• Tag Archives Caitlín R. Kiernan

  • Relatively Recent Books

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    Been procrastinating with adding these because it’s a pain. May as well get it over with now:

    • Sealed with a Curse (Cecy Robson) – Real bad. Basically all the worst Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance tropes/stereotypes mashed together. One of the characters having a surfer-dude accent for whateverthehell reason just made it all the more aggravating.
    • Allegiant (Veronica Roth) – Honestly, it’s been so long since I read this that my only recollection is liking how Tris’ story turned out while disliking the somewhat circular nature of the plot developments.
    • The Razorland Trilogy (Ann Aguirre) – The first book starts out good but seems to lose its way toward the end when the protagonists start picking up party members like a RPG. The second shifts between being interesting and being annoying (the latter mostly caused by the whole gender roles focus), and the third is readable enough even though it wraps everything up a little too neatly.
    • Red Delicious (Caitlín R. Kiernan) – Usually when people dislike something, they’ll just make a blog/forum post about it. Kiernan (as Kathleen Tierney) goes the extra mile and writes a book about it. This reads like an open letter regarding all the sorts of books/genres and literary criticisms she hates and frankly just comes across as rather sad posturing.
    • Wild Justice (Kelley Armstrong) – Fairly interesting continuation of the Nadia Stafford series that focuses on both Nadia’s past and her current relationship with Jack. There are a few things off about the ending stretch that sort of dull its sheen though.
    • The Undead Pool (Kim Harrison) – A more or less solid continuation of the series focused on vampires, elves, and Trent/Rachel’s relationship.

    Related posts:

    1. Books; Before and After First the before, which was three books read back in...
    2. Recent Books Normally I do these three at a time… but, well…...
    3. Indexing, Skin Game, & Some Other Books May as well get these out of the way while...
    4. Blood Heir & So I’m a Spider, So What? #12 I actually read Ilona Andrews‘ Blood Heir way back at...
    5. More Caitlín R. Kiernan This next set of Kiernan‘s books is somewhat different from...

    Powered by YARPP.


    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged

  • More Caitlín R. Kiernan

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    This next set of Kiernan‘s books is somewhat different from the previous set. Three of them are constructed as though they were written by their in-universe characters (unreliable narrators all) while the last is a short-story compilation in graphic novel form.

    The Red Tree is the literary equivalent of a ‘found footage’ movie. It is also brilliant. Beyond brilliant. Written in the form of a 1st-person diary as told from the point of view of a not particularly successful author on a summer retreat, it ends up eminently realistic and shockingly engrossing.

    The follow-up to the above is The Drowning Girl. It’s quite a bit more fantastical and abstract than The Red Tree is as a result of being written from the perspective of a schizophrenic. It also has an extremely nonlinear narrative which can end up somewhat confusing at times. It’s still a remarkably intriguing read, just not exactly immersive and better appreciated as a fictional work than a potential reality.

    Slightly changing gears from the previous two books, Blood Oranges‘ in-universe author’s lack of reliability does not come from mental distortions. Rather, it comes from her being a junky and prone to lies. Thematically speaking this is quite a bit different from the previous novels in that it’s conventional cut-and-dry urban fantasy rather than theoretical urban fantasy (i.e. fantasy that may just all be hallucinations/delusions instead of ‘real’). Presumably this is why it was written under the name of Kathleen Tierney… then again it says right on the cover: “Caitlín R. Kiernan Writing as“. So… who knows what the point of using a secondary name was. Anyway, it’s fairly amusing in a cynical fashion and quite entertaining. Somewhat busy though with lots of different supernaturals all crammed in together.

    Finally we come to Alabaster: Wolves. This is a graphic novel compilation of short stories focused on the albino girl who appears in Threshold. Curiously, her personality seems quite a bit different here than it does there. Different bad rather than different good; the conversations are atrocious. The stories also seem especially simplistic and are frankly not particularly enjoyable in any respect. On the bright side, this contains some fairly fantastic pieces of full-page artwork.

    Related posts:

    1. Caitlín R. Kiernan The five books I’m going to cover here start at...
    2. Relatively Recent Books Been procrastinating with adding these because it’s a pain. May...

    Powered by YARPP.


    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged

  • Caitlín R. Kiernan

    Posted on by Offkorn Comment

    The five books I’m going to cover here start at the horror end of the spectrum and eventually metamorphosize into urban fantasy that leans heavily on the fantasy. They remind me of Justine Musk‘s two BloodAngel novels.

    Silk kicks things off with an intriguing story split among several viewpoints. The fantasy aspects are at their most subdued here, mostly taking the form of general horror and alternate perceptions. It’s nicely self-contained and simply works… for the most part. Having Niki spontaneously turn bisexual is a fairly abrupt plot development when you consider the reason she washed up in Birmingham in the first place.

    Threshold features both a different set of characters and a different set of antagonistic mythology, the latter of which will only appear in the later novels once in passing. Here the balance starts to shift away from horror and into more conventional urban fantasy. The antagonists have much more clearly physical manifestations and while there is still a bit of twisting perception, what occurs happens in a relatively straight-forward manner. The ending is unfortunate on a great many levels and sets a nasty precedent that will be revisited in Daughter of Hounds.

    Low Red Moon I feel is the best out of the five, striking the cleanest balance between reality and misconception with a nicely paced story filled with intriguing developments. It features different versions of the same characters from Threshold and yet another change of antagonistic forces.

    Murder of Angels is my least favorite of this bunch. It’s very, very close to being almost pure fantasy and picks up a decade or so after the ending of Silk with the same characters (along with a transplant from Low Red Moon). This takes what occurred in Silk and turns it into a half-bit imitation of grand fantasy. It’s fairly terrible all-around and painfully contrived (turning Daria into a pseudo-bisexual, Scarborough making his re-appearance, everything about the Dragon and the Weaver, etc.).

    Finally we come to Daughter of Hounds, which picks up years after Low Red Moon and revisits the horrid contrivance that ended Threshold; the ability to rewind time. There are few, very few plot devices cheaper than waving away everything that’s happened and simply pretending it didn’t. Time-fiddling aside, this novel takes a step back from the heavy-fantasy abyss of Murder of Angels to be slightly more grounded in the ‘real world’. It still has a significant focus on fantasy lands and wizards/witches, but presents them in a much less oversaturating fashion.

    All told, I’m rather glad I decided to check out Kiernan’s work. For the longest time I thought that I wouldn’t come across anything else like BloodAngel and these scratched that itch nicely.

    Related posts:

    1. More Caitlín R. Kiernan This next set of Kiernan‘s books is somewhat different from...
    2. Relatively Recent Books Been procrastinating with adding these because it’s a pain. May...

    Powered by YARPP.


    This entry was posted in Book Related and tagged