The Scarlet Gospels

Like the first, this book cannot compete in any sense with the movies, but it has a great and elaborated plot, for the genre. It does not rely only on fear, it actually had a plot the author wanted to tell, adding some details of hell and the the cenobite's mythology along the way

It felt like a drag during many parts, the human's roles were pretty meaningless, the final battle was epic.

The first third or so of The Scarlet Gospels was highly focused and left me anticipating what was to come.

The rest was lightweight for a Clive Barker horror novel, especially when he has all these iconic characters (Harry D'Amour, Pinhead, Lucifer) to knock together.

I miss the older, more intense Barker.

”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