Caitlín R. Kiernan is a vertebrate paleontologist and author of many fantasy novels, including Silk, The Drowning Girl, Threshold, Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels, Daughter of Hounds, and The Red Tree. Her award-winning short fiction has been collected in six volumes.
Praise for the novels of Caitlin R. Kiernan
“[Caitlín R. Kiernan is] the most singular voice to enter the genre
since Neil Gaiman popped up in graphic novels and Stephen King made
movies live inside books...Beginning with the instant-classic Silk
and continuing through her short fiction to this extraordinary new
novel, Kiernan hasn’t missed a step yet...If you haven’t sampled
her work yet, you haven’t really been reading the future of horror
and dark fantasy, only its past.”—Lisa DuMond, SF Site, MEviews
Silk (2001), Kiernan's first novel, established her as a leading exponent of the generation-X horror story. This ambitious sophomore effort is a bold step backward: a distinctively modern tale that invokes cosmic terrors redolent of past masters H.P. Lovecraft and Algernon Blackwood. Set in present-day Birmingham, Ala., the novel centers on Chance Matthews, a promising young paleontologist left bereft by the recent deaths of friends and family. Chance and ex-boyfriend Deke Silvey, a loser with latent psychic powers, wallow in self-destructive angst until they're sought out by Dancy Flammarion, a strange teenage girl who claims to be pursued by monsters. Details of Dancy's wild story inexplicably jibe with an anomaly Chance finds in the fossil record, and a pattern gradually emerges that points to an inconceivably ancient entity surviving from Earth's prehistory that is consciously shaping their lives and miseries to suit its inscrutable purposes. Kiernan rises to the challenge of evoking incomprehensible horrors by skillfully deploying symbols that suggest much more than they show. Her oblique and dreamy prose style slows the narrative to a torpid crawl in spots, but ultimately contributes to the thick atmosphere of dread that supports the novel's weird events and sustains its mood of inarticulable terror. A finale that veers unexpectedly from a seemingly inevitable display of supernatural fireworks to a subtly disarming denouement only underscores the intelligence behind this carefully crafted tale of awe-inspired nightmare. (Nov. 6) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Praise for the novels of Caitlin R. Kiernan
"[Caitlin R. Kiernan is] the most singular voice to enter the genre
since Neil Gaiman popped up in graphic novels and Stephen King made
movies live inside books...Beginning with the instant-classic
Silk and continuing through her short fiction to this
extraordinary new novel, Kiernan hasn't missed a step yet...If you
haven't sampled her work yet, you haven't really been reading the
future of horror and dark fantasy, only its past."-Lisa DuMond, SF
Site, MEviews
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