Repost of my imdb thread - Thar be some spoiler below matey's

Let me preface this by saying I haven't read Barker since he went more fantasy than horror, though I really liked his earlier stuff.

So, the epic battle of Pinhead vs Harry D'Armour...a long time in the making and touted as a story which was gonna be the final hellraiser movie.

I'll start off with saying that I was very disappointed in this, for a few reasons.

It was more fantasy than horror (apart from an amazing opening, which really is horror). It turned out to be some sort of sub par lord of the rings "adventure" through hell

Its about pinhead vs lucifer(?)...that may sound good, but I dunno, Barker delving into christian mythology just felt like a cop out IMO. I would have liked a mythology that he built absent of that...plus god seems to be not there? You can't have one without the other!

Hell is a place where a bunch of people/demons live and carry on normal-ish lives(?) But then they can get killed and die? Where to then? Why don't they just kill themselves?

The characters spouted off the worst kinda lines, and did the most unreasonable things. Oh and for the most part I didn't feel that most of them were under any sort of real threat (ie that they would make it through all this with only a few scratches) despite being in hell for a lot of the book.

Apart from some nice descriptive passages, I felt the whole book was a bit of a waste of time...almost like some fan fiction or something.

I see reviews are mixed, but a lot of "reputable" ie paid reviewers gave it good reviews, but unfortunately I wasn't in their camp.

Maybe I've gotten too far away from Barker's writing to appreciate it, or perhaps it was just the wrong genre for me or something.

Anyone else read it, thoughts?