Customer Reviews

Brushfire: Illuminations From the Inferno

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First off, Barlowe is an amazingly talented artist, and anything he does is worth owning.
Second, this book is an excellent continuation of "Inferno". If you do not own "Inferno", this can be read alone. However, the two are part of the same vision of Hell.
Third, while this book has slightly less content than "Inferno", it's still excellent. The artwork is inspired and haunting. The demons have an organic feel that makes them look real. They also have the remnants of their angelic heritage. Whereas "Inferno" is Barlowe's travels through Hell, focusing on people, places, and "beings", this book focuses on beings in the hierarchy of Hell, from officers to demons to fallen souls.

As my first thought, the point of view of Brushfire was much different from that of Inferno. This time it is written as if Barlowe were actually in Hell while painting his various subjects. Although this can be interesting, the perspective sometimes leaves out alot of information about the demons major and minor, focusing more on what he was thinking and what was happening around him at the time he was painting.
Brushfire mananages to have very visually rewarding illustrations. Pictures of "posing subjects" tend to be more photographic, while pictures outdoors are usually more like the ones from Inferno. However, I feel it could have incorporated more of the titanic scale so ubiquitous in Inferno. This effect gives Barlowe's Hell a very supernatural feel, one that separates his vision from that of other's.
As a humorous ending note, there is a little "insider joke" in the book. One of the pictures is of Morphaiis, a demon that Barlowe befriends on his visit to Hell. What makes it funny is that the painting is of James Cowan, Barlowe's friend and book publisher (who just happens to work for Morpheus International.

And that's not a bad thing, in the least. Some of the images simply took my breath away, more so than those in Inferno. Hannibal and his army of souls still has be picking up the book just to see it again. The text that accompanies the artwork is nice as well. It answers some questions that Inferno left us with and gives more of the lush inferno of hell while expanding it with the sketchily outlined events of a rebellion and war. While I believe this book could stand on it's own, it truly seems to shine as a companion to inferno. Indeed, inferno itself seems much more coherent after having read/viewed Brushfire.