Pinhead's march through the streets of Hell and into the Monastery of the Cenobitic Order is some fantastic stuff, with images that linger with the reader long after the cover is closed. Once the story shifts to Hell, however, it's a whole different story. It's dark and it's violent, but there are also some strong touches of humor, especially with the banter between Harry and his crew. It serves to establish Pinhead as more than just another opportunistic Cenobite answering the call of Lemarchand's box, establishes Norma Paine as a friend for whom Harry D'Amour would willingly go to Hell to save, introduces Harry to the horrors of Lemarchand's box, and introduces Pinhead to the one mortal worthy of being considered a true adversary. The first third of the novel is a contemporary horror story, full of magic, ghosts, demons, and monsters.

Gone, Barker has recaptured the power of his narrative voice, marking a return to the kind of storytelling where you're compelled to linger over every word. More than that, after the somewhat sterile novella that was Mister B. This is a book that's influenced by his entire career, seamlessly meshing the sadomasochistic brutality of The Hellbound Heart with the epic mythology of Weaveworld, while incorporating the same depth of character we found in Sacrament. If you've worried that absence may have made the heart grow softer, or that he'd have trouble getting back into the blood after so long spent in the Abarat, then fear not. The Scarlet Gospels is the dark, bloody, brutal, magnificently epic horror novel we've needed from Clive Barker for so long. Similarly, with Harry serving more as witness here than epic hero, it's simply not important for him and Pinhead to have ever met. There's no room in it for the 'other side' to tell their story. While I would have loved nothing more than to immerse myself in another Imajica-length door-stopper, I'm actually glad none of those scenes are to be found here.

There's no Joseph and the Holy Grail to be found in its pages no first encounter between Pinhead and a 12 year old Harry D'Amour and no conversation between Harry and Jesus, discussing the subject of suffering, and remarking on how Pinhead's nails are akin to his crown of thorns. That means, of course, that more than half the story has been edited out of the final text, including many of the scenes Barker himself has teased. Over the course of those 20+ years it's grown from just another short story destined for a new Books of Blood collection to a massive 232,000 word epic, before being edited back down to the 100,000 word final book. Not only is it Clive Barker's first novel for adults since 2007, it's one he's been teasing since 1993. Like many fans, I entered into The Scarlet Gospels with significant expectations.

The scarlet gospels review