp.
Going to Hell has never been so compelling. Vivid, lush, and intense, its pacing never stops and its scenes engulf the reader. You can’t read fast enough, yet you’re unable not to stop and admire, and imagine in detail, the visionary sights and harrowing experiences Barker offers. A couple of his characters have this dichotomy of mad rush and the urge to stop, marvel, and savor passing scenes.
Strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys Barker’s work, or for fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels, or for readers of more classical fare such as Dante. Influences, and ripples, abound. Wade in.
/ Gene Stewart
