The Scarlet Gospels - Clive Barker's sequel to the Hellbound Heart

The Scarlet Gospels: Clive Barker: 9781250055804: Amazon.com: Books

For quite a few years now I've been awaiting the release of the Scarlet Gospels as it was to feature detective Harry D'Amour versus Pinhead with a bunch of time devoted to the cenobites and their order and Hell itself. I like the Hellbound Heart a great deal along with some of the Hellraiser films (the first two primarily). There are quite a few surprisingly decent comics as well. The book is really a sequel to the first movie (and only the first movie) rather than being a sequel to the novella which is odd.

I'm at the last 10% and the thing is just terrible. It's like if someone who was pretending they were Joss Whedon wrote a porn parody of the Dresden Files and set it in New York. The dialogue isawful.You know that scene in Ocean's Thirteen where Terry Benedict tells Danny Ocean he was "born ready" and Danny rolls his eyes?


The whole thing is filled with lines equally eye-roll worthy but all played straight. Much of what is supposed to be disturbing sexual imagery just isn't anymore. I'm sure bondage, water sports, and horse tail butt plugs were serious business 30 yeas ago but now that's all shit you laugh at as you mouse past. Tons of characters are gay in an obnoxious and faggy "I talk about cocks a lot" kind of way that is damn near caricature. When it's just Pinhead doing stuff in Hell it's pretty decent. He has to become very, very stupid at one point for the rest of the plot to work which is a shame.

If you've read many or all of the Dresden Files it's going to be goddamn distracting having a detective named Harry tackle supernatural opponents. Fortunately Harry Dresden never had to spit in a demon's hand so the demon could use it as lube as he masturbated while torching Harry's partner.

Very disappointing to have seen others do better with the source material than the creator himself. In the urban fantasy genre Clive Barker comes off like a rank amateur.

I've only read some of his Books of Blood and The Thief of Always which I really liked. I've heard really good things about the Great and Secret Show though.

I finished it and about 1/4th of the book, the parts that deal with Hell that also do not have Harry D'Armour saying anything or doing anything, are very good. It's a compelling vision of Hell.

But everything else is just a fucking slog to get through. At the conclusion of the adventure our heroes come across a fundamentalist preacher just so the squad of very, very gay characters can be all snarky about what they've been through. It's awful hack writing and the thing is full of it from start to finish.