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Chance Matthews #1
Threshold
A strange girl speaks of being charged by an angel to battle monsters and claims she cannot do it alone. She needs Chance’s help.
Chance Matthews has suffered enough tragedies. The latest — her grandfather’s death — has left her shaken, convinced that she will always be alone. What she needs now is time — time to recover, time to determine what her future will be. What she doesn’t need is a strange girl with alabaster skin who knows things about Chance she can’t possibly know.
Chance doesn’t believe in angels. Or monsters. But among the artifacts left by her geologist grandparents, there lies a fossil of a creature that couldn’t possibly have ever existed.
But it did. And still does…
Chance Matthews has suffered enough tragedies. The latest — her grandfather’s death — has left her shaken, convinced that she will always be alone. What she needs now is time — time to recover, time to determine what her future will be. What she doesn’t need is a strange girl with alabaster skin who knows things about Chance she can’t possibly know.
Chance doesn’t believe in angels. Or monsters. But among the artifacts left by her geologist grandparents, there lies a fossil of a creature that couldn’t possibly have ever existed.
But it did. And still does…
336 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 2001
About the author
Caitlín R. Kiernan
394 books1,615 followersCaitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American published paleontologist and author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels, series of comic books, and more than two hundred and fifty published short stories, novellas, and vignettes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 151 reviews
April 6, 2009
I tried to stick this one out, but I finally cried "Uncle" at page 106.
The story seemed intriguing (Fossils? Goths? Beowulf? Do tell!) and the musicality of the language and the strong imagery provided enough of an incentive to bear with it, to a point.
So what broke me?
The characters, man. There's only so much self-pity you can swim in till you drown. In Chance's case, it's arguably somewhat justified, but it doesn't necessarily make for compelling reading. And Dancy wasn't so bad, but seriously, Deacon? Really, Sadie? And you too, Elise! I know the world is a vampire, but maybe eat a little more iron and buck up.
Also, while I thought the prose was strong, in the end I couldn't deal with the author's idiosyncratic predilection for making word stew: mushing two words together to make a new word (i.e. bruisedark). This wasn't occasional; it was incessant. The first few times it was interesting; after that it was distracting and irritating. I realize the point was probably to create a stream-of-consciousness effect, but the effect it had on me was to keep pulling me out of the story.
Also, the pacing: I eat faster than this plot advances. And I'm always the last one at the table. By a lot. This might have been easier to bear with, barring the above conditions, and I bore with it for awhile because it seemed like the payoff might be worth it.
And maybe it is. But, in light of the above, I wasn't up to finding out.
The story seemed intriguing (Fossils? Goths? Beowulf? Do tell!) and the musicality of the language and the strong imagery provided enough of an incentive to bear with it, to a point.
So what broke me?
The characters, man. There's only so much self-pity you can swim in till you drown. In Chance's case, it's arguably somewhat justified, but it doesn't necessarily make for compelling reading. And Dancy wasn't so bad, but seriously, Deacon? Really, Sadie? And you too, Elise! I know the world is a vampire, but maybe eat a little more iron and buck up.
Also, while I thought the prose was strong, in the end I couldn't deal with the author's idiosyncratic predilection for making word stew: mushing two words together to make a new word (i.e. bruisedark). This wasn't occasional; it was incessant. The first few times it was interesting; after that it was distracting and irritating. I realize the point was probably to create a stream-of-consciousness effect, but the effect it had on me was to keep pulling me out of the story.
Also, the pacing: I eat faster than this plot advances. And I'm always the last one at the table. By a lot. This might have been easier to bear with, barring the above conditions, and I bore with it for awhile because it seemed like the payoff might be worth it.
And maybe it is. But, in light of the above, I wasn't up to finding out.
December 4, 2011
First, I love Caitlin Kiernan, so if you are a fan of horror, well written fiction, and of fiction in general, you should do yourself a favor and pick up a novel of hers. I have read 3 of Kiernan's later novels and fell in love with them. This book has a lot to like and parts to love too, but I felt that the ending was far to weak for the suspense that built up until then. The ending was nothing like the ending's she has written in other novels. So, if you are a horror fan, start with this one, then move on to Low Red Moon, and end with Daughter of Hounds, you will not regret it.
October 6, 2024
"Our thoughts make spirals in their world."
Damn near pure and committed genre fiction at its finest, especially in the back half. Had kinda a rocky experience in the beginning but it was never the book's fault, I've just been slow with reading recently but damn near everything in the back half more than stole my attention completely on this reread. To instantly get my actual criticisms out of the way before I talk about all the great stuff it's that I do think the earlier stretches of the book could have stood to use tighter editing [I'm particularly thinking of the overreliance on the kind of Faulkner-y way she attempts to compound different words i.e. "violetred", it's a bit like Genuinely Gimmicky at the start but as the book goes along Kiernan tempers the impulse and makes them scarce enough to work a lot better and when she does use them she clearly vetted which ones were the most effective, making it clear she probably agreed it was a bit excessive at first]. I also find the narrative to lull a bit when it focuses on Sadie, it feels difficult to justify her amount of pagetime as she feels sort of underdeveloped compared to Chance/Deacon/Dancy who are clearly the stars of the show, though she does bring her own sort of Balancing Energy to the rest of the cast so I wouldn't have excluded her sections
That's about it for the negatives tho becuz like!!! God fucking damn y'all!! When I first read the trilogy this one did not particularly stick in my mind as being as much of a Genre Melting Pot as the two sequels, so I think a lot of the details in this one got overshadowed by the comparative bombast of "Low Red Moon" and "Daughter of Hounds". But that's by design, and I realize in hindsight this one is just as ferociously maximalist and ambitious as its successors, and its status as the series opener necessitated this slower-burn approach. This is much more of an out and out horror novel than its sequels in terms of the general plot structure and tone, a slowly boiling cauldron of Apocalyptic Dread where the armaggedon is just as interpersonal as it is on a cosmic scale, the things that go bump in the night gradually escalating and becoming no longer ignorable, no longer rationalizable the more these characters desperately try to run from what they can no longer deny. No matter how much you try to evade the demons of the past, no matter if you try to Understand and Compartmentalize or if you try to just bury them, they Will eventually come back to hold you to task and rend everything you thought you knew about reality from under your feet, and the things that lay poisonously between even people who deeply and truly love one another can never be swept under the rug forever, lest reality itself unspool. In the beginning the protagonists' seemingly mundane world is already tenuous, something that must change because it’s inherently built on faulty foundations, and it will and does change as brutally as possible in order to force these people to face the truth... builds and builds to the point where an initially dark but still fairly Down to Earth story, one that could theoretically be answered by the scientific rationalism Chance so desperately clings to in order to keep herself sane, continually unravels to the point where this escalates to practically biblical scale by the last five chapters. Whatever lull in the beginning is justified ultimately by the nonstop shaking power of the final act, and it further benefits from how much of this in hindsight foreshadows and informs the events to come in the sequels
Both aesthetic and thematic heaven for me, as is clear from all this… as always this is a character-driven drama working compassionately within its low-fantasy pulp psychological thriller mechanics**, it is primarily about how people will do anything to run from the truth and the pain that echoes throughout the abysses of time in our lives, how we do whatever we can to stave off the inevitable decay that comes with that time - but rebirth, no matter how brutal and messy and painful, is always assured, and you and those you love must stand before this shift because in every case, the only way out is through. In the end appropriate to the cosmicism there are no easy answers, no one-size-fits all pin to make us make complete sense of our trauma and our lives as the world is ever changing and uncertain, but we have to fucking try to find peace no matter what, even if it means descending into the depths of a watery darkness. And it does this all with the backdrop of paleontological lore and endearing obsession with prehistory, informed by references to archaeology and Beuwolf and mythology as much as to modern culture, its approach to pulp high-concept but still clearly working lovingly within its unabashedly genre fic roots and not condescending to it because this is pure genre and a great example of what it can do. P willing to call this a flawed masterpiece tbh, and it’s already got me thinking about how much of the sequels expand upon and are informed by the events that occur in this book [in a way, too, that in hindsight narratively justifies the initially jarring transition between the plot of this and “Low Red Moon”]. Might just binge the other two before the end of the year tbh, if we ever get a fourth entry to this [and I’d say it’s plausible given the Structure of the series] then I’ll be the first in line to stand at the dark altar of Kiernan’s once again and experience another work of inspiring pulp imagination
*Hesitated to call this portal fantasy but it probably fits - and a damn good example of it at that, the way this directly uses reality-shifts not necessarily as between Physical places but through how our conception of time and memory Literally facilitates the passages between worlds, was an inspired choice and especially pairs well with the themes of deep geological time. Glad I know now that there’s at least one author I like who I can definitively say was also a Dino Kid growing up sjsjsjsjjs
Damn near pure and committed genre fiction at its finest, especially in the back half. Had kinda a rocky experience in the beginning but it was never the book's fault, I've just been slow with reading recently but damn near everything in the back half more than stole my attention completely on this reread. To instantly get my actual criticisms out of the way before I talk about all the great stuff it's that I do think the earlier stretches of the book could have stood to use tighter editing [I'm particularly thinking of the overreliance on the kind of Faulkner-y way she attempts to compound different words i.e. "violetred", it's a bit like Genuinely Gimmicky at the start but as the book goes along Kiernan tempers the impulse and makes them scarce enough to work a lot better and when she does use them she clearly vetted which ones were the most effective, making it clear she probably agreed it was a bit excessive at first]. I also find the narrative to lull a bit when it focuses on Sadie, it feels difficult to justify her amount of pagetime as she feels sort of underdeveloped compared to Chance/Deacon/Dancy who are clearly the stars of the show, though she does bring her own sort of Balancing Energy to the rest of the cast so I wouldn't have excluded her sections
That's about it for the negatives tho becuz like!!! God fucking damn y'all!! When I first read the trilogy this one did not particularly stick in my mind as being as much of a Genre Melting Pot as the two sequels, so I think a lot of the details in this one got overshadowed by the comparative bombast of "Low Red Moon" and "Daughter of Hounds". But that's by design, and I realize in hindsight this one is just as ferociously maximalist and ambitious as its successors, and its status as the series opener necessitated this slower-burn approach. This is much more of an out and out horror novel than its sequels in terms of the general plot structure and tone, a slowly boiling cauldron of Apocalyptic Dread where the armaggedon is just as interpersonal as it is on a cosmic scale, the things that go bump in the night gradually escalating and becoming no longer ignorable, no longer rationalizable the more these characters desperately try to run from what they can no longer deny. No matter how much you try to evade the demons of the past, no matter if you try to Understand and Compartmentalize or if you try to just bury them, they Will eventually come back to hold you to task and rend everything you thought you knew about reality from under your feet, and the things that lay poisonously between even people who deeply and truly love one another can never be swept under the rug forever, lest reality itself unspool. In the beginning the protagonists' seemingly mundane world is already tenuous, something that must change because it’s inherently built on faulty foundations, and it will and does change as brutally as possible in order to force these people to face the truth... builds and builds to the point where an initially dark but still fairly Down to Earth story, one that could theoretically be answered by the scientific rationalism Chance so desperately clings to in order to keep herself sane, continually unravels to the point where this escalates to practically biblical scale by the last five chapters. Whatever lull in the beginning is justified ultimately by the nonstop shaking power of the final act, and it further benefits from how much of this in hindsight foreshadows and informs the events to come in the sequels
Both aesthetic and thematic heaven for me, as is clear from all this… as always this is a character-driven drama working compassionately within its low-fantasy pulp psychological thriller mechanics**, it is primarily about how people will do anything to run from the truth and the pain that echoes throughout the abysses of time in our lives, how we do whatever we can to stave off the inevitable decay that comes with that time - but rebirth, no matter how brutal and messy and painful, is always assured, and you and those you love must stand before this shift because in every case, the only way out is through. In the end appropriate to the cosmicism there are no easy answers, no one-size-fits all pin to make us make complete sense of our trauma and our lives as the world is ever changing and uncertain, but we have to fucking try to find peace no matter what, even if it means descending into the depths of a watery darkness. And it does this all with the backdrop of paleontological lore and endearing obsession with prehistory, informed by references to archaeology and Beuwolf and mythology as much as to modern culture, its approach to pulp high-concept but still clearly working lovingly within its unabashedly genre fic roots and not condescending to it because this is pure genre and a great example of what it can do. P willing to call this a flawed masterpiece tbh, and it’s already got me thinking about how much of the sequels expand upon and are informed by the events that occur in this book [in a way, too, that in hindsight narratively justifies the initially jarring transition between the plot of this and “Low Red Moon”]. Might just binge the other two before the end of the year tbh, if we ever get a fourth entry to this [and I’d say it’s plausible given the Structure of the series] then I’ll be the first in line to stand at the dark altar of Kiernan’s once again and experience another work of inspiring pulp imagination
*Hesitated to call this portal fantasy but it probably fits - and a damn good example of it at that, the way this directly uses reality-shifts not necessarily as between Physical places but through how our conception of time and memory Literally facilitates the passages between worlds, was an inspired choice and especially pairs well with the themes of deep geological time. Glad I know now that there’s at least one author I like who I can definitively say was also a Dino Kid growing up sjsjsjsjjs
December 20, 2011
Threshold is a difficult novel to summarize. I'm not sure Caitlin Kiernan even knew what kind of book she was writing. Chance has had a lot of people die in her life, and the book opens with her grandfather's funeral. Her ex-boyfriend, Deacon, is a drunk and his girlfriend, Sadie, is an immature goth girl. Dancy is a stranger who believes that there are monsters in the world that need to be stopped, and she comes to town looking for Chance because of visions she has had with Chance in them. She first convinces Deacon and Sadie that she's telling the truth, and together they try to convince Chance that she needs to help Dancy do whatever it is she needs to do. You are never really sure what Dancy had in store for them, or what exactly the monsters are--what they look like, what their powers are. The plot of the novel, as far as I can tell, is based solely around Chance believing in the existence of monsters.
While the characters are well-done, the plot is slow and confusing. For the entire book, the characters know little to nothing about the mysteries that surround and taunt them--and neither does the reader.
Kiernan has a stream-of-consciousness sort of style that takes some getting used to. This helps the mood of the story, but does not help the reader to understand it. Some of the made-up compound words she creates (e.g., "skinnytall," "countrydark") are just as confusing as her sentence structure. For example, when she uses colors like "orangered" it looks more like some weird verb "oranger" than what it is--"orange-red." Her style is interesting in terms of the creepy mood she is able to convey with it, but it's far from perfect.
To add to the confusion of her prose, the plot itself is difficult to discern. Reality, dreams, vision, and time-jumps blend into one another and the combination of theses factors makes reading the novel unnecessarily difficult.
This story is very "airy" and a little messy. If you expect a concrete pay-off for getting through such a scattered story, you will be disappointed. The messy, open ending will leave you hanging. While the ending was interesting and not inherently bad, it did give the impression of the whole novel being confused and nonsensical. It gave me flashbacks to Lost. You expect the ending to tell you what the point is of the entire exercise, only to be told flatly that there is no point. You can't even be sure how much of it was real. Normally with endings like this, the writer ends up making the ending about the characters reaching their peak of growth; however, in Threshold, the painfully slow growth of Kiernan's characters is basically reversed. There's no real pay-off, and no real "spook factor" either because you won't even know how you got to that ending or what it means. I was very disappointed.
While the characters are well-done, the plot is slow and confusing. For the entire book, the characters know little to nothing about the mysteries that surround and taunt them--and neither does the reader.
Kiernan has a stream-of-consciousness sort of style that takes some getting used to. This helps the mood of the story, but does not help the reader to understand it. Some of the made-up compound words she creates (e.g., "skinnytall," "countrydark") are just as confusing as her sentence structure. For example, when she uses colors like "orangered" it looks more like some weird verb "oranger" than what it is--"orange-red." Her style is interesting in terms of the creepy mood she is able to convey with it, but it's far from perfect.
To add to the confusion of her prose, the plot itself is difficult to discern. Reality, dreams, vision, and time-jumps blend into one another and the combination of theses factors makes reading the novel unnecessarily difficult.
This story is very "airy" and a little messy. If you expect a concrete pay-off for getting through such a scattered story, you will be disappointed. The messy, open ending will leave you hanging. While the ending was interesting and not inherently bad, it did give the impression of the whole novel being confused and nonsensical. It gave me flashbacks to Lost. You expect the ending to tell you what the point is of the entire exercise, only to be told flatly that there is no point. You can't even be sure how much of it was real. Normally with endings like this, the writer ends up making the ending about the characters reaching their peak of growth; however, in Threshold, the painfully slow growth of Kiernan's characters is basically reversed. There's no real pay-off, and no real "spook factor" either because you won't even know how you got to that ending or what it means. I was very disappointed.
January 8, 2021
(Re)reread, 2020: I'll never be able to recapture the first time I read this, which was also my introduction to new weird and modern cosmic horror, some of the first horror to really get me. This gave me a favorite author and genre; it gave me a way of seeing the unknown askance, where navigating "don't show the monster" is part of the monster, as well as the horror. Some favorite books improve on reread; this I see in a larger context upon reread, but it's too much for the text to live up to. Especially so as Kiernan's body of work continues many of the same themes and techniques, but better--in particular, her short fiction & later books have better corporeal facets of the unknowable and less tortured (by missed communication) views askance, and I've come to prefer them.
Original review, 2010: When Chance and her friends break into a mountainside tunnel, they never expect to set into action a chain of events that lead to the appearance of Dancy, a young girl who claims to see monsters, or the discovery of impossibly old fossils, which may prove her right. Kiernan writes Lovecraftian horror of the finest sort, but her lyrical prose and carefully balanced novel are entirely her own. Threshold's narrative voice may not suit all readers, but for those with a love of lyricism and an appreciation for fear of the unknown, this book is a must read. I highly recommend it.
Kiernan is a child of Lovecraft in the purest sense, but unlike much of Lovecraft's writing and Kiernan's own short fiction, with Threshold she does more than show a glimpse of the terrible unknown—--she explores the concept in depth and at length. Couching the story in paleontology which gives the fantastical horror a ring of authenticity that makes it all the more frightening, Kiernan explores the horror of the endless malignance which lies on the edge of comprehension, and she does so with aplomb. Her monsters are original and often surprisingly visceral, but there is always something beyond them--never so far away that the reader feels teased, but far enough that the reader can only glimpse its infinite vastness and darkness. It's a brand of horror that relies on the reader's imagination to intrigue and frighten, and Kiernan executes it with perfection. Fans of Lovecraft will be perfectly at home in this novel.
But, regardless of her predecessors, Kiernan remains unique. This book stands apart by expanding its concept through an entire novel; Kiernan's writing stands apart by the other aspects which compliment its horror: lyrical prose, flawed and finely nuanced characters, and a plot which balances character development, atmosphere, and action to end in a simply brilliant final chapter. These aspects may not appeal to readers in search of a transparent narrative or consistently likable characters, but they make for a complex and finely-layered story and they add that special something, a blend of inspiration and skill, which turns a strong novel into something truly remarkable. Threshold was my introduction to Kiernan, and upon this reread it remains my favorite of her oeuvre. It's a good place to begin reading her work and a wonderful book in its own right: intelligent, thoughtful, atmospheric, terrifying, altogether skillful, and greater than the sum of its parts, this is a book to remember. I highly recommend it.
Original review, 2010: When Chance and her friends break into a mountainside tunnel, they never expect to set into action a chain of events that lead to the appearance of Dancy, a young girl who claims to see monsters, or the discovery of impossibly old fossils, which may prove her right. Kiernan writes Lovecraftian horror of the finest sort, but her lyrical prose and carefully balanced novel are entirely her own. Threshold's narrative voice may not suit all readers, but for those with a love of lyricism and an appreciation for fear of the unknown, this book is a must read. I highly recommend it.
Kiernan is a child of Lovecraft in the purest sense, but unlike much of Lovecraft's writing and Kiernan's own short fiction, with Threshold she does more than show a glimpse of the terrible unknown—--she explores the concept in depth and at length. Couching the story in paleontology which gives the fantastical horror a ring of authenticity that makes it all the more frightening, Kiernan explores the horror of the endless malignance which lies on the edge of comprehension, and she does so with aplomb. Her monsters are original and often surprisingly visceral, but there is always something beyond them--never so far away that the reader feels teased, but far enough that the reader can only glimpse its infinite vastness and darkness. It's a brand of horror that relies on the reader's imagination to intrigue and frighten, and Kiernan executes it with perfection. Fans of Lovecraft will be perfectly at home in this novel.
But, regardless of her predecessors, Kiernan remains unique. This book stands apart by expanding its concept through an entire novel; Kiernan's writing stands apart by the other aspects which compliment its horror: lyrical prose, flawed and finely nuanced characters, and a plot which balances character development, atmosphere, and action to end in a simply brilliant final chapter. These aspects may not appeal to readers in search of a transparent narrative or consistently likable characters, but they make for a complex and finely-layered story and they add that special something, a blend of inspiration and skill, which turns a strong novel into something truly remarkable. Threshold was my introduction to Kiernan, and upon this reread it remains my favorite of her oeuvre. It's a good place to begin reading her work and a wonderful book in its own right: intelligent, thoughtful, atmospheric, terrifying, altogether skillful, and greater than the sum of its parts, this is a book to remember. I highly recommend it.
August 11, 2023
First the good. The details about paleontology and geology were great, and I would have loved more with that. Kiernan's writing is poetic and rich; she is masterful, however I found the gluesticking of words together to be overusedannoying. There were some interesting ideas in this books but they suffocated beneath overwrought and thoroughly dislikable characters. Most of the time I was reading I was thinking "how much longer is this, should I just stop?" which is not a good indication. The plot that the struggled underneath the dying ideas and shitty characters was feeble, and as the book was coming to a close I correctly thought "there's nothing here". Sure enough the story whimpered its way to an utterly unimpressive ending. At this point I think I've done my due diligence with this author, and no need to read anymore.
April 19, 2022
I liked this book, but I wanted to like it a whole lot more.
The detail and the setting were great. I really loved the way Kiernan immerses the reader in the protagonists' worlds; the detail she includes makes all the characters seem believable, relatable. There are a lot of main characters: Chance, Dancy, Deke, Elise, Sadie; and some minor characters; and some monster-characters. So I put a lot of investment in all these people and their worlds, and that didn't prepare me for the ending.
From the start it was creepy, and I was really caught up in trying to figure out what was going on. It was fun, and a little scary.
But the way the characters refused to take action and would not respond to what was happening did get on my nerves. Their dialogue in the middle of the novel was like:
'You saw monsters. Tell me what you saw.'
'No. I can't. It's too terrible.'
'Tell me what you saw. Because I saw something too, but I can't tell you about it.'
'Well, what did you see?'
'Well, I can't tell you. It's too terrible.'
'So no one can tell anyone what they saw, and the only one who's giving us warnings is speaking in riddles.'
'Yes. She's creepy and says she can see monsters. Let's ignore her.'
'Right.'
'Hey, everybody, maybe let's deal with this situation?'
'No. I'll get drunk instead.'
'Hey everybody, we were just attacked by creepy, demon-possessed animals. Please, let's stay together tonight. The monsters are coming and we're running out of time.'
'Nah. I know we all just saw a whole bunch of super-scary supernatural shit, but it's over now. It didn't mean anything.'
'Please stay together. They're coming!'
'Right. Okay, everybody, let's split up and all go home.'
Everyone splits up and bad stuff happens. Monsters chase them down and good guys start getting killed, etc.
That kind of stuff was annoying. Still, the story had scenes of tension that were really well written, and I was eager to get to the final scene, the payoff for all the zig-zag storylines. I really wanted to know what the secrets in the pine box were about and what was happening to all the missing main characters.
In the final scene I was really expecting a showdown with the big bad guys, but instead everything flipped and went kind of Twilight-Zoney: an alternate reality occurred, the whole story was averted, the entire book never happened, and we see that one of the good guys was, in actuality, a real hospitalized psychopath all along. That was cool, and it threw me off balance, but then the story ended. Bam, done. No resolution, no denouement.
So I liked the story and the characters, loved the detailed view into their world, but was confused by their actions in the face of actual danger. That, and all the fade-in/fade-out dream sequence stuff was at first confusing, then later a bit annoying. The ending didn't seem to match the investment I'd put into the characters and I was/am confused by that.
Still, I liked it. Three stars.
The detail and the setting were great. I really loved the way Kiernan immerses the reader in the protagonists' worlds; the detail she includes makes all the characters seem believable, relatable. There are a lot of main characters: Chance, Dancy, Deke, Elise, Sadie; and some minor characters; and some monster-characters. So I put a lot of investment in all these people and their worlds, and that didn't prepare me for the ending.
From the start it was creepy, and I was really caught up in trying to figure out what was going on. It was fun, and a little scary.
But the way the characters refused to take action and would not respond to what was happening did get on my nerves. Their dialogue in the middle of the novel was like:
'You saw monsters. Tell me what you saw.'
'No. I can't. It's too terrible.'
'Tell me what you saw. Because I saw something too, but I can't tell you about it.'
'Well, what did you see?'
'Well, I can't tell you. It's too terrible.'
'So no one can tell anyone what they saw, and the only one who's giving us warnings is speaking in riddles.'
'Yes. She's creepy and says she can see monsters. Let's ignore her.'
'Right.'
'Hey, everybody, maybe let's deal with this situation?'
'No. I'll get drunk instead.'
'Hey everybody, we were just attacked by creepy, demon-possessed animals. Please, let's stay together tonight. The monsters are coming and we're running out of time.'
'Nah. I know we all just saw a whole bunch of super-scary supernatural shit, but it's over now. It didn't mean anything.'
'Please stay together. They're coming!'
'Right. Okay, everybody, let's split up and all go home.'
Everyone splits up and bad stuff happens. Monsters chase them down and good guys start getting killed, etc.
That kind of stuff was annoying. Still, the story had scenes of tension that were really well written, and I was eager to get to the final scene, the payoff for all the zig-zag storylines. I really wanted to know what the secrets in the pine box were about and what was happening to all the missing main characters.
In the final scene I was really expecting a showdown with the big bad guys, but instead everything flipped and went kind of Twilight-Zoney: an alternate reality occurred, the whole story was averted, the entire book never happened, and we see that one of the good guys was, in actuality, a real hospitalized psychopath all along. That was cool, and it threw me off balance, but then the story ended. Bam, done. No resolution, no denouement.
So I liked the story and the characters, loved the detailed view into their world, but was confused by their actions in the face of actual danger. That, and all the fade-in/fade-out dream sequence stuff was at first confusing, then later a bit annoying. The ending didn't seem to match the investment I'd put into the characters and I was/am confused by that.
Still, I liked it. Three stars.
April 9, 2009
I picked up this book because it had a lukewarm endorsement by Neil Gaiman on the cover and it looked interesting. While a fairly mediocre horror story, the writing tends to be beyond annoying. I think someone must have told this author she had an interesting writing style in college and she went with it. It's the type of writing that irks me with its pretentiousness. Throughout the book, often up to six times on a page, Kiernan combines words such as 'icycold' and 'blackiced' and 'wetdark' and 'brightyellow' just like that. At first, it's sort of interesting, the more I read, the more I wondered what editor in the world would read this book and NOT think "wow, that's annoying." It comes back as somewhat pretentious and does nothing to make you care about the story or the characters. While the author is great at capturing the personality, tone and atmosphere of a young woman who's hit rock bottom, all of the characters are unlikeable. It's hard to connect to any of them. The climax of the story is...anticlimactic. It took me a while to realize that I actually DID get what had happened, it was just such an 'easy' ending that I overthought it and tried to make it more than it was. By all means, I'd suggest skipping this book if you run across it.
January 3, 2016
An entertaining wee story. Enjoyable but way too drawn out.
September 6, 2018
The story of Chance Matthews, her ex-boyfriend Deke, his g/f Sadie, Elise......who are drawn into a battle between angels and monsters...or so says an albino teenager.
I like Kiernan's short fiction....but frankly not sure what to make of this book. An albino girl tracks down Chance...and tells her an angel told her to find her. The story has something to do with a mountain, and living fossils, who don't want people to know of their existence.
The albino girl is captured by its agents, and by the end of the book escapes, and confined to a psychiatric hospital. Why? I don't know.
I see this is the first "Chance Matthews" book...not sure if I'll read another.
Jeff Mcintosh
I like Kiernan's short fiction....but frankly not sure what to make of this book. An albino girl tracks down Chance...and tells her an angel told her to find her. The story has something to do with a mountain, and living fossils, who don't want people to know of their existence.
The albino girl is captured by its agents, and by the end of the book escapes, and confined to a psychiatric hospital. Why? I don't know.
I see this is the first "Chance Matthews" book...not sure if I'll read another.
Jeff Mcintosh
July 30, 2015
I'm giving this book three stars for now because it's one of those rare books that leaves me confused as to how I feel about it (that is, I don't know if I really, really liked it or really, really disliked it). This is the second of Kiernan's books that I've read (the first being "Silk") and for some reason it didn't provide the same emotional oomph to me as her first novel did (though it's certainly more tightly written). Perhaps nostalgia has something to do with this: I started reading "Silk" back around the year 2000, read a little over 200 pages or so, and then, for some bizarre reason, never finished it, until this June, when I picked it up again and started over, though much of it was still vivid to my memory (I always gauge how good a book is by how much of it I can still remember even years after the fact). One of the things I liked about "Silk" was how Kiernan would often identify the music the characters would listen to: I like it when books have their own soundtracks that I can assemble and listen to later on, after I'm done reading. That's pretty much all but dropped in this one, though at least she still identifies what kind of music the characters like.
A lot of people on here have complained about her use of compound words. I too found this very irritating initially (in fact on Facebook a few days ago I first described it as "...every time I see those it's like that razor that slit the dead cow's eye open at the start of 'Un Chien Andalou.'" But as the book goes on one gets used to them and maybe it's my imagination but I think they even start to decrease in frequency the further you get in the book.
Although Lovecraft's name gets tossed around a lot as an influence on this novel (perhaps due to the heavy use of scientific language, mainly related to paleontological and geological terminology... thankfully a handy glossary is provided at the back of the book), I think it owes a lot more to Algernon Blackwood (Kiernan even gives a shout-out to his "The Willows" at the very start of the book. That reminds me, I do like how she always takes the time to identify her influences in her book's acknowledgments, and it's nice to see credit given where it's due... I wish more authors did that). Like Blackwood, the book is an exercise in weird atmosphere, lots of build-up, build-up, build-up before ending in a somewhat anticlimactic manner. I'm also reminded of the work of Ramsey Campbell; characters spotting odd things at the corner of their eye that they trick themselves into believing aren't really monsters (of course, we know they are), scenes where dreams start to bleed into reality until we're unsure as to which is which any longer, and so forth. One could accuse the plot of being an incoherent mess, but then again, real life is messy and rarely coherent anyway. And one can ignore such quibbles while enjoying the prose. The atmosphere of the book is suitably creepy (the scene where Deacon visits Dancy's childhood home in particular is very gripping), and as with "Silk" there are some great descriptions (such as "...her pink eyes like the secret insides of conch shells," "...the forsaken places where men left the skeletons of trains to decay beneath the impossible rains of meat and blood," "...rumbling dryers and washing machines like the strangling lungs of drowning men," and so forth). Although the book starts off slow, as the reader gets used to the characters things start to pick up and the later chapters are very fast moving. The ending of the book is either totally brilliant or a total cop-out... or maybe both (to be fair, Kiernan does lampshade it well in advance, so I see no reason for people getting upset about it).
I'm not sure which of her books I'll read next. Maybe I'll keep reading them in the order they were published and move on to "Low Red Moon" next. Though at the same time I recently learnt that "Murder of Angels" is a sequel to "Silk" and I'm kind of excited to read that as well.
A lot of people on here have complained about her use of compound words. I too found this very irritating initially (in fact on Facebook a few days ago I first described it as "...every time I see those it's like that razor that slit the dead cow's eye open at the start of 'Un Chien Andalou.'" But as the book goes on one gets used to them and maybe it's my imagination but I think they even start to decrease in frequency the further you get in the book.
Although Lovecraft's name gets tossed around a lot as an influence on this novel (perhaps due to the heavy use of scientific language, mainly related to paleontological and geological terminology... thankfully a handy glossary is provided at the back of the book), I think it owes a lot more to Algernon Blackwood (Kiernan even gives a shout-out to his "The Willows" at the very start of the book. That reminds me, I do like how she always takes the time to identify her influences in her book's acknowledgments, and it's nice to see credit given where it's due... I wish more authors did that). Like Blackwood, the book is an exercise in weird atmosphere, lots of build-up, build-up, build-up before ending in a somewhat anticlimactic manner. I'm also reminded of the work of Ramsey Campbell; characters spotting odd things at the corner of their eye that they trick themselves into believing aren't really monsters (of course, we know they are), scenes where dreams start to bleed into reality until we're unsure as to which is which any longer, and so forth. One could accuse the plot of being an incoherent mess, but then again, real life is messy and rarely coherent anyway. And one can ignore such quibbles while enjoying the prose. The atmosphere of the book is suitably creepy (the scene where Deacon visits Dancy's childhood home in particular is very gripping), and as with "Silk" there are some great descriptions (such as "...her pink eyes like the secret insides of conch shells," "...the forsaken places where men left the skeletons of trains to decay beneath the impossible rains of meat and blood," "...rumbling dryers and washing machines like the strangling lungs of drowning men," and so forth). Although the book starts off slow, as the reader gets used to the characters things start to pick up and the later chapters are very fast moving. The ending of the book is either totally brilliant or a total cop-out... or maybe both (to be fair, Kiernan does lampshade it well in advance, so I see no reason for people getting upset about it).
I'm not sure which of her books I'll read next. Maybe I'll keep reading them in the order they were published and move on to "Low Red Moon" next. Though at the same time I recently learnt that "Murder of Angels" is a sequel to "Silk" and I'm kind of excited to read that as well.
August 20, 2012
Don't let the three star rating fool you I really enjoyed this. It has a very gritty atmosphere with not a single happy character in sight. It fit my mood yesterday.
Some things did bug me. I want to underline the end about five times. Feels unfinished or maybe just open to interpretation.
About the writing: It's a love/hate relationship
The writing style I loved. The story telling style was extremely rough. Bounces into the past much to often. Adds more angles to the story, but over complicates things. If your writing is terrible I can see the draw of lots of flashbacks, but it is unnecessary here.
At times I thought I had missed a key reveal, but as I read on more was filled in.
My favorite scene was Dancy describing her mothers suicide attempt. Morbid I know. She walks into the water to drown herself, to rid herself of hearing the angels, and something unholy attempts to drag her down. All the while promising she'd never have to hear the angels ever again. I wanted to add the text, but I'm much too lazy right now.
Characters:
Not crazy about any besides Dancy. Her character was just so unique. I really hope to learn more of her in Low Red Moon.
Some things did bug me. I want to underline the end about five times. Feels unfinished or maybe just open to interpretation.
About the writing: It's a love/hate relationship
The writing style I loved. The story telling style was extremely rough. Bounces into the past much to often. Adds more angles to the story, but over complicates things. If your writing is terrible I can see the draw of lots of flashbacks, but it is unnecessary here.
At times I thought I had missed a key reveal, but as I read on more was filled in.
My favorite scene was Dancy describing her mothers suicide attempt. Morbid I know. She walks into the water to drown herself, to rid herself of hearing the angels, and something unholy attempts to drag her down. All the while promising she'd never have to hear the angels ever again. I wanted to add the text, but I'm much too lazy right now.
Characters:
Not crazy about any besides Dancy. Her character was just so unique. I really hope to learn more of her in Low Red Moon.
December 14, 2011
I loved the two possible story lines Kiernan posits at the end of the novel. Which is to be believed?
Note to readers: this is the first in a series of three books. Part two of Chance's and Deacon's tale is told in "Low Red Moon," while part three, which picks up the new mythos discussed in the second, is the excellent "Daughter of the Hounds." (The mythology is based on Lovecraft's, but only loosely.)
These novels remind me, somehow, of "His Dark Materials," but here, the materials are indeed dark yet equally wondrous. The human characters living in ordinary time fascinate, and their visits to strange realms and visitations by even stranger beings (some partially human) resemble the journeys of Lyra Belaqua (minus the war for the Republic of Heaven.)
Kiernan's world is truly dark and frightening (as Pullman only dares suggest how dark his world is). At the same time, Kiernan also provides some characters a chance for true heroism and almost without letting on, prefers her characters to survive true damnation.
These three books will leave you thinking hard on the concept of evil and of the world around you--what possible lives are available to you? What was the world like before man?
I unknowingly made a connection with a novella I had not read before until I started this book--Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." All of his "Cult of Cthulu" tales would be helpful in understanding Kiernan's mindset, but "At the Mountains of Madness" repeats an image, a cypher, important to "Threshold."
These three books are frightening, but in a manner that goes beyond the gross out tactics of early Stephen King. Kiernan prefers to raise the hackles on the back of your neck. Her work provokes anxiety. Expect a wonderful breathless suspense at the end of these three books that will keep you reading into the dark night.
Note to readers: this is the first in a series of three books. Part two of Chance's and Deacon's tale is told in "Low Red Moon," while part three, which picks up the new mythos discussed in the second, is the excellent "Daughter of the Hounds." (The mythology is based on Lovecraft's, but only loosely.)
These novels remind me, somehow, of "His Dark Materials," but here, the materials are indeed dark yet equally wondrous. The human characters living in ordinary time fascinate, and their visits to strange realms and visitations by even stranger beings (some partially human) resemble the journeys of Lyra Belaqua (minus the war for the Republic of Heaven.)
Kiernan's world is truly dark and frightening (as Pullman only dares suggest how dark his world is). At the same time, Kiernan also provides some characters a chance for true heroism and almost without letting on, prefers her characters to survive true damnation.
These three books will leave you thinking hard on the concept of evil and of the world around you--what possible lives are available to you? What was the world like before man?
I unknowingly made a connection with a novella I had not read before until I started this book--Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness." All of his "Cult of Cthulu" tales would be helpful in understanding Kiernan's mindset, but "At the Mountains of Madness" repeats an image, a cypher, important to "Threshold."
These three books are frightening, but in a manner that goes beyond the gross out tactics of early Stephen King. Kiernan prefers to raise the hackles on the back of your neck. Her work provokes anxiety. Expect a wonderful breathless suspense at the end of these three books that will keep you reading into the dark night.
November 26, 2020
This should have been a novella, as, at around 250 pages, it is at least 100 pages too long for the actual content.
Three twenty-somethings become involved in... I'm not quite sure what, but it includes a blocked-up tunnel in a mountainside, a teen girl who sees monsters, prescience, psychometry, trilobites, tall guys with lots of teeth, incredibly tragic pasts, and kamikaze crows.
I've previously read, and enjoyed, a few of Kiernan's short stories, and fully expected to enjoy this - and, to be fair, I sporadically did, what with dashes of Ramsey Campbell unease, dustings of Thomas Ligotti's ineffable nihilism, and Lovecraftian chocolate drops of deep time horror (fittingly, I have no idea what this concoction might be called). But the sponge/meat/bread of all this, the main ingredient of this very stretched metaphor, consists of round upon round of over-described smoking and drinking, while agonising around kitchen tables and in messy lounges about relationships, pasts, futures, other people's nasty habits, other people's sincerity and insincerity, other people's opinions (and often using of unnecessary -and annoying- bespoke word combinations to do it). Perhaps pizza is the best analogy - and this one has so much dough the flavours are almost totally overcome.
Less would truly have been more with Threshold.
Three twenty-somethings become involved in... I'm not quite sure what, but it includes a blocked-up tunnel in a mountainside, a teen girl who sees monsters, prescience, psychometry, trilobites, tall guys with lots of teeth, incredibly tragic pasts, and kamikaze crows.
I've previously read, and enjoyed, a few of Kiernan's short stories, and fully expected to enjoy this - and, to be fair, I sporadically did, what with dashes of Ramsey Campbell unease, dustings of Thomas Ligotti's ineffable nihilism, and Lovecraftian chocolate drops of deep time horror (fittingly, I have no idea what this concoction might be called). But the sponge/meat/bread of all this, the main ingredient of this very stretched metaphor, consists of round upon round of over-described smoking and drinking, while agonising around kitchen tables and in messy lounges about relationships, pasts, futures, other people's nasty habits, other people's sincerity and insincerity, other people's opinions (and often using of unnecessary -and annoying- bespoke word combinations to do it). Perhaps pizza is the best analogy - and this one has so much dough the flavours are almost totally overcome.
Less would truly have been more with Threshold.
February 1, 2016
This was one of those rare, rare books that I just couldn't finish. The plot meandered to the point where it wasn't really even present or necessary. The characters were whiny wusses wallowing in young adult angst.
The writing was...wow, it was just awful; I imagine that when Ms. Kiernan was a young writer someone noticed her bizarre stream of consciousness style and mash-up adjectives and told her it was "quirky" or "clever". Constantly reading words like "icywet", pastysharp" and "countrydark" starts out as interesting and a little...cute, but quickly becomes "annoyingasfuck". Combined with sentences that run on to paragraph length and you have a combination of silly techniques that are —at least to me— just too distracting to attempt to tough it out and finish this book.
Although she's been highly recommended, I've never read anything by Ms. Kiernan before. If all of her writing is like what I read in "Threshold" I doubt I'll read much more. I can only assume that the folks who recommended this were incredibly high at the time.
The writing was...wow, it was just awful; I imagine that when Ms. Kiernan was a young writer someone noticed her bizarre stream of consciousness style and mash-up adjectives and told her it was "quirky" or "clever". Constantly reading words like "icywet", pastysharp" and "countrydark" starts out as interesting and a little...cute, but quickly becomes "annoyingasfuck". Combined with sentences that run on to paragraph length and you have a combination of silly techniques that are —at least to me— just too distracting to attempt to tough it out and finish this book.
Although she's been highly recommended, I've never read anything by Ms. Kiernan before. If all of her writing is like what I read in "Threshold" I doubt I'll read much more. I can only assume that the folks who recommended this were incredibly high at the time.
July 27, 2015
I always love Kiernan, and am going to go 4.5 stars on this one. As always, her approach is unique (trilobite palentology and elder things) and her characters flawed but relatable. There were scares, and gore, and an actual resolution of the main journey. My only complaint is that Kiernan's generally beautiful prose is still a tiny bit of a work-in-progress in this early novel, and she sprinkles the text with dozens of quasi-Joycean portmanteu words, which I found drew unnecessary attention to themselves. (They were seriously distracting.)
Otherwise, yes, please.
Otherwise, yes, please.
April 4, 2020
Didn't finish it. Die Sprache war schon magisch, aber inhaltlich hat es mich gar nicht gefesselt.
April 4, 2024
This is really slow-burn horror, but I do enjoy swimming around in Kiernan's wondrously strange prose. In this early novel, they have a habit of combining two adjectives into one - it gives the prose a unique, slightly rambling, off-kilter feel. That said, it is slow and dense and kind of a slog to get through.
Chance has recently lost a couple of people in her life and her grieving is interrupted by the arrival of an unhoused teenager named Dancy Flammarion. Dancy claims that she was sent by angels to fight monsters and manages to convince Chance's ex, Deacon - who has some psychic abilities of his own. Dancy insists that she needs Chance's help to defeat . . . something. But the book isn't about Dancy fighting monsters.
Threshold is 90% stream-of-consciousness character study of some very depressed and traumatized people. It's not bad and I always enjoy Kiernan's prose, but it is a little exhausting by the end. Not my favorite of their work.
Chance has recently lost a couple of people in her life and her grieving is interrupted by the arrival of an unhoused teenager named Dancy Flammarion. Dancy claims that she was sent by angels to fight monsters and manages to convince Chance's ex, Deacon - who has some psychic abilities of his own. Dancy insists that she needs Chance's help to defeat . . . something. But the book isn't about Dancy fighting monsters.
Threshold is 90% stream-of-consciousness character study of some very depressed and traumatized people. It's not bad and I always enjoy Kiernan's prose, but it is a little exhausting by the end. Not my favorite of their work.
October 12, 2012
I'll go ahead and say it--this book was awful.
I'd had Kiernan's stories recommended to me before, since I'm a huge Lovecraft fan. Daughter Of Hounds was the one most frequently mentioned, but at the time I was living in Japan and didn't have easy access to an English library or an English bookstore that was likely to have any of her books, but through the services of Bookmooch I managed to get a copy of Threshold.
It's about Chance and Deacon's relationship. Or maybe it's about monsters? If the monsters exist. And fossils. It's not really plot-driven, because very little happens during the book and the ending isn't a payoff so much as the bag ripping and all the money spilling out, and it's not character-driven, because no one changes and it's impossible to tell if large parts of the book are hallucinations or dreams or, indeed, if most of the events depicted even happened. It feels like the ho-hum first third of a larger novel until you realize that the tension that's building is the last 20% of the book and then it just ends.
Another huge problem I had was the invented adjectives. Kiernan constantly squashes together two words to make a new adjective like "whisperquiet" or "countrydark." This is somewhat evocative, but the problem I ran into is that every single time I saw one of these, it ripped me right out of the story and reminded me that I was reading a book. Obviously, this was already known to me, but for a horror novel that's mostly relying on drawing me into the mood, slamming my head into the text over and over again was a terrible way to go about it.
Save time and read Daughter of Hounds instead.
I'd had Kiernan's stories recommended to me before, since I'm a huge Lovecraft fan. Daughter Of Hounds was the one most frequently mentioned, but at the time I was living in Japan and didn't have easy access to an English library or an English bookstore that was likely to have any of her books, but through the services of Bookmooch I managed to get a copy of Threshold.
It's about Chance and Deacon's relationship. Or maybe it's about monsters? If the monsters exist. And fossils. It's not really plot-driven, because very little happens during the book and the ending isn't a payoff so much as the bag ripping and all the money spilling out, and it's not character-driven, because no one changes and it's impossible to tell if large parts of the book are hallucinations or dreams or, indeed, if most of the events depicted even happened. It feels like the ho-hum first third of a larger novel until you realize that the tension that's building is the last 20% of the book and then it just ends.
Another huge problem I had was the invented adjectives. Kiernan constantly squashes together two words to make a new adjective like "whisperquiet" or "countrydark." This is somewhat evocative, but the problem I ran into is that every single time I saw one of these, it ripped me right out of the story and reminded me that I was reading a book. Obviously, this was already known to me, but for a horror novel that's mostly relying on drawing me into the mood, slamming my head into the text over and over again was a terrible way to go about it.
Save time and read Daughter of Hounds instead.
October 19, 2011
Chance is grieving after the death of her grandfather and is disturbed by the arrival of a strange girl who seems to know too much about her life. She claims to be an angel and wants Chance to help her destroy something evil.
*Yawn* This was not a good book in my opinion. There was nothing to like about Chance. In the prologue she and her friends are drug taking, for the rest of what I read she was drunk most of the time, and she was forgiving her boyfriend and best friend who were sleeping together. Pretty spineless girl all in all.
The plot was baffling. The prologue was totally incomprehensible. Half of each chapter was the full depressing description of suicides, funerals and being cheated on, while the other half were baffling dream sequences with the same themes. Meanwhile Dancy's journey full of steriotype religious busybodies being insulted for trying to help her and 'weird stuff happening' leads her to our lovely heroine and more pages of useless chat about nothing that you are interested in reading. By the time we get to the next chapter where the cheating ex-boyfriend gets into a fight with a guy who has anti Jewish, constant swearing and anti-gay comments coming out his mouth for two solid pages, I'd had more than enough.
There was no clever dialogue and storytelling here, just as much offensive behaviour and language as the author can cram into 50 pages that I suffered through. Adult language and themes in books are ok with me but not at the expense of a good story or just shoved in when the writer can't think of anything interesting to have her characters say or do. It's not clever or entertaining just pretty damn boring!
*Yawn* This was not a good book in my opinion. There was nothing to like about Chance. In the prologue she and her friends are drug taking, for the rest of what I read she was drunk most of the time, and she was forgiving her boyfriend and best friend who were sleeping together. Pretty spineless girl all in all.
The plot was baffling. The prologue was totally incomprehensible. Half of each chapter was the full depressing description of suicides, funerals and being cheated on, while the other half were baffling dream sequences with the same themes. Meanwhile Dancy's journey full of steriotype religious busybodies being insulted for trying to help her and 'weird stuff happening' leads her to our lovely heroine and more pages of useless chat about nothing that you are interested in reading. By the time we get to the next chapter where the cheating ex-boyfriend gets into a fight with a guy who has anti Jewish, constant swearing and anti-gay comments coming out his mouth for two solid pages, I'd had more than enough.
There was no clever dialogue and storytelling here, just as much offensive behaviour and language as the author can cram into 50 pages that I suffered through. Adult language and themes in books are ok with me but not at the expense of a good story or just shoved in when the writer can't think of anything interesting to have her characters say or do. It's not clever or entertaining just pretty damn boring!
June 20, 2020
I love Caitlín Kiernan. She's amazing and her writing's always so beautiful. I just can't resist that. I mean, she usually writes about monsters, not really my kind of thing because although I love horror I'm more into ghosts and less concrete things, yet she does so exquisitely, diving into the old old night to bring her creatures to our world of chiaroscuro and dancing shadows and it's just chilling and feels so real, reminding me a bit of Lovecraft sometimes, with her tentacled forgotten gods and fallen angels, trilobites, ancient trees and earth or ocean's depths, all the geological, paleontological details so captivating. And her characters are always such tormented, dark souls. I know some people find the stories too depressive or angsty, but I really connect to that somehow. I mean, I even dreamt about this one, with the dicranarus and the dark, moist heart of unspoken mountains.
Still, even though I loved it, I think this one is my less favorite book I've read of her so far.
It revolves about Chance, a woman who's had a rough life, losing her parents in a car accident as a child, then her grandma that lives with her kills herself, then her best friend does the same and following closely she loses her grandad to a heart attack. She's struggling with all that loss when an albino girl approaches her and strange things start to happen that might be related to some events that happened years ago.
Still, even though I loved it, I think this one is my less favorite book I've read of her so far.
It revolves about Chance, a woman who's had a rough life, losing her parents in a car accident as a child, then her grandma that lives with her kills herself, then her best friend does the same and following closely she loses her grandad to a heart attack. She's struggling with all that loss when an albino girl approaches her and strange things start to happen that might be related to some events that happened years ago.
June 28, 2011
I wanted so badly to like this book. I really did. But I'd actually give it a 2 1/2 stars if I could because it was very disappointing.
I wanted to like it because the author is a great writer. I will not deny her that. Her writing is very poetic and fluid, especially for this genre. I liked that she actually had whole, lengthy and intelligent paragraphs rather than just a few sentences here and there that you lost some brain cells on as you were reading.
But alas, she failed to satisfy me. In fact, it was really upsetting how she ended the book.
When I was in college it was mentioned that the easiest bail-out for a story is ending it as a dream. And that's exactly what she did. It cheats the reader. It just says, hey, you wasted time thinking this was worth investing your time.
She also took a very long time to get to any sort of point and collaberation of events. I was more than half way through the book before things started to shape together. It was as if she was quickly reminded that the book must, in fact, end so she slapped together an 'oh she was dreaming' finale and there ya go.
If I could rate myself, I'd give myself four stars simply for finishing the book.
I want to say that her writing style will pursuade me into reading her other books, but I think I will need a few good reads (ha ha) before I attempt her again.
I wanted to like it because the author is a great writer. I will not deny her that. Her writing is very poetic and fluid, especially for this genre. I liked that she actually had whole, lengthy and intelligent paragraphs rather than just a few sentences here and there that you lost some brain cells on as you were reading.
But alas, she failed to satisfy me. In fact, it was really upsetting how she ended the book.
When I was in college it was mentioned that the easiest bail-out for a story is ending it as a dream. And that's exactly what she did. It cheats the reader. It just says, hey, you wasted time thinking this was worth investing your time.
She also took a very long time to get to any sort of point and collaberation of events. I was more than half way through the book before things started to shape together. It was as if she was quickly reminded that the book must, in fact, end so she slapped together an 'oh she was dreaming' finale and there ya go.
If I could rate myself, I'd give myself four stars simply for finishing the book.
I want to say that her writing style will pursuade me into reading her other books, but I think I will need a few good reads (ha ha) before I attempt her again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 8, 2013
A wonderfully sad, poetic, and disturbing horror novel. Dark and ambiguous, richly literate. Populated with damaged people who will never really be healed and horrors that we can't completely understand. Strongly Lovecraftian in underlying philosophy but with contemporary gonzo sensibilities that would not be out of place in something from Warren Ellis or David Wong's John Dies at the End.
June 21, 2007
THis book was so depressing, I didn't make it past the second chapter
December 8, 2008
I found reading this book a long and often boring process. Neither the characters nor the story left a lasting impression.
October 17, 2022
It is a very hard novel to get into. Between the present tense and the constant jumping in time (you are never sure if you are in the past, in the present or in someone's dreams until you get to something that gives you a clue), the story seems almost jumbled. And yet, once you get used to the constant change and get used to the style, it actually somehow works.
Chance Matthews had just lost her grandfather - the last family member she had left - and all she wants it to be left alone to grieve. What she definitely does not want is an albino girl, who claims to be able to see monsters, and Chance's old boyfriend (and his new paramour) to show up at her door talking about secrets, monsters and evil. But of course the universe does not work on her schedule so she needs to deal with all of them. She is a paleontologist, she believes in science and sanity. All that talk about monsters sounds like someone's mental breakdown and not like something she needs to pay attention to. Although there is this incident in the past and the girl knows things which supposedly only Chance knew.
That's how this story starts. And then it gets weird. Kiernan is a trained paleontologist and she blends her science with some Lovecraftian horror to create something almost unexpected. Add a connection to some old literature and a few deaths and you really want to know where this whole story is going.
It is not a perfect novel - it is an early novel and it shows. It could have used some tightening, especially in the middle parts. The constant jumping around and revelations from the past can get a bit tiring (in a few places I wondered if I missed something or if it really feels as if she needed something in the past for the story to work so it just got thrown into the mix) and more than once I wish she had left some of the characters' self-pity out of the story - by the end it got tiresome.
And yet at the end I liked the book quite a lot. The slow storytelling works well with the time jumps so it almost blends together.
Kiernan wrote quite a lot of stories about Dancy Flammarion, the albino girl who kickstarted the whole story here. She also wrote at least one more novel about Chance. The novel may be flawed but it made me want to read more about its characters. And what more can a writer ask for?
Chance Matthews had just lost her grandfather - the last family member she had left - and all she wants it to be left alone to grieve. What she definitely does not want is an albino girl, who claims to be able to see monsters, and Chance's old boyfriend (and his new paramour) to show up at her door talking about secrets, monsters and evil. But of course the universe does not work on her schedule so she needs to deal with all of them. She is a paleontologist, she believes in science and sanity. All that talk about monsters sounds like someone's mental breakdown and not like something she needs to pay attention to. Although there is this incident in the past and the girl knows things which supposedly only Chance knew.
That's how this story starts. And then it gets weird. Kiernan is a trained paleontologist and she blends her science with some Lovecraftian horror to create something almost unexpected. Add a connection to some old literature and a few deaths and you really want to know where this whole story is going.
It is not a perfect novel - it is an early novel and it shows. It could have used some tightening, especially in the middle parts. The constant jumping around and revelations from the past can get a bit tiring (in a few places I wondered if I missed something or if it really feels as if she needed something in the past for the story to work so it just got thrown into the mix) and more than once I wish she had left some of the characters' self-pity out of the story - by the end it got tiresome.
And yet at the end I liked the book quite a lot. The slow storytelling works well with the time jumps so it almost blends together.
Kiernan wrote quite a lot of stories about Dancy Flammarion, the albino girl who kickstarted the whole story here. She also wrote at least one more novel about Chance. The novel may be flawed but it made me want to read more about its characters. And what more can a writer ask for?
November 28, 2019
Caitlín R. Kiernan’s second novel doesn’t read like a sophomore effort. Threshold is a careful, subtle descent from normal day-to-day life in Birmingham, Alabama, into a bottomless, lightless reality where the laws of nature we hold to be inviolable are as flimsy as balsa wood.
Three years ago, protagonist Chance Matthews, her then boyfriend Deacon Silvey, and her friend Elise got stoned, and for a lark, broke into Birmingham’s water works, situated deep in Red Mountain. What happened there is a black hole in Chance’s memory, but she has more important concerns. Days after Elise commits suicide, Chance’s grandfather suffers a fatal heart attack, leaving her alone in their family home at the top of Red Mountain. A hard-headed Invertebrate Paleontologist, just like her late grandmother, Esther Matthews, she is not prepared for teenage albino runaway, Dancy Flammarion. After all, Chance is still deep in the throes of grief when the girl waylays her in the library, apparently knowing that they would meet in that very place, at that very moment, even though Dancy has just arrived in town from the swamps of Florida.
Desperate to convince Chance that they have something important to do, she also drags Deacon and his current girlfriend, Sadie Jasper, into her very strange orbit. Once the four are together, Dancy reveals her urgent secret: she can see monsters, she hunts and kills them, and she has a small jar with a severed finger in solution to prove it.
Despite their skepticism, Dancy unerringly leads the three to an unmarked crate in Chance’s own house. The contents are the final, unfinished work of Esther Matthews: a journal, a piece of hematite with an impossibility embedded in it, and a small bottle with a sample of something indescribable. As Chance investigates these things, something awakens in Birmingham, something that will do absolutely anything to keep the crate, the history of Chance’s family, and all four of these investigators silent. Forever.
Caitlín Kiernan takes us on a five-hundred-million year odyssey through deep time, and gradually, with dreadful precision, tumbles us into a horror older than man, older than the great saurians that once walked the Earth.
Threshold is a work of Lovecraftian, cosmic proportions, and Caitlín Kiernan is already a master of the supernatural with this second novel.
Three years ago, protagonist Chance Matthews, her then boyfriend Deacon Silvey, and her friend Elise got stoned, and for a lark, broke into Birmingham’s water works, situated deep in Red Mountain. What happened there is a black hole in Chance’s memory, but she has more important concerns. Days after Elise commits suicide, Chance’s grandfather suffers a fatal heart attack, leaving her alone in their family home at the top of Red Mountain. A hard-headed Invertebrate Paleontologist, just like her late grandmother, Esther Matthews, she is not prepared for teenage albino runaway, Dancy Flammarion. After all, Chance is still deep in the throes of grief when the girl waylays her in the library, apparently knowing that they would meet in that very place, at that very moment, even though Dancy has just arrived in town from the swamps of Florida.
Desperate to convince Chance that they have something important to do, she also drags Deacon and his current girlfriend, Sadie Jasper, into her very strange orbit. Once the four are together, Dancy reveals her urgent secret: she can see monsters, she hunts and kills them, and she has a small jar with a severed finger in solution to prove it.
Despite their skepticism, Dancy unerringly leads the three to an unmarked crate in Chance’s own house. The contents are the final, unfinished work of Esther Matthews: a journal, a piece of hematite with an impossibility embedded in it, and a small bottle with a sample of something indescribable. As Chance investigates these things, something awakens in Birmingham, something that will do absolutely anything to keep the crate, the history of Chance’s family, and all four of these investigators silent. Forever.
Caitlín Kiernan takes us on a five-hundred-million year odyssey through deep time, and gradually, with dreadful precision, tumbles us into a horror older than man, older than the great saurians that once walked the Earth.
Threshold is a work of Lovecraftian, cosmic proportions, and Caitlín Kiernan is already a master of the supernatural with this second novel.
July 2, 2023
This is definitely going to be someone's favorite book. It feels utterly like a nightmare starting with the dreamlike words that Kiernan piles on top of each other in a stream-of-consciousness style and ending with the disjointed narrative that hops around in time. The trilobite "dicranurus" was mentioned frequently and looking at pictures of it is pure nightmare fuel.
Unfortunately, the story also suffers from the kind of logic one would find in a nightmare. The characters waste entirely too much time sitting around, thinking deep thoughts, retreading the same fears, going over the same monstrous shape over and over and over and over.
Dancy, Chance, and Deacon feel interchangeable: all miserable people with tragic backstories and "special" gifts that they can't deal with. Sadie was the only character that felt fleshed out with motivations and dreams and ideals. She should have been the main character, however she was not.
Other people mentioned the ending, but I'm going to go ahead and spoil it for anyone interested. So, if you're expecting a satisfying resolution, I don't think you'll find it here.
The whole book was a nightmare, in the best way and in the worst way all at once. I'm happy to wake up. 3/5
PS: The summary of this book was complete false advertising. Do not read this book expecting anything like the plot synopsis.
Unfortunately, the story also suffers from the kind of logic one would find in a nightmare. The characters waste entirely too much time sitting around, thinking deep thoughts, retreading the same fears, going over the same monstrous shape over and over and over and over.
Dancy, Chance, and Deacon feel interchangeable: all miserable people with tragic backstories and "special" gifts that they can't deal with. Sadie was the only character that felt fleshed out with motivations and dreams and ideals. She should have been the main character, however she was not.
Other people mentioned the ending, but I'm going to go ahead and spoil it for anyone interested. So, if you're expecting a satisfying resolution, I don't think you'll find it here.
The whole book was a nightmare, in the best way and in the worst way all at once. I'm happy to wake up. 3/5
PS: The summary of this book was complete false advertising. Do not read this book expecting anything like the plot synopsis.
November 2, 2022
This book is an assault on the English language. Whether it's the exhausting run-on sentences, the egregious use of "and" to wrap together clauses that have nothing to do with one another, or the absolutely incessant welding together of words like "icywet" or "plasticfalse," Threshold is legitimately painful to read. Open to any random page, and you can find examples of all of this in no time at all--sometimes all in the same damn sentence. e.g. " ' You can't change what happened,' and the dark blood from Elise's wrists has made a big, stickydamp stain on the carpet at her feet, and that's when Deacon always gets up to close the windows, never mind the heat because they can all hear the birds at the windows, the frightened birds trying to get in, and 'You're only making it harder,' Elise says." [sic]
For crying out loud, I can't imagine there's an English teacher in the country who would've let this kind of crap pass their desks without a "see me after class" note attached. I usually give DNFs at least two stars, in acknowledgement of the possibility that things could feasibly improve past the point where I stopped reading. But after 20 pages into Threshold, I think I could count the number of paragraphs that don't include at least one instance of Kiernan's atrocious affectations on my fingers--and likely have a few left over. That is to say, this book is one of the worst things I've ever tried to sit through, and worthlesstrash should have been neverpublished.
See? I can vomit out word salad, too.
For crying out loud, I can't imagine there's an English teacher in the country who would've let this kind of crap pass their desks without a "see me after class" note attached. I usually give DNFs at least two stars, in acknowledgement of the possibility that things could feasibly improve past the point where I stopped reading. But after 20 pages into Threshold, I think I could count the number of paragraphs that don't include at least one instance of Kiernan's atrocious affectations on my fingers--and likely have a few left over. That is to say, this book is one of the worst things I've ever tried to sit through, and worthlesstrash should have been neverpublished.
See? I can vomit out word salad, too.
March 2, 2023
Kiernan's second novel which is infused with her knowledge and passion of palaeontology and Birmingham, Alabama. This is a solid, modern Lovecraftian tale without the florid excesses characteristic of Lovecraft and some other Mythos writers. It is the first in Kiernan's Chance Matthews series of books.
Anomalies in the fossil record, a female protagnist with a complicated personal life, her psychic ex-boyfriend, and an albino teen-age girl who needs help from Chance with fighting "monsters". This is the essential elements of the novel. Some folks may find it slow since Kiernan goes heavily into character development.
Kiernan's writing style is a bit different, at least for me. I'm much more a Hemingwayesque style reader, though Tolkien is an exception to this. She can construct a lengthy paragraph and it is really only one or two sentences. No, nothing experimental in writing, just a clever use of commas and semi-colons. Take for example this sentence: "And at some point all the lights were turned out, sixty blindperfect seconds so that everyone would know how dark the cave really was, how absolute and complete that blackness, and she hel desperately onto her mother, feeling dank and insubstantial teeth sink through her skin, all the way to her bones." Perhaps, I'll make an exception for Kiernan as to the writing styles I like...
Anomalies in the fossil record, a female protagnist with a complicated personal life, her psychic ex-boyfriend, and an albino teen-age girl who needs help from Chance with fighting "monsters". This is the essential elements of the novel. Some folks may find it slow since Kiernan goes heavily into character development.
Kiernan's writing style is a bit different, at least for me. I'm much more a Hemingwayesque style reader, though Tolkien is an exception to this. She can construct a lengthy paragraph and it is really only one or two sentences. No, nothing experimental in writing, just a clever use of commas and semi-colons. Take for example this sentence: "And at some point all the lights were turned out, sixty blindperfect seconds so that everyone would know how dark the cave really was, how absolute and complete that blackness, and she hel desperately onto her mother, feeling dank and insubstantial teeth sink through her skin, all the way to her bones." Perhaps, I'll make an exception for Kiernan as to the writing styles I like...
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