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A Is for Alien
A is for Alien is award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan's first collection devoted entirely to her science-fiction work. It includes the critically acclaimed novelette Riding the White Bull (chosen for The Year s Best Science Fiction, 22nd Annual Collection), along with seven other tales of a less-than-utopian future. Ranging from the wastelands and mountains of Mars to the streets of a late 21st-Century Manhattan, from the moons of Europa and Saturn to an iceless Antarctica, these tales bring Kiernan s trademark brand of the eco-gothic to bear on what it means to be human and the paths and decisions that may face mankind only a little farther along.
319 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2009
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About the author
Caitlín R. Kiernan
417 books1,666 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 - 24 of 24 reviews
December 30, 2011
Kiernan, it is becoming clear to me, walks a very fine line between the "gothic," as in a literary focus on the sublime found within an oppressively dark atmosphere, and the "gothic," as in teenagers who wear black leather trenchcoats and listen to awful industrial rock and get off on freaking out the squares (parents). I think it's clear where my sympathies lie.
Either way, we have here a relentlessly grim set of (beautifully written!) stories that infuse a science-fictional setting with a kind of pestilential cosmic dread by way of Lovecraft filtered through H. R. Giger. This isn't just a dichotomy of mood, either: these stories also walk a narrative tightrope between a kind of standard SF mode of "realism" (you know what I mean) and a more surrealist expression of dream logic. This interaction is even further mirrored in the subject matter of each story, all of which quite literally involve the infusion of human bodies with nightmarish alien elements- be they actual extraterrestrials, Lovecraftian demonic entities, or simple human technology.
As you might have picked up from the first paragraph, this fixation of Kiernan's on bodies works better at some points than others, hitting rock bottom when (you guessed it) it combines with her "gothic" (the bad kind) "edginess" to produce stories focused on sexual violence as the means to be creepy and shocking. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: can we have a moratorium on that awful, problematic, tiresome tactic, PLEASE?
Riding the White Bull was by far my favorite story in the collection, and incidentally basically a note-for-note transposition of Kiernan's "Houses Under The Sea", which was my first exposure to her writing and what led to me picking up this collection. Both stories revolve around an investigation into some sort of vague disaster, a video recording of which is constantly and hauntingly referred to. They also share a noir-ish tone, but where "Houses" focused on a suicidal water cult, "Riding" deals with the aftermath of some sort of alien plague brought back from Jupiter. This idea of an alien plague that physically deconstructs its victims recurs throughout these stories, as do human-esque androids and machine-esque cyborgs and bio-engineered post-humans, to the point where it isn't entirely clear if they all take place in the same future history or not. Given the similarity of themes and the dreamlike atmosphere of much of this material, though, I guess that doesn't really matter at all.
Faces in Revolving Souls: good, but nothing to blow me away. Society has by and large rejected those who have chosen to refashion their bodies with bits and pieces from various animal species (each becoming a "species of one"), but what happens when a woman attempting to join them is rejected by the new technology itself? Actually the more I think about this one the more annoyed I am by its literal approach to "beautiful unique snowflake" individuality.
Zero Summer had a lot of elements that I enjoyed but they never really converged the way I wanted or expected them to. Another one told in a kind of fragmentary style, wherein the tale of a pair of astronauts realize that they are actually disposable androids is interspersed with the story of the ex-junky from whom the personality of one of the machines was derived.
The Pearl Diver, even more than the previous story, frustrated me with an excellent setup (a woman muddling her way through the day-to-day office drone in a corporate panopticon dystopia) that then disintegrated into a dreamlike experience of salvation (?) ... or something.
In View of Nothing: A woman, having failed in some sort of assassination attempt, is being interrogated by her target. Or is having a nightmare? Or is dead? Who knows? This, I think, is where the combination of realism and nightmare worked best, because the character and narrative were actually slipping back and forth between the two, and the descriptions of the city outside of the room where she was confined were truly nightmarish. Buuuuuuuuut this was also the story where weird rape fantasy stuff starts intruding, ruining the other aspects of this story with disappointingly juvenile teenage goth bullshit. I mean, seriously, you think that presenting a woman being sexually assaulted in some sort of "alluring" manner puts you OUTSIDE of mainstream society?
Ode to Katan Amano: Ugh. This one is about an android sex slave who becomes obsessed with some sort of doll or puppet as an object of salvation. At the time I assumed this was the story most oriented toward the teenage goth "take that mom and dad!" attitude...
A Season of Broken Dolls: ... but I was wrong! This one I didn't even bother finishing, another trans-humanist examination of shocking mutilations and two women living together who actually hate one another and I just couldn't force myself to get through it. Kiernan's tricks were wearing pretty thin by this point.
Bradbury Weather: My second-favorite of the bunch, concerning a woman living on Mars (inexplicably inhabited only by women?) who is looking for her ex-girlfriend, who has left to join some sort of cult dedicated to sacrificing their bodies to yet another alien plague/lifeform that incorporates individual humans as disgusting Giger-esque biomechanical organs, or something. Like "Riding the White Bull," this one really skillfully generates a creepy, despairing atmosphere as the reader is slowly fed clues about the looming extraterrestrial threat even while being guided around these desolate (post-apocalyptic?) communities wherein humans themselves were and are the agents of destruction.
The first and last stories (and maybe "The Pearl Diver") are worthwhile, skip the rest.
Either way, we have here a relentlessly grim set of (beautifully written!) stories that infuse a science-fictional setting with a kind of pestilential cosmic dread by way of Lovecraft filtered through H. R. Giger. This isn't just a dichotomy of mood, either: these stories also walk a narrative tightrope between a kind of standard SF mode of "realism" (you know what I mean) and a more surrealist expression of dream logic. This interaction is even further mirrored in the subject matter of each story, all of which quite literally involve the infusion of human bodies with nightmarish alien elements- be they actual extraterrestrials, Lovecraftian demonic entities, or simple human technology.
As you might have picked up from the first paragraph, this fixation of Kiernan's on bodies works better at some points than others, hitting rock bottom when (you guessed it) it combines with her "gothic" (the bad kind) "edginess" to produce stories focused on sexual violence as the means to be creepy and shocking. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: can we have a moratorium on that awful, problematic, tiresome tactic, PLEASE?
Riding the White Bull was by far my favorite story in the collection, and incidentally basically a note-for-note transposition of Kiernan's "Houses Under The Sea", which was my first exposure to her writing and what led to me picking up this collection. Both stories revolve around an investigation into some sort of vague disaster, a video recording of which is constantly and hauntingly referred to. They also share a noir-ish tone, but where "Houses" focused on a suicidal water cult, "Riding" deals with the aftermath of some sort of alien plague brought back from Jupiter. This idea of an alien plague that physically deconstructs its victims recurs throughout these stories, as do human-esque androids and machine-esque cyborgs and bio-engineered post-humans, to the point where it isn't entirely clear if they all take place in the same future history or not. Given the similarity of themes and the dreamlike atmosphere of much of this material, though, I guess that doesn't really matter at all.
Faces in Revolving Souls: good, but nothing to blow me away. Society has by and large rejected those who have chosen to refashion their bodies with bits and pieces from various animal species (each becoming a "species of one"), but what happens when a woman attempting to join them is rejected by the new technology itself? Actually the more I think about this one the more annoyed I am by its literal approach to "beautiful unique snowflake" individuality.
Zero Summer had a lot of elements that I enjoyed but they never really converged the way I wanted or expected them to. Another one told in a kind of fragmentary style, wherein the tale of a pair of astronauts realize that they are actually disposable androids is interspersed with the story of the ex-junky from whom the personality of one of the machines was derived.
The Pearl Diver, even more than the previous story, frustrated me with an excellent setup (a woman muddling her way through the day-to-day office drone in a corporate panopticon dystopia) that then disintegrated into a dreamlike experience of salvation (?) ... or something.
In View of Nothing: A woman, having failed in some sort of assassination attempt, is being interrogated by her target. Or is having a nightmare? Or is dead? Who knows? This, I think, is where the combination of realism and nightmare worked best, because the character and narrative were actually slipping back and forth between the two, and the descriptions of the city outside of the room where she was confined were truly nightmarish. Buuuuuuuuut this was also the story where weird rape fantasy stuff starts intruding, ruining the other aspects of this story with disappointingly juvenile teenage goth bullshit. I mean, seriously, you think that presenting a woman being sexually assaulted in some sort of "alluring" manner puts you OUTSIDE of mainstream society?
Ode to Katan Amano: Ugh. This one is about an android sex slave who becomes obsessed with some sort of doll or puppet as an object of salvation. At the time I assumed this was the story most oriented toward the teenage goth "take that mom and dad!" attitude...
A Season of Broken Dolls: ... but I was wrong! This one I didn't even bother finishing, another trans-humanist examination of shocking mutilations and two women living together who actually hate one another and I just couldn't force myself to get through it. Kiernan's tricks were wearing pretty thin by this point.
Bradbury Weather: My second-favorite of the bunch, concerning a woman living on Mars (inexplicably inhabited only by women?) who is looking for her ex-girlfriend, who has left to join some sort of cult dedicated to sacrificing their bodies to yet another alien plague/lifeform that incorporates individual humans as disgusting Giger-esque biomechanical organs, or something. Like "Riding the White Bull," this one really skillfully generates a creepy, despairing atmosphere as the reader is slowly fed clues about the looming extraterrestrial threat even while being guided around these desolate (post-apocalyptic?) communities wherein humans themselves were and are the agents of destruction.
The first and last stories (and maybe "The Pearl Diver") are worthwhile, skip the rest.
April 18, 2010
This collection contains eight stories, some hard science fiction, some science fiction combined with erotica, some transhumanist analyses, and plenty of dystopia to last even the most jaded of readers for a long time. I admit that I prefer CRK when she is writing works that tilt more in the vein of horror – Alabaster and Daughter of Hounds are both in my list of Top 25 Books of All Time. But her essential themes remain even when her genre differs, and that is what matters I think. Read my entire review here.
May 30, 2016
Note: I actually read the PS Publishing version of this book.
December 10, 2016
I love this book. I wasn't really planning to read it because it has a terrible title and I recently read the first volume of her collected fiction, but after glimpsing the table of contents and seeing there was only one story in here I'd read, I couldn't resist. I'm glad I wasn't able to help myself while browsing at the main branch library, because now I have To Charles Fort, With Love and The Ammonite Violin sitting on my desk to be read next.
The title doesn't really have anything to do with the contents. There's no story that shares the name, and though more than half of the stories are vaguely about aliens, sort of, in the sense of how contact with aliens has shaped and distorted humanity, aliens don't appear in any of these stories as such. In the afterword, Elizabeth Bear writes, "She invites us to inspect what lies under our despised human shells, and understand that the failed transformations are the most terrible." That, in a nutshell, is what many of these stories are about-- failed transformations, whether literal physical failure or failure of the longed-for transformation to fulfill an emotional need, or a mix of both. The focus is on that transformational state, so close to becoming, and the horror of being trapped there in between before reaching some kind of enlightenment or understanding.
I was confused about how to describe this in more detail, and I still am, because there is a lot of grotesquerie, a lot of really effective body horror, but it's also vehemently beautiful. When I finished the second story, "Faces in Revolving Souls," and found myself empathizing so deeply with a woman lovingly fondling a rejected body modification she's refused to remove, I knew what I was in for. There's so much SF that can only infuse this type of scene with horror, that only assume this character must be a little bit sick-- that ultimately serves to place a distance between that character and you, the reader, presuming it's a distance the reader wants to preserve. I'm thinking now of Orphan Black, and the clear distinction drawn between beautiful, identical female clones and the creepy body-mod crowd sporting predator eyes and fleshy humanoid tails. Kiernan collapses these categories entirely, laying bare the messy truth of monstrosities that transcend the physical, and laughs in the faces of those who would look away. That refusal to look away from the unknowable permeates these stories, both stylistically and as a trope within the stories themselves.
I'm at a loss as to why more of these stories are not included in Two Worlds And In Between, if only because it would make this collection redundant. In fact it almost reads like a concept album, the stories so seamlessly organized that I had to go back and count how many there were because I kind of felt like I had just finished a surreal experimental novel. The last story is called "Bradbury Weather," and the more I think about it, the more this reminds me of a twisted version of The Martian Chronicles. Kiernan gets compared to Lovecraft a lot, but I think she's better than Lovecraft. I've always been confused by his kind of hysterical approach to monsters and the unknown-- who wouldn't want to meet an eldritch horror? Who wouldn't want to be part magical fish-monster? I've always thought. Kiernan's writing is the answer to this, a dark, oily, bloody upwelling of the unconscious, a landscape of what might be left surviving after that eldritch ocean swelled up and flooded the world, and we had to find a way to live among the wreckage, side by side everyday with our worst nightmares, and realized there was beauty in it, and maybe that realization is what we were really afraid of after all.
The title doesn't really have anything to do with the contents. There's no story that shares the name, and though more than half of the stories are vaguely about aliens, sort of, in the sense of how contact with aliens has shaped and distorted humanity, aliens don't appear in any of these stories as such. In the afterword, Elizabeth Bear writes, "She invites us to inspect what lies under our despised human shells, and understand that the failed transformations are the most terrible." That, in a nutshell, is what many of these stories are about-- failed transformations, whether literal physical failure or failure of the longed-for transformation to fulfill an emotional need, or a mix of both. The focus is on that transformational state, so close to becoming, and the horror of being trapped there in between before reaching some kind of enlightenment or understanding.
I was confused about how to describe this in more detail, and I still am, because there is a lot of grotesquerie, a lot of really effective body horror, but it's also vehemently beautiful. When I finished the second story, "Faces in Revolving Souls," and found myself empathizing so deeply with a woman lovingly fondling a rejected body modification she's refused to remove, I knew what I was in for. There's so much SF that can only infuse this type of scene with horror, that only assume this character must be a little bit sick-- that ultimately serves to place a distance between that character and you, the reader, presuming it's a distance the reader wants to preserve. I'm thinking now of Orphan Black, and the clear distinction drawn between beautiful, identical female clones and the creepy body-mod crowd sporting predator eyes and fleshy humanoid tails. Kiernan collapses these categories entirely, laying bare the messy truth of monstrosities that transcend the physical, and laughs in the faces of those who would look away. That refusal to look away from the unknowable permeates these stories, both stylistically and as a trope within the stories themselves.
I'm at a loss as to why more of these stories are not included in Two Worlds And In Between, if only because it would make this collection redundant. In fact it almost reads like a concept album, the stories so seamlessly organized that I had to go back and count how many there were because I kind of felt like I had just finished a surreal experimental novel. The last story is called "Bradbury Weather," and the more I think about it, the more this reminds me of a twisted version of The Martian Chronicles. Kiernan gets compared to Lovecraft a lot, but I think she's better than Lovecraft. I've always been confused by his kind of hysterical approach to monsters and the unknown-- who wouldn't want to meet an eldritch horror? Who wouldn't want to be part magical fish-monster? I've always thought. Kiernan's writing is the answer to this, a dark, oily, bloody upwelling of the unconscious, a landscape of what might be left surviving after that eldritch ocean swelled up and flooded the world, and we had to find a way to live among the wreckage, side by side everyday with our worst nightmares, and realized there was beauty in it, and maybe that realization is what we were really afraid of after all.
April 26, 2018
My reaction to this book is extremely mixed. I don't tend to read dystopias, I don't need all of my stories to be bright and sunshine filled, but I don't usually enjoy overly dark ones either and this is a very dark and nihilistic collection of stories. However I found the language use to be both beautiful and lyrical and I very much felt compelled to read each story no matter how dark. And there is not one truly uplifting moment in any of the stories, they all show the slow, cold disintegration of our societies, our species, in some cases our planet. No explanation is ever given for how we ended up where we do in the stories and the only thing that seems for certain is that things are not going to be getting better. My biggest issue with some of the stories is that there was no ending or explanation at all, not just leaving things vague or up to interpretation, NO explanation for what happened or why, those stories were annoying and almost felt like a waste of time. The only reason I don't consider them a waste of time is because they at least intrigued me enough to be annoyed and really WANT answers. As one example, in one story we are told a character is chosen because she is a zero summer. We are never told, nor even given hints at what that means. Overall though the stories were unique, the worlds created felt unique and I would love to read more based in them, as dark and depressing as they are, and the authors use of language is beautiful and lyrical and I am glad to have read this book.
June 16, 2009
I'm having trouble finding words for a review here - basically, I was expecting awesomeness because, well, Caitlin Kiernan. But these stories blew me away, in ways I hadn't even thought to expect. Her take on the ideas of science fiction is creepy, beautiful, otherworldly, disgusting and frankly, brilliant. All of these stories focus on the collision between biology and technology, and explore a world in which the boundaries between the two are blurred, sometimes entirely absent.
I think what I love the most about reading Kiernan is her ability to write stories that I can feel completely lost in - it's not too often that I read a story and come out of it feeling the need to sit back for a minute and get my bearings, and so when I do get to have that experience I appreciate the hell out of it. These stories, the rawness, the way their ideas creep inside your head and refuse to make sense... this is what reading's about. Amazing.
I think what I love the most about reading Kiernan is her ability to write stories that I can feel completely lost in - it's not too often that I read a story and come out of it feeling the need to sit back for a minute and get my bearings, and so when I do get to have that experience I appreciate the hell out of it. These stories, the rawness, the way their ideas creep inside your head and refuse to make sense... this is what reading's about. Amazing.
September 23, 2009
I’m pretty terrible at reading short fiction. I’ve said that before. It isn’t an easy form to write in and when reading it I always feels the siren call of longer prose. So, when I say that A is for Alien is one of the more engrossing collections I’ve read, amongst a very tiny list of collections I’ve actually read, you should understand that for me that is pretty high praise. Perhaps it is Kiernan’s use of one of my favorite Lovecraft quotes as the collection’s opening epithet but from the very beginning I found reading the the stories collected here to be a pleasant, though frequently bleak and depressing, experience.
Full review available here.
Full review available here.
April 23, 2022
A collection of eight science fiction tales. As many other reviewers have noted this isn't as satisfying as a usual Kiernan collection - I think that is mainly due to the lack of variety and all the stories being sci-fi themed. Some of these are more successful than others, but all of them introduce thought provoking alternate worlds and scenarios. I have to admit that I am not particularly keen on sci-fi. Kiernan's prose is excellent and usual and I am a big fan of their writing hence why I was still able to enjoy the book.
• Riding the White Bull ⭐⭐⭐
• Faces in Revolving Souls ⭐⭐⭐
• Zero Summer ⭐⭐⭐
• The Pearl Diver ⭐⭐
• In View of Nothing ⭐⭐⭐
• Ode to Katan Amano ⭐⭐⭐
• A Season of Broken Dolls ⭐⭐⭐
• Bradbury Weather ⭐⭐⭐
Afterword by Elizabeth Bear
• Riding the White Bull ⭐⭐⭐
• Faces in Revolving Souls ⭐⭐⭐
• Zero Summer ⭐⭐⭐
• The Pearl Diver ⭐⭐
• In View of Nothing ⭐⭐⭐
• Ode to Katan Amano ⭐⭐⭐
• A Season of Broken Dolls ⭐⭐⭐
• Bradbury Weather ⭐⭐⭐
Afterword by Elizabeth Bear
June 28, 2021
actual rating: 3.5
Another compelling and atmospheric collection of short stories from Kiernan. Didn't enjoy this one quite as much as her others because they were all sci-fi stories and I like when she jumps around a lot between genres in her collections. I also don't like scifi as much as fantasy or horror so while these were all still really interesting stories I just didn't find myself getting lost in them like some of her other stuff that I've read. I did like how several of them had a very noir detective feel while also being scifi stories and also feeling distinctly gothic. She definitely has a way of blending genres while mainting her own personal style.
Another compelling and atmospheric collection of short stories from Kiernan. Didn't enjoy this one quite as much as her others because they were all sci-fi stories and I like when she jumps around a lot between genres in her collections. I also don't like scifi as much as fantasy or horror so while these were all still really interesting stories I just didn't find myself getting lost in them like some of her other stuff that I've read. I did like how several of them had a very noir detective feel while also being scifi stories and also feeling distinctly gothic. She definitely has a way of blending genres while mainting her own personal style.
March 19, 2011
I really like most of her novels, but most of these stories just did not hold my interest. The first and last stories are the best, and they made me not dislike the whole collection. Since I have read all of her novels I thought I should check out some of her short story collections. I cannot decide if I just don't like short stories very much or if it was just the subject matter of these stories that made it sort of ho-hum. I'll try one of her other collections sometime to see if I like those stories better.
February 7, 2012
Definitely my least favorite of her books. The first story was the only one I'd encountered before in another collection - and it was my least favorite of that collection. I've read that the author wonders why her sci fi is consistently much less popular than her fantasy. I can't put my finger on what it is, but I feel the same way, apparently. The beautiful writing was just as beautiful. The characters were not so different. But I didn't enjoy it the way I usually do. That's understating it: I didn't enjoy it much at all, whereas normally I love every paragraph. ??? I'm puzzled too.
October 13, 2016
maybe the statute of limitations on my enjoyment of Kiernan has expired, or maybe i have lost interest somehow... for me, her style does not translate well to sci-fi (that is how the book is marketed...)... most of the stories came across as various versions of failed/failing relationships couched in a variety of space-y themes with variegated aliens/robots/Others... just not enough concept to hold me...
October 8, 2009
A is for Alien, Caitlin R. Kiernan 3 of 5
Sci Fi Short Stories
I read about ½ the book before quitting. The stories were excellent but very dark and at this time of life I’m looking for cheerful.
Sci Fi Short Stories
I read about ½ the book before quitting. The stories were excellent but very dark and at this time of life I’m looking for cheerful.
September 29, 2014
Her writing is like reading the depths of a dream where you feel as if you have been there before, but there are secrets you can't quite see in the shadowed corners of the room. Rich and gritty. I did wish her endings were a little more clear in some stories.
August 10, 2009
An interesting, different book of SF shorts that deals with being Alien, and in may cases strange.
January 25, 2010
Solid short story collection. I enjoy the straight up horror stuff of Kiernan's more, but this was still well worth the time.
July 4, 2020
RIDING THE WHITE BULL - 3/5 - Read it twice. Disliked it the first time I read it, liked it more the second time, after I knew what was going on, but it still wasn't terrific.
FACES IN REVOLVING SOULS - 3.5/5 - Cool idea. Wish it was longer.
GALAPAGOS - 2.5/5 - Initially read from her The Very Best of... collection; did not read again. Not a fan.
ZERO SUMMER - 5/5 - My favorite from the collection, and maybe my favorite story from the author so far. It's a very well weaved together story with a lot of cool ideas like android rights, altered memories and shared memories, and a truly vast alien entity. The things I usually find frustrating I found this story did excellently, like the use of dreams and having an unreliable narrator. All the pieces were there to put together a clear picture of this story if you paid attention, and I can't say the same for her other stories, though maybe I missed the pieces in those other stories.
THE PEARL DIVER - 3/5 - "I'm not any good with riddles" - the main character says in this story. Yeah, neither am I, hence why I didn't particularly love this story. Well, I do like some riddles in my stories, as long as I'm given relatively clear information, as jumbled as it may come (hence me loving Zero Summer). The world in this story was clear - a depressing but entirely too possible futuristic Earth. The alien infection story at the core of this tale was... not so clear. I found the use of dreams in Zero Summer fascinating; I found the use of dreams in The Pearl Driver kind of vague. Was the shark an alien? Did it choose the main character, manipulate her dreams because it knew she would help spread its "infection"? I'll probably reread this one again soon.
IN VIEW OF NOTHING - 4/5 - Read it first from her other collection, but decided to read it again. Vague and frustrating, but amazing imagery.
ODE TO KATAN AMANO - 4.5/5 - A really cool little metaphorical tale about android rights and autonomy (I think).
And all the rest below I had previously read.
HYDRARGUROS - 3/5
A SEASON OF BROKEN DOLLS - 3/5
TIDAL FORCES - 3.5/5
THE STEAM DANCER (1896) - 3/5
BRADBURY WEATHER - 4.5/5
FACES IN REVOLVING SOULS - 3.5/5 - Cool idea. Wish it was longer.
GALAPAGOS - 2.5/5 - Initially read from her The Very Best of... collection; did not read again. Not a fan.
ZERO SUMMER - 5/5 - My favorite from the collection, and maybe my favorite story from the author so far. It's a very well weaved together story with a lot of cool ideas like android rights, altered memories and shared memories, and a truly vast alien entity. The things I usually find frustrating I found this story did excellently, like the use of dreams and having an unreliable narrator. All the pieces were there to put together a clear picture of this story if you paid attention, and I can't say the same for her other stories, though maybe I missed the pieces in those other stories.
THE PEARL DIVER - 3/5 - "I'm not any good with riddles" - the main character says in this story. Yeah, neither am I, hence why I didn't particularly love this story. Well, I do like some riddles in my stories, as long as I'm given relatively clear information, as jumbled as it may come (hence me loving Zero Summer). The world in this story was clear - a depressing but entirely too possible futuristic Earth. The alien infection story at the core of this tale was... not so clear. I found the use of dreams in Zero Summer fascinating; I found the use of dreams in The Pearl Driver kind of vague. Was the shark an alien? Did it choose the main character, manipulate her dreams because it knew she would help spread its "infection"? I'll probably reread this one again soon.
IN VIEW OF NOTHING - 4/5 - Read it first from her other collection, but decided to read it again. Vague and frustrating, but amazing imagery.
ODE TO KATAN AMANO - 4.5/5 - A really cool little metaphorical tale about android rights and autonomy (I think).
And all the rest below I had previously read.
HYDRARGUROS - 3/5
A SEASON OF BROKEN DOLLS - 3/5
TIDAL FORCES - 3.5/5
THE STEAM DANCER (1896) - 3/5
BRADBURY WEATHER - 4.5/5
September 7, 2023
Some short stories were ok, but all just abruptly end. Maybe full novels are better from this author but this anthology was not for me. I wanted some overarching story linking the stories all together.
Read
September 29, 2023WHAT ARE THE BEST HORROR OR GOTHIC NOVELS YOU'VE READ IN THE LAST FEW YEARS?
January 2, 2026
I don’t care for their SF stuff nearly as much as their dark fantasy and horror.
April 7, 2012
I often don't love short stories, but I keep reading them! - Kiernan's creepy dark vision crosses over into future territory and sometimes it made sense. The hopelessly dark lovecraftian visions kept me in a grumpy mood all week. The one that left the most impression was the poor little fetish girl at her first conference.
unfinished
March 15, 2012Ended on page 135.
The first section was great, but the second section was harder for me. I returned it during a time of book overload, so I'd check it out again.
The first section was great, but the second section was harder for me. I returned it during a time of book overload, so I'd check it out again.
February 24, 2013
Well-written and carefully crafted, but not really my cup of tea.
May 1, 2012
My new favorite writer.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews