Customer Reviews

Threshold

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Writing style is interesting, the mood is dark and scary and defininely Lovecraftian, but the characters were a little sparse. Maybe I'm too black and white, but the whole book left me thinking, "What just happened here?"

As a longtime resident of Birmingham, AL, the setting of Caitlin Kiernan's new novel, I was delighted to visit, though her text, many places so familiar too me. Kiernan has a knack for taking the familiar (a park, a book, a street) and casting it in a new and sinister light. Fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Ramsey Campbell, and Clive Barker should give the book a try. Those of us who have been following her work since she first appeared in the early '90s are already familiar with her breathtaking prose and deft characterization, her plots that flow like poisonous honey, but Threshold is a marvelous opportunity for new readers to discover Kiernan's powerful, terrifying writing. This book is truly something wonderful.

I suppose after all of the excellent reviews of this book, I was expecting it to knock my socks off. Well, it didn't. I will admit that the character development was very good, but at the expense of the story. After finishing, it seemed more of an incomplete mystery to me than a horror story. Sure, there were sort of vague references to possible horrific things, and suggestions of badness, but I was expecting a fully fleshed out ending after all of the build-up. There really wasn't any and I'm very disappointed. I think Kiernan has talent, but I doubt I'll ever read anything by her again.

It's always good to see that an author I adore hasn't lost his or her touch. Threshold is proof that Caitlin Kiernan is only getting better, honing her already-considerable talents to a fine edge. I absolutely loved Silk and her short fiction, but Threshold goes one or two steps further in almost every respect. The characters are more sharply drawn, the prose is more accomplished, and the plotting is impeccable. Not to mention that this is a very, very scary book! This time out, Kiernan draws on her background as a paleontologist to weave a tale of timeless horrors that might lurk at the edges of what we believe to be a comprehensible universe, all the while keeping her characters front and center. This is not a book about monsters. It's a book about the effect that monsters might have upon the people who come into contact with them. If you still think Anne Rice, Stephen King, or Clive Barker are the masters of horror, you haven't read Caitlin Kiernan.

In her second novel Kiernan seems to be getting back to her roots, drawing on her background as a paleontologist and her Southerness to create a tale of terror that rivals anything recently produced by the Big Four (King, Koontz, Rice, and Barker). Unlike those more conventional authors, though, Kiernan combines her knack for the uncanny with a lyrical style (a note from the author on the indicia page tells us "This book is best read aloud" and it's the truth) that makes for an alost cinematic immediacy. Reading Kiernan's work is like watching a film made of words and every word is meant to be savored, not merely to move the story forward. She even manages to make Birmingham, Alabama interesting! All in all, Threshold is one of the finest and most honest things I've read in a long time and I can't wait for Caitlin Kiernan's next novel.

Threshold initially intrigued me. I heard good things about this book so I picked it up as soon as I could. After reading a couple of chapters it became apparent that Ms. Kiernan is a talented writer with a knack for good characterization and flowing prose. The initial intrigue wore down almost halfway into the book. I love the slow buildup to whatever cosmic menace is threatening humanity, but this book just didn't deliver.

Some things kept me from enjoying this book, and that led to severe annoyance at times. The first is the constant use of made-up compound words such as icywet; it could be my predjudice, but it smacks of pretension. Also, the motivation of the characters was unbelievable at times. I couldn't believe that Deacon would go to Florida to follow up on a flimsy lead and leave his girlfriend and ex-girlfriend in potential life-threatening danger. Plus the plot line really moved in fits and starts; there were long sections where you're finding out about incidental information, waiting for the story to start again. Finally, the really exciting build up that led to a seriously cliched ending. I was actually raging, walking around the house swearing after I finished this book. I don't get that Ms. Kiernan was writing the kind of book that deliberately denied you a tidy ending. I felt cheated after I finished the epilogue. I don't know if Ms. Kiernan couldn't figure out how to end her book or if she just ran out of ideas, but the ending she chose left me feeling like I'd wasted my time reading the book.

I wouldn't recommend this book, but I'm open to check out what she does next.

Like the Publisher's Weekly review says (you don't have to read it if you don't want to), the most distinctive feature of Caitlin Kiernan's Threshold (and her work in general) is her prose. She has a very dense, descriptive style. It's definitely purple prose, but I agree with the editorial review. The slow, disjointed tone increases the dread, making the book effective. That said, that same style makes the book not for everyone, and its consistency is certainly a weakness. When a frenzied bar fight sounds exactly the same as a quiet examination of fossils, there's something wrong.

Personally, I would have preferred some cutting to the chase. Threshold is a supernatural horror story, more in the vein of Lovecraft than Stephen King, but the actual supernatural horrors don't show up until very late in the story, when they are defeated quickly, but harrowingly. The denouement in particular is puzzling, as it renders a large part of the novel entirely meaningless. The book is an introduction to a setting for more novels (a "threshold", if you will), so the prolonged set up and characterization is probably necessary.

I also have some nits to pick. First of all, Kiernan is fond of inventing compound words (e.g. "dreamsweat" and "angrytired"). This is a clever descriptive method, but its cleverness calls attention to itself and can prove distracting. Second, Kiernan is a paleontologist, which means a good chunk of the book is about the study of extinct creatures. No offense to the paleontologists out there, but paleontology is BORING. Nothing kills excitement than pondering what geological age the remains of an obscure snail belongs to.

All that being said, I liked this book, but I can recognize it's not for everyone. If you enjoy a heavy atmosphere and lost characters, and don't mind a weak supernatural payoff, you'll enjoy this work. If you want a more intense monster hunt, you might want to check out Daughter of Hounds, also by Caitlin Kiernan.

This autumn has given us two spectacular horror novels. First Stephen King and Peter Straub's BLACK HOUSE and now, THRESHOLD by Caitlin R. Kiernan. As a devotee to both the genre and to Miss Kiernan's work (and to literature in general), I recommend THRESHOLD to anyone looking for a novel that's both frightening and intelligent. As she did in her first novel, SILK, Kiernan combines a stunning prose style with keen characterization, for a tale of creepy intensity. Unlike SILK, however, which was primarily concerned with inner demons, THRESHOLD turns its gaze outward and deals with horrors of a more cosmic scale. This novel will keep you turning pages and leave you wanting more.

Well, it's pretty much the best written Cthulhu-mythos story I've ever read, but that's still basically what it is. Bizarre swamp people, ancient subterranean creatures, and angles from beyond space and time mingle in this literary horror novel. It's rather as if Kathe Koja had written _It_.

The literary language use is generally clear and incisive, though I find Kiernan's intensely poetic diction more effective in her short stories (which are exemplary).

Characters are young Goth-ish people; I would have identified with them a lot when I was 21. The nonlinear plot never lost my interest, though I felt disappointment that there wasn't more of a bang at the end.

Of greatest interest here is Kiernan's portrayal of paleontology and the tying in of that with ancient horrors. I thought the paleontology was the most interesting part of the book, and I would have liked much more of it -- I get the feeling that maybe Kiernan felt readers would be bored with too much scientific detail, but personally I would have loved more. The intellectual mystery gets a little lost in the book's artistry -- perhaps inevitable given the right-brain, image-loading writing style, but I wanted to know more about the weird ancient critters, darn it.

A significant horror novel, I think. Recommended.

I've been reading Caitlin R. Kiernan's amazing work since I first stumbled across her short story "Bela's Plot" years ago. Since then, she's given us a steady stream of marvelous dark fiction. Instead of the usual horror cliches, Kiernan's work is fashioning a new mythos, complete with heroes and monsters, gods and demons, the whole thing seen through the expertly fractured lens of her prose. THRESHOLD is the latest addition to Kiernan's ouvre and does not disappoint. Like her literary antecedents - Lovecraft, Poe, Blackwood, Brockton Brown, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, etc. - she is creating a vast and disturbing world from the fragments of our own, one with has the power of refining those things she wishes us to see and understand. THRESHOLD is both terrifying and uplifting, and deserves to be read and cherished by all true admirers of horror fiction.