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The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker. Possibly the most disappointing book I have ever read cover to cover. Jarring genre shift from Hellbound Heart—going from straight up horror to goofy dark fantasy—and it really, truly, feels phoned in.

Barker's capable of so much more. Hope he's doing alright. Most reviews I've seen have been positive, so maybe I'm just not the audience for this novel.

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I finished it a couple of weeks ago. I bought it even though I was afraid it would be rather cheesy and it turned out to be much worse. I don't know what I disliked more, the characters for whom "flat" is by far not the appropriate term, the dialogue which reads as if a 16-year-old lacking any imagination attempted to write hardboilded fiction or the total absence of artistic (and linguistic) vision when the trip through hell is described (which feels as if you are playing a shooter in God mode). Seriously, I'm wondering what happened to Clive Barker. :o

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Just finished Scarlet Gospels. I agree with the previous posters ...

Wow! What a dud! I had high expectations, but even with low expectations, those would have still been too high. What a disappointment. This wouldn't even have made a good episode of Law & Order. Boo!

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Finishing GBH by Ted Lewis. Read this on a recommendation from a friend. I didn't have high hopes but boy was I wrong! Great dark and gloomy British crime novel.

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I need to get this novel, as I watched the film on YouTube recently. (Don't bother looking for it. It's been removed.)

At present I'm reading Across the Nightingale Floor by Liam Hearn. It has the magical readability of a child's fairy story, while being anything but that. I did wonder if Liam Hearn was descended from Lafcadio Hearn - but it's actually the pseudonym of Gillian Rubinstein. Reading an interview on the Liam Hearn site I found a reference to Kaneto Shindo's The Black Cats from the Grove which I must track down, as I love Asian cinema and that director's work... regrettably I can't say I know enough of it or the culture to write knowledgeably about either. But it does fascinate.

Apologies for wandering far off topic and not realizing how long this thread was. Unfortunately I doubt if any of the books I've finished recently would be of much interest here, as they've been mostly by Leslie Charteris and Edgar Wallace... even if I did find myself re-evaluating those authors.

These two books are also curiously intriguing, for some reason.

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Star Maker by William Olaf Stapledon. My gawd! what a book! It must be the most tremendous book ever written and rivals Lovecraft, Hodgson, and Smith in its cosmic imagination, scope, and vision (albeit without the soul-destroying terrors). Its closest analogue, in fusing persistent philosophy with interplanetary adventure, would be A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, but on a much more grander scale. I have not read Stapledon's Laft and First Men, which is roughly similar to Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time.

http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328048540l/525304.jpg

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I read Star Maker a couple of years ago, recall enjoying it very much. That's a cooler-looking cover than the edition that I read.

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I have that version too but haven't read it yet.

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Eyes Of The Overworld (2/4 in Dying Earth sequence) by Jack Vance.

This is a huge improvement over the previous book, a better adventure and so much more happens.
It's not a continuation although one character from Dying Earth is mentioned a few times. Eyes Of The Overworld has humour as a major component whereas Dying Earth only had several funny moments. Dying Earth was partially linked short stories about different characters but this is just one long story following one man.

Cugel The Clever seems to me a clear replacement for Liane The Wayfarer (easily the most fun character in the previous book); initially I thought Cugel was an anti-hero but he's every bit the horrible villain Liane was; I was genuinely shocked at how nasty Cugel could be, especially when he murders someone for a harmless prank, and shows he's probably not above sexual harassment.
The main pleasure of the book for me was the showy conversations (it's hard not to want to talk like this and start referring to food as "viands") and Cugel's hilariously pompous indignation and claims to innocence when he is accused of crimes he has actually committed. He wrongs so many people in a spectacular fashion.

A couple of problems though:
(1) The scene in which Voynod assumes Cugel killed one of the pilgrims made no sense, and then immediately after Cugel unconvincingly succeeds in lying to Voynod that the salve he is trading is magic. It's a weak setup for later scenes to happen.
(2) Vance is well known for his impressive visual descriptions (particularly good at countryside and skies) but just like in the previous book, I found a lot of the descriptions confusing, awkward or ill fitting.
When the disembodied legs that support Derwe Coreme's boat are first mentioned, there is no mention of their arms, but when the arms grab at people they are jarringly introduced as if we already knew about them.
Cugel's rope climb down from the huge pillar was seemingly impossible to visualise correctly from the text.
Many of the clothes, furnishings, creatures and various other things are described in a frustratingly plain or unsatisfying manner when compared to the often lovely settings, sights and generally extravagant manner of the story. This is my biggest complaint.

But I generally had a good time with this book and the strengths outweigh my disappointments.

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The Room Beyond by Ramsey Campbell. I purchased Holes for Faces and that story is the first and only one I've read so far. Just from that short story alone, I think Campbell's stature is unquestionably justified.