general

Very highly recommended... but be certain all your lights are on when you open this beautiful but disturbing book.

Although Barlowe's searing INFERNO imagery is rendered in a somewhat less photographic, more "painterly" style than his earlier books I have, it's dead-on target for depicting this eternally skin-crawling, hyper-grotesque netherworld. Helpfully described by a sort of narrative text, the twisted inhabitants of Barlowe's raging nightmarescapes purposefully go about their unending torments with skull-shredding focus: their horrors make bizarre sense.

I first went through this visually and spiritually cacophonous, masterful work on Christmas day. What contrast: listening to carols about angels from Heaven, while staring at demon-shrieking souls in Hell.

Final note; don't miss the deliciously caustic JUSTITIA OMNIBUS at the bottom of page 2.

Barlowe seems to have drawn his visions of hell directly from some deep, primordial ancient memory within us. His illustrations are haunting beyond measure, and seem to resonate with a subconcious picture of what many of us must think the hell of religion and legend must be like. His illustration style departs from his work on Expedition and his other earlier work. His style in Inferno has an ephemeral quality, leaving the distinct impression that there is still something just beyond the edge of perception, beyond the ink on the page. The text makes a perfect accompaniment, providing palpable texture to this world of Barlowe's. As dark as the subject matter is, this is a beautiful book and should definitely be in your libary.

The book was not as good as I thought it was going to be. When I read certain passages of it at the bookstore I thought it was going to be a fictional narrative of a doomed person's experience in Hell. Instead it was more of an artists explanation about his paintings. The book still drew me in and made me think and feel about what Hell might be like. For this reason, the books ability to make me seriously think about Hell in a literal sense, I will give it four stars.