Marley

”Demons to some, angels to others” isn't true anymore, the Priest (“Pinhead”) is just straight up looking to take over the world and hell itself. The random mentions and descriptions of various creatures' genitals just felt out of place and in most cases entirely irrelevant to the scene. Barker's worldbuilding is still top notch, thankfully, and the main characters are well written and fleshed out (pun intended). I guess I just expected more ambiguity regarding the Priest

The villain character is empty, boring, just exists because the story needed a villain. He's just a gross despicable dude I absolutely DREADED having to go back to after spending some time with the “good guys”. The villain literally only exists in conflict scenes. He has zero background or personality.

I do enjoy Dan Brown's writing, which I know is a bit of a faux-pas in the reading community, at least the ones I've been involved in. It's just one of those authors I can just sit down with, turn some of my brain off, and just enjoy an adventure with some mysticism sprinkled in.  ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Dan Brown found a formula, and reuses it ad infinitum, and honestly? I don't mind that. I have ADHD, some reliability here and there is nice ;)