Customer Reviews

Low Red Moon

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In "Wuthering Heights," Catherine Earnshaw says she's had dreams that have gone through her like wine through water, and changed the color of her mind. Reading Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Low Red Moon" was a similar experience, only, unlike a dream, it can be repeated for enjoyment again and again. This story doesn't just stay with you, it takes up permanent residence in your head and makes you see differently.

Although this book is a sequel, of sorts, to Kiernan's novel "Threshold," it's quite possible you can read and enjoy it without having heard of the earlier book. However, if you have, it's like adding another dimension on top of our mundane three; it's almost bizarrely bruising to keep running into details -- seemingly the "wrong" details -- from "Threshold" (there's that tunnel) -- a strong sense not of parallel universes, but ghostly neverworlds, paths not taken, what-could-have-been bumping up against what-is (or is it?) and even in some cases influencing it. (And then there are some dreadfully unsettling echoes, like just one phrase -- "little pig?" -- that made me a little sorry I was finishing the novel at night.)

It's difficult to write specifically about the plot in a review, not just for fear of spoilers, but because the idea of what might have been and never will be has a metaphorical thrust in the book, as in "Threshold." We meet Deacon Silvey, and Chance, and Sadie, from the previous book, but although they remain the same -- or are they? -- their relationships to each other have changed to the point where Chance is eight months pregnant and Deacon has sobered up (his struggle with liquor is beautifully, nerve-wrackingly done). But just as in Threshold, they begin to be pursued by extreme, elemental, ferocious forces, only rather than coming from the depths of the earth or outer space, this dark power wells up from the human heart.

The book is heartbreakingly sad, but not tragic. While I was finishing the final pages, there was a sort of tidal crash of mourning that seemed to "come out of nowhere" (but which had obviously been built up carefully throughout the first pages and first words). There are all kinds of fantastic little details about "the real world," beautifully done shards of reality you don't find in most modern "realistic" novels -- the sense you get is of a real world being created, and cherished; the making, remembering, as an act of love. And this book is really about the power of love, sort of the way Silk was, except that was nearly a negative proof -- about the loss of love, or the failure of the promise of love -- where this book is a positive one -- about what love can do. Trust me on this one-- like "King Lear," this story's really about love, and the harm, and healing, and hope, that love bears.

This isn't to say the book is weepy, or dull, or slow; on the contrary, it's even more fast-paced than Threshold, filled with all kinds of funny lines and sharp observations and real people. From about about the beginning of Part II on I began to have a Foreboding that Things Were Not Going To Turn Out Quite All Right, accented by the deep bass-notes of sorrow Kiernan wrings out of the plot. It was like the first time I read through "The Return of the King," and realized: Even if they get up Mt. Doom, and throw the Ring into the fire, even if they both live, things are....not going to Be All Right here. There is a Price. And yes, I did CRY at one point.* I couldn't help it. I bet when you get there you'll cry too.

Kiernan is the enviable kind of writer who keeps getting better and better with each book -- this is her best-written yet -- tight, sharp, exciting, but with all kinds of gentle details and asides and world-building. Debates have already been held about whether or not it's "as," or "more," frightening than Threshold; for me, it was more heartrending than any of her other books I've read, containing a deep kind of terror and grievous acceptance of the prices we pay ("Grief is the price we pay for love," as the Queen said on the Princess' death) that makes it more realistic and adult and about "real life" than, again, most modern, mundane this-is-the-American-experience-as-we-live-it-right-now "fiction," which often seems terrified of the inventive power of fiction itself.

In short, it's gorgeous, and harrowing, and one of the books of the year, in any and all genres.

*"I wish it didn't have to end this way....I wish the story could have a better ending. I wish it could end, 'And then they all left the tunnel, went home and never met another monster and lived happily ever after.'"

"That would be a fine story," Chance tells her. "That would be a very fine story."

The protagonists of Threshold return in a very different story, an original and chilling take on werewolves. Low Red Moon stands alone; you don't have to have read Threshold to understand it.

It's interesting to watch an author learn and develop skills. Kiernan's writing has improved dramatically since her first published novel, Silk; there are still shiny stylistic twists, but there's also a solid, high-tension plot (better paced than Threshold) and well-realized, believable characters.

Many things are well done here: the sentence-level writing, the way the dark secrets hidden at the book's center are revealed just enough to make sense, but not enough to lose their effect. Narcissa, the "villain", is a complex character in her own right. The story's resolution will not please readers who want happy endings, but I liked it.

I wanted more of the paleontology, wanted it worked into the story (which it is in Threshold more than in this book) rather than just being a character trait - it's interesting, original and has lots of horror potential.

It's really good to know that someone is writing intelligent, stylish New Horror. I recommend this book.

When a psychic tracks down a serial killer and saves a victim most would call it a job well done. But for Deacon Silvey it turns into a nightmare. Asked to do a favor for the Birmingham police, Deacon becomes the target of a dark hunt, facing both the revenge of the old ones and the hopes of another killer to fulfill a dream of ascension. Had he been the only target, Deacon might have been able to stand firm, but the demon with yellow eyes has a ritual to perform - on those that Deacon loves.

Deacon is an ex-alcoholic, trying to start a new life with Chance, his very pregnant young wife. When he seeks help with the dark visions that have begun to plague him, death follows his trail. Chance is a practical woman and a scientist - a paleontologist. She barely believes in her husbands powers and now finds she is having visions of her own. She is torn between her own bloody nightmares and her fears that Deacon will succumb to his own demons. A deep wedge is being driven between them and only catastrophe can follow.

My first encounter with Caitlen Kiernan was Silk, her freshman novel. While chilling and interesting in its own right, Silk pales beside Low Red Moon, Kiernan's third. The events of this novel would be terrifying on their own, but Kiernan has learned to blend subconscious fears and a modern mythology with echoes of Lovecraft into a concoction as suspenseful and doom-filled as anything I've read in years.

Dream and reality crisscross in splashes of blood, characters refuse to follow any stereotype, and the Southern gothic horror story gets an infusion of new ideas. Kiernan displays a command of language that transcends her chosen genre. The reader, of course, is the beneficiary, nose buried in a book that is both too chilling to read and impossible to put down. If this is your introduction to Kiernan, brace yourself, you will soon be hunting up everything she has written.

The moody and impressionistic "Low Red Moon," is Caitlin R. Kiernan's third, and best novel yet. This time out she brings back many of the Southern Gothic Birmingham characters from her previous novels and introduces them to an escapee from Lovecraft country, serial killer and psychotic Narcissa Snow. She wants to please and appease folks you would definitely not want to invite to your place.

But Narcissa, arrested adolescent that she is, wants to be in with this ghoulish in crowd (they apparently are headquartered in a strange house in Providence) and so she sets off Southward to Birmingham on a killing spree (all the while listening in her head to the voices of the people she killed), and an attempt to steal the baby of eight-month-pregnant Chance, from "Threshold," who's now married to recovering alcoholic Deacon Silvey. Narcissa wants to give the baby over to the in crowd as a ticket of admission. After many surprises, the chilling finale takes place back north in Lovecraft country as the sun sets and that low red moon rises on Halloween Night, 2001 a night when, as Ms. Kiernan assures us in her note in the front, the moon actually was full.

The author expertly blends standard slasheriana (Don't go out for a cigarette, Alice! Why isn't there a police car at the rear entrance? Will you just hear the guy out before punching him in the nose, Deacon? A dark and stormy night? Oh oh!) with her own unique visions and her intoxicating prose style (she writes of "old-fashioned lampposts along the street, gaslights with electric hearts") and brews up something rich and strange, fresh and piquant. She knows the concoction calls for certain required elements, but her garnishments are what make the difference. Its flavor will leave you spellbound.

Notes and asides: On p. 18 you'll learn why Ms. Kiernan has abandoned her trademark technique of running words together. The Low Red Moon, occurring as it does on the last day of the month, was also a blue moon. Not for children under 13.

I just finished Low Red Moon, and all I have to say is wow! I thoroughly enjoyed Silk, and thought that this one was even better. Kiernan's command of the English language and her skill in description are amazing. I'm not sure what the writing process was like, but I can say how I felt about the reading of this book. It's like a fever dream, and there's always something coming up around the bend. With Kiernan's books, I find myself itching to read the whole thing all at once. I can't wait to see what the next work holds.

After reading "Bradbury Weather" in Subterranean magazine, I decided I wanted to have a closer look at Caitlín R. Kiernan's fiction. After some consideration, I picked up Low Red Moon from a local bookstore and read it through. I was enthralled, having a harder and harder time putting it down the farther I got into the work.

First off, the present tense narrative threw me in the beginning. Modern fiction conditions the reader to read in the past tense so when I started reading the book; it was difficult and slow. However, it worked well with the flashback being in past tense. The changes in tense gave the reader a definite indicator when they were in the story. I overcame the tense issue about 50 pages in and was reading at full speed.

Another problem I had, which is entirely with me, was I was trying to define what Narcissa was. At first, taking a hint from the title, I thought she was a werewolf. Then I began to doubt that, thinking that perhaps she was a ghoul. I knew Kiernan had steeped her story in Lovecraftian Mythos and because I knew that, I tried to drop the character into a preconceived hole. Needless to say, the she did not fit in any holes, but she was still an enjoyable and very flawed character.

The story is well told over all. The pacing. I enjoyed Detective Downs, Starling Jane and Scarborough Pentecost. The description was overwrought at times, but it did not slow the story too much. Her world was also well thought out and not fully explained - which is good. I liked how she pioneered her own mythos, not falling into the worn ruts that modern fiction and role-playing games have made.

I do have to say, I found the ending was too sketchy. I understand why the scenes seem to skip was characters fade in and out of consciousness and action. However, I am interested in exactly how Deacon left the tunnel with the baby. I did not expect it to be an easy thing and with leaving it out of the story, it detracted from it.

I would definitely recommend this story to friends interested in fantasy, horror or the Lovecraftian vein (in fact, I already have). Kiernan has a very distinct style, and I look forward to reading future works from her.

Caitlin R. Kiernan is one of the rising stars of horror, and her literary prowess is once again on display in her novel Low Red Moon. Not only is the story a most unpredictable of sequels to her highly acclaimed novel Threshold: A Novel of Deep Time, it is streaked with deadly slashes of originality. Whereas Threshold was rooted in a neo-Gothic Lovecraftian universe, Low Red Moon is a more conventional tale brandishing a fascinating, intriguing, yet slightly incomprehensible source of evil. We first meet murderess Narcissa Snow sitting in a hotel room that she has remade into a bloody chamber of horrors, arguing with the voices of a lifetime of victims as she waits fervently for a phone call. We are given strange glimpses of a dark fellowship which Narcissa is determined to join, and it soon becomes clear that whatever horror she will unleash in these pages is done in pursuit of that one goal, a desire to belong in a group of indefinable monsters somewhere in a yellow house in Providence.

After dipping our toes in the bloody pool of this sadistic killer's persona, the scene shifts to Birmingham, Alabama, where Deacon Silvey and Chance Matthews, the primary characters in Kiernan's earlier novel Threshold, are married and expecting a child. Theirs is a most unconventional of partnerships: Chance is a learned paleontologist and Deacon is an unemployed recovering alcoholic and reluctant psychic. Against his wishes, Deacon finds himself being consulted by the local police on a series of recent murders. Not only can Deacon "see" the murders as they were committed, he in turn can be seen in those visions by the killer and is made to understand that she comes seeking him.

A strange man and teenaged girl only thicken the plot, for they come to Deacon in search of the woman they know is searching for him. Deacon is never sure whom to trust or believe, but he does know that his pregnant wife is in danger as long as this killer is on the loose. I have to admit I found several aspects of this novel confusing, and my enjoyment of the story was limited somewhat by the fact that I simply did not like a single character in these pages. Deacon is an inscrutable man, keeping secrets from the police, his wife, and (when he can do it) himself, and he is constantly on the verge of giving up and retreating back into alcoholism. Toward the end of the novel, some of Deacon's actions and thoughts struck me as remarkable if not incomprehensible, further damaging the rather low opinion I already had of him. His wife Chance is far less complicated but even harder to like, constantly nagging Deacon about his involvement in psychic matters she puts no stock in; if there is love in this relationship, it is not easy to find.

As far as the plot goes, I feel as if I'm missing a few pieces to the puzzle. Narcissa Snow is a fascinating, truly disturbing murderess, yet her reasons for all the bad things she did never made complete sense to me, and one possible aspect of her identity felt completely out of place in the context of the novel. The conclusion, for its part, works pretty well, maintaining the darkness which seems to brood over the entire novel. The epilogue does not completely succeed in pulling together some of the disparate storylines of the preceding pages, but it does make an honest, appropriately subtle attempt.

Low Red Moon seemed to hang over my imagination like a death shroud, mimicking in some small way the effects of Deacon's constant migraines on his well-being. This is simply a dark tale that likes to skip rocks across the lake of hopelessness. A sense of gloom and doom is appropriate to the tale being told, but a cast of characters who do not, in my perception, share a single spark of life among them made this otherwise compelling read something to be endured as well as enjoyed.

Low Red Moon shows us a writer at the top of her game. Caitlin Kiernan has written consistently high quality books, but here she surpasses all expectation.
A dark, and genuinly terrifying tale, weaving the battles against epic evils and the no less harrowing ones against daily life, like alcoholism, and domestic responsibility. I could not put this book down.
Also, though technically a sequel to 'Threshold', this story stands so well alone, that I would recommending reading it immediately, and then going back for Threshold, if you haven't read it already.
This is the best book I have read this year.

I tried to take my time and savor this book. The writing is lucid and streamlined, easier to get lost in than some of Caitlin's other writing (for whatever that's worth). I'd recommend reading Caitlin Kiernan's other work first, simply because numerous tidbits from other books make cameo appearances and I always enjoy that sort of thing, it adds another dimension to the story. Not to say that Low Red Moon doesn't stand on it's own- it certainly does, and I'd say this is probably the best novel from Caitlin Kiernan so far.

One of the most interesting facets in this book is the portrait of Chance and Deacon's relationship. Their marriage is one of those that seems quite incomprehensible- they hide things from each other, are short with and unpleasant to each other frequently, and generally behave in a extremely believably human fashion. It's the sort of marriage that makes you start psychoanalyzing the two people in it. Why does Chance marry someone who she clearly doesn't respect- and doesn't have much reason to? Why does Deacon stay with someone who denies a huge chunk of his life? It's all quite interesting, and just like life, there are no concrete answers. I might speculate that they're both terrified of being alone, and that Chance kind of enjoys feeling superior to her semi-deadbeat husband, but who knows?

Really, the depth of characterization and wonderfully literate writing style make this a must read.

He's a gifted psychic who gave the police the break they needed to find Mary English, a serial killer who killed fourteen children. Deacon Silvey solved many cases for the Atlanta police before the ugliness he subjected himself to finally wore him out. He was an unemployed drunk living in Birmingham when he met Chance, a young woman on the right side of the tracks who wanted Deacon but only if he gave up the bottle.

They eventually married, the geology professor and the recovering alcoholic and they expect their child to be born in a matter of weeks. Their happy life shatters when serial killer Narcissa Snow enters their lives first through a vision and then in physical form. She wants their child to offer up to the monsters in the hope that they will make her one of their own. When she kidnaps Chance, days before the birth Deacon must rely on an otherworldly being to track Narcissa before she can have his wife and child.

Caitlin R. Kiernan will appeal to readers who like the works of Poppy Z. Brite. She writes dark fantasy where happily ever after is never guaranteed. The protagonist is a dark and brooding Heathcliffe who can act the hero when the need arises and has the inner fortitude to handle the tough breaks fate throws at him. LOW RED MOON is a haunting gothic urban fantasy that will not easily be forgotten.

Harriet Klausner