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Summary: Good God!
Review: All I'll say is this: Barlowe's Inferno literally kept me from falling asleep and consequently gave me nightmares. If this appeals to you, then stick this bad boy in your shopping cart. You will be disturbed and awed.
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Summary: Astounding visions of hell
Review: Barlowe is an artist and a genius. This book is brilliant and original, especially for a book about one of the oldest subjects in the world.
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Summary: A great addition to your library
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A great addition to your library
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Barlowe's Inferno is an incredibly unsettling journey.
Review: Barlowe's Inferno is an unsettling journey into the unknown. A fantastic concept brilliantly executed by a phenomenal artist. The text which precedes each painting is also very well done. My only complaint is that the book could have been a bit longer.
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Summary: Beautifully frightening & effective!
Review: Being a fan of Mr.Barlowe's fantastic work in the past, especially his 1990 book "Expedition : the A.D. 2358 Voyage to Darwin IV", I believe this one is a stunner! He has broken his own mold by departing the worlds of dinosaurs and science fiction by entering the dark realms of horror. His narrative and artwork were so effective that I felt I was there beside him, to the point of being nauseated and frightened by the images he evoked within my psyche. I recommend it highly, although it's best read when all the lights are turned on inside the house.
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Summary: A visually arresting, if VERY brief, "natural history"
Review: Bottom line: if you like jarring images for your jaded visual palate or as Robert Williams put it, are a "retinal fiend", then buy this and buy it now! But beware, it is not the usual eye candy. You have to like your candy made of habanero peppers, gravel and meat by-products.There is very much that is odd about this book. It's certainly a coffee table book but only a deranged, militant bishop would leave it out on the coffee table. It is not a guide, neither field nor travel, nor is it a photo-journal of a trip as, with only 22 full color paintings and 6 sketches, it would be a woefully incomplete one. Yet, at times, one is left with the feeling that Barlowe is on the verge of a new form of story telling, i.e., using a series of almost disconnected images to force the reader thru a series of emotions and conclusions leading to an inescabable denouement. The artwork, while visually stunning, has its oddities also. It owes nothing to Dore, Bruegel or Bosch and in this Barlowe succeeds in the almost impossible task of creating something "completely new" in his re-fitting of Hell. His handling, always meticulous, has become a vituoso display of textures and gone, generally and thankfully, are the sharp linear highlights and brushwork of his earlier works. The images presented are neither hermetic nor hieratic and very approachable in symbolic content. While somewhat more impressionist than realist, the paintings range from landscapes to portraits. Yet, they are curiously without sympathy--the artist is moved to awe by the atmosphere of Hell but conveys little pity for its inhabitants. In this, he matches Dante, but oddly again, gone is the divine logic of Dante's punishments. Barlowe's punishments are capricious and illogical. In fact, there seems to be a glaring logical flaw (something like the Daggerwrists in Expedition: how can the population be stable if the parent has to die in the birthing?). Unlike in Dante (and Niven and Pournelle's derivative re-telling) souls can be utterly, permanently torn apart or altered (morphed) until they are either laying about the landscape or are part of it. It seems like they can become so diffuse one wonders how there is anything left to suffer pain. Finally, in the most inventive part of the book lays its most dissatisfying aspect. Barlowe begins to outline a logical ecology for Hell that uses souls as raw material, yet never completes it.
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Summary: The best!!
Review: Depicting an artist's descent in to hell, Barlowe's Inferno is a richly stunning masterpiece. This hell is not a simple pit of torment, not limited to one religions preconcieved notions, and definitely not a place you would want to be. Everything about it screams of human suffering as the souls of the damned are cruely ground down in to the very stuff hell is made of. One of the other reviewers mentions that the depictions lack sympathy for the souls of the damned, but indeed how can you have sympathy for the souls able to wonder when every brick of the behemoth structures surrounding them is itself a soul, when the very dirt is constructed of souls so old and torn they have become agonized fragments of dust. From the Demons Major and Minor with their regal stances and manor bearing witness to their once grace filled state, to the lesser demons completely alien and yet frighteningly recognizable, to the bricks that stare at you with their sorrowful imprisoned eyes, this book is simply captivating.
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Summary: A thoroughly believable, beautiful hell
Review: Depicting an artist's descent in to hell, Barlowe's Inferno is a richly stunning masterpiece. This hell is not a simple pit of torment, not limited to one religions preconcieved notions, and definitely not a place you would want to be. Everything about it screams of human suffering as the souls of the damned are cruely ground down in to the very stuff hell is made of. One of the other reviewers mentions that the depictions lack sympathy for the souls of the damned, but indeed how can you have sympathy for the souls able to wonder when every brick of the behemoth structures surrounding them is itself a soul, when the very dirt is constructed of souls so old and torn they have become agonized fragments of dust. From the Demons Major and Minor with their regal stances and manor bearing witness to their once grace filled state, to the lesser demons completely alien and yet frighteningly recognizable, to the bricks that stare at you with their sorrowful imprisoned eyes, this book is simply captivating.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: Having read Dante's Inferno, a visual description is hard to render. Mr. Barlowe has done just that. He has painted the hard to desribe. One look through this book and you will be "disturbed." Mr. Barlowe has taken the ideas of different religions and beliefs in rendering his "Inferno." Having caught a "glimpse" of what awaits those that do wrong in the afterlife, one sees the visual deterent to doing wrong. This book is a must see.
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