The Scarlet Gospels - Traverse Hell in This Continuation of The Hellbound Heart
I adored reading "The Great and Secret Show" by Clive Barker, and "The Hellbound Heart" with its Cenobites was enthralling (the movies really 'fleshed' it out too, if you get my drift). With this in mind, I picked up this hardcover to see what was to become of Pinhead and Harry D'Amour.
The friendship between the characters, and the interesting Hellscape they traversed drew me in rigorously. I could vividly imagine what they were seeing, the demons they witnessed, especially Quo'oto, which is probably one of the scariest images I've conjured through reading in a while. Really neat stuff. It was also interesting to witness the humanity of the Cenobite, Pinhead, although I'm not sure if I actually liked that or not.
The downsides of the book are that this is far less brutal than other books by Clive Barker. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of cold, steel brutality of the Cenobites (and all the evil beings in this story). The presence of those mannerisms had taken my breath away in other stories by Barker, so it was missed.
This read is not as lengthy as many other works by Clive Barker. The chapters are short and sweet. The story has an easiness to it that is on the lighter side, but it will give you a taste of what Hell might be like, should you wish to explore it.
