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Tinfoil Dossier #2
Black Helicopters
A dark jewel of a novella, this definitive edition of Caitlín R. Kiernan’s Black Helicopters is the expanded and completed version of the World Fantasy Award-nominated original.
Just as the Signalman stood and faced the void in Agents of Dreamland, so it falls to Ptolema, a chess piece in her agency’s world-spanning game, to unravel what has become tangled and unknowable.
Something strange is happening on the shores of New England. Something stranger still is happening to the world itself, chaos unleashed, rational explanation slipped loose from the moorings of the known. Two rival agencies stare across the Void at one another. Two sisters, the deadly, sickened products of experiments going back decades, desperately evade their hunters.
An invisible war rages at the fringes of our world, with unimaginable consequences and Lovecraftian horrors that ripple centuries into the future.
Just as the Signalman stood and faced the void in Agents of Dreamland, so it falls to Ptolema, a chess piece in her agency’s world-spanning game, to unravel what has become tangled and unknowable.
Something strange is happening on the shores of New England. Something stranger still is happening to the world itself, chaos unleashed, rational explanation slipped loose from the moorings of the known. Two rival agencies stare across the Void at one another. Two sisters, the deadly, sickened products of experiments going back decades, desperately evade their hunters.
An invisible war rages at the fringes of our world, with unimaginable consequences and Lovecraftian horrors that ripple centuries into the future.
202 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2015
192 people are currently reading
1008 people want to read
About the author
Caitlín R. Kiernan
420 books1,672 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 192 reviews
May 15, 2018
I am going to be upfront and honest about this book and say it outright; I didn’t understand this book. I don’t quite know what happened through the story, the central theme, the motivations of the main characters, or even at times who the main characters were. I gather from the reviews and my understanding of the story it involved perhaps some sort of quantum entanglement between two people, of how their actions impacted each other not only at the same time but throughout time and space. I think.
The book wasn’t easy to digest. It read like an anthology, with different chapters involving different characters at different times, whether it was spies in Dublin in 2012, people on a ship sailing outside the ruins of Old Boston in a world of significantly higher sea levels in 2112, to a web journalist covering suicides for a paying audience (eww) in “Atlanta/Manhattan” in 2035, to two women fighting invading shoggoths (ah at last Lovecraftian creatures like in _Agents of Dreamland_) in Stonington, Maine in 2012, to the spaceship _Nautilus-IV_ in orbit over the Martian northern pole in 2152, with still more chapters in different settings…there were just too many different viewpoints and characters, several only getting one or two chapters.
It is not that any chapters were bad, well except for the chapters following the person covering suicides, they were bad, as those chapters also suffered from at times being rambling, lots of long strings of strange words or nonsense phrases, at times incomprehensible, and even when coherent was filled with a lot of slang and pop culture words that made no sense to me. A number of other chapters were actually quite good. The chapters detailing the Lovecraftian critter invasion in Maine were gripping, I really liked the Dublin spy chapters, I would have gladly read more about the _Nautilus-IV_ (as an odd a fit as it was), and overall the writing was good and sometimes great. It just lacked any sort of (for me) binding glue to make it a coherent novel, and it felt like stream of consciousness writing (some chapters more than others, but definitely the book as a whole).
I really liked _Agents of Dreamland_ and would have loved a sequel or prequel or sidequel to that novella. Though the Signalman gets a cameo, this book isn’t really a continuation, just a series of short stories set in the same universe. It is still Lovecraftian, kind of, but only in a few chapters. Instead of a great blend of modern X-Files-ish conspiracy theories and secret government agents and spies with Lovecraftian horrors, the Lovecraftian elements simply get overwhelmed by everything else. Good when they are there but crowded out by everything else.
Another observation was that one of the characters in _Agents of Dreamland_, the woman by the name of Immacolata Sexton (who as far as I can tell is absent from this book) had flashbacks of the past and flashforwards of possible futures. They fit _Agents of Dreamland_, weren’t confusing, were gripping, and really developed the rest of the novella. Here though the jumping around in time just muddied the waters a lot, especially since the jumping around wasn’t anchored either by the same characters or the same overall threat as it was with Immacolata Sexton.
I certainly didn’t dislike the book, it read fast, and I would still definitely read more in the series, hoping it got back to its roots in _Agents of Dreamland_. This is definitely a work of a talented author, just it lacked coherence and a clear driving narrative for me.
The book wasn’t easy to digest. It read like an anthology, with different chapters involving different characters at different times, whether it was spies in Dublin in 2012, people on a ship sailing outside the ruins of Old Boston in a world of significantly higher sea levels in 2112, to a web journalist covering suicides for a paying audience (eww) in “Atlanta/Manhattan” in 2035, to two women fighting invading shoggoths (ah at last Lovecraftian creatures like in _Agents of Dreamland_) in Stonington, Maine in 2012, to the spaceship _Nautilus-IV_ in orbit over the Martian northern pole in 2152, with still more chapters in different settings…there were just too many different viewpoints and characters, several only getting one or two chapters.
It is not that any chapters were bad, well except for the chapters following the person covering suicides, they were bad, as those chapters also suffered from at times being rambling, lots of long strings of strange words or nonsense phrases, at times incomprehensible, and even when coherent was filled with a lot of slang and pop culture words that made no sense to me. A number of other chapters were actually quite good. The chapters detailing the Lovecraftian critter invasion in Maine were gripping, I really liked the Dublin spy chapters, I would have gladly read more about the _Nautilus-IV_ (as an odd a fit as it was), and overall the writing was good and sometimes great. It just lacked any sort of (for me) binding glue to make it a coherent novel, and it felt like stream of consciousness writing (some chapters more than others, but definitely the book as a whole).
I really liked _Agents of Dreamland_ and would have loved a sequel or prequel or sidequel to that novella. Though the Signalman gets a cameo, this book isn’t really a continuation, just a series of short stories set in the same universe. It is still Lovecraftian, kind of, but only in a few chapters. Instead of a great blend of modern X-Files-ish conspiracy theories and secret government agents and spies with Lovecraftian horrors, the Lovecraftian elements simply get overwhelmed by everything else. Good when they are there but crowded out by everything else.
Another observation was that one of the characters in _Agents of Dreamland_, the woman by the name of Immacolata Sexton (who as far as I can tell is absent from this book) had flashbacks of the past and flashforwards of possible futures. They fit _Agents of Dreamland_, weren’t confusing, were gripping, and really developed the rest of the novella. Here though the jumping around in time just muddied the waters a lot, especially since the jumping around wasn’t anchored either by the same characters or the same overall threat as it was with Immacolata Sexton.
I certainly didn’t dislike the book, it read fast, and I would still definitely read more in the series, hoping it got back to its roots in _Agents of Dreamland_. This is definitely a work of a talented author, just it lacked coherence and a clear driving narrative for me.
May 21, 2018
5 Stars
Black Helicopters by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a new weird horror novella by one of my very, very, favorite authors writing today. I am a massive fan boy of all things written by Kiernan. She is my favorite horror author, often writing lovecraft-like stories twisted with the new weird. Her writing is off the charts and other often require the reader to work with it and to delve into it. Caitlin R. Kiernan will change your world if you are willing to do some work to allow yourself to be transported into the dark, dirty, and often scary corners of her mind.
Black Helicopters is a difficult read and often somewhat incomprehensible... But, it is magical in a way that only words can convey. Influenced by Lovecraft and Poe and many others it is an atmospheric horror story that spans hundreds of years. It would make a fabulous full length novel.
I loved it.
I gush because I love this author, this woman, this true story teller. She truly is a favorite of mine and I hope that you to give her a try...
Black Helicopters by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a new weird horror novella by one of my very, very, favorite authors writing today. I am a massive fan boy of all things written by Kiernan. She is my favorite horror author, often writing lovecraft-like stories twisted with the new weird. Her writing is off the charts and other often require the reader to work with it and to delve into it. Caitlin R. Kiernan will change your world if you are willing to do some work to allow yourself to be transported into the dark, dirty, and often scary corners of her mind.
Black Helicopters is a difficult read and often somewhat incomprehensible... But, it is magical in a way that only words can convey. Influenced by Lovecraft and Poe and many others it is an atmospheric horror story that spans hundreds of years. It would make a fabulous full length novel.
I loved it.
I gush because I love this author, this woman, this true story teller. She truly is a favorite of mine and I hope that you to give her a try...
December 29, 2020
A lot of cool bits that don't ultimately come together very satisfactorily.
Aso, ymmv depending on your level and area of erudition: there are a lot of unexplained science terms and long non-translated conversations in French. These probably contain some Easter eggs for the assiduous, but I was reading under my cat and not about to displace her to look up which fossils were real and which invented (especially as none of the archaeological parts seemed plot-relevant).
Aso, ymmv depending on your level and area of erudition: there are a lot of unexplained science terms and long non-translated conversations in French. These probably contain some Easter eggs for the assiduous, but I was reading under my cat and not about to displace her to look up which fossils were real and which invented (especially as none of the archaeological parts seemed plot-relevant).
December 10, 2023
This is a book that asks a lot of its readers. I loved Agents of Dreamland, and I started Black Helicopters thinking this slim book would be a quick read. It is not. It deals with agents from various shadowy organizations, and multiple plots that have repercussions throughout the timeline. It was also influenced by Alice Through the Looking-Glass, and it jumps through time like movements on a chessboard. I kept a notebook with the chapters, dates, and characters. Without the notes, I would have been lost; with them, it was an extremely rewarding read, as various pieces (and horrors) fell into place.
If you are in the mood to follow a convoluted chess game of agents, apocalypses, clandestine psychic experiments, and cosmic horrors spanning time, then dive-in. Just be careful of the water, there are very bad things in it.
If you are in the mood to follow a convoluted chess game of agents, apocalypses, clandestine psychic experiments, and cosmic horrors spanning time, then dive-in. Just be careful of the water, there are very bad things in it.
March 8, 2019
Made it about a third of a way through this futuristic novella and remained both confused and uncaring, so I stopped reading.
April 24, 2019
When does the war end? This is, of course, a trick question—the war never ends. It is going on right now, as I type, as you're reading this—and all the peace you've ever felt has been no more than a momentary cease-fire.
And so—what can you do to stop this secret war?
Heh... does the falling domino ever even try to right itself?
I seem to have a hard time writing directly about Caitlín R. Kiernan's work. While I did manage to say, back in August 2017, that Agents of Dreamland was "a high-voltage link to the bizarre," with "not a single word out of place," most of that review somehow turned into an article about the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
And this one? Well... we'll see.
The timeline of this book's publication is almost as convoluted as its internal chronology. According to Caitlín R. Kiernan's "Author's Note for the Definitive Edition," Black Helicopters was written before—but expanded after—Agents of Dreamland. Make of that what you will.
Are you a man or a mouse? Think carefully before you answer—there is a cat in the room...
Even more so than Agents of Dreamland, Black Helicopters comes across as something like a highly-compressed Tim Powers novel—conveying that same unsettling sense of deep, occult currents running underneath the surface of our quotidian reality. From the very first scene, in which Ptolema—a certified badass who's much older than she looks—awaits a couple of tardy X agents in a celebrated Dublin café, off-kilter details start accumulating rapidly.
Too rapidly, perhaps—in contrast to its companion volume's jewellike precision, Black Helicopters seems... disjointed, even wandering off into untranslated French dialogue for several pages midway through (although you will find "le remix Anglaise" in Appendix 9—the only Appendix in this volume, Appendices 1 through 8 apparently having been, to use a word currently much en vogue, redacted).
And, like Powers', Kiernan's characters all seem to smoke cigarettes as sustenance, as if they'd been raised on a planet whose atmosphere is half-nicotine.
We readers cannot share this sentiment with Kiernan's narrator. Black Helicopters turns out to be many things—not all of them wonderful—but it is never, ever mundane.
And so—what can you do to stop this secret war?
Heh... does the falling domino ever even try to right itself?
Or did a butterfly only recently flap its wings?
—p.29
I seem to have a hard time writing directly about Caitlín R. Kiernan's work. While I did manage to say, back in August 2017, that Agents of Dreamland was "a high-voltage link to the bizarre," with "not a single word out of place," most of that review somehow turned into an article about the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
And this one? Well... we'll see.
It is difficult to believe this can continue much longer.
—p.91
The timeline of this book's publication is almost as convoluted as its internal chronology. According to Caitlín R. Kiernan's "Author's Note for the Definitive Edition," Black Helicopters was written before—but expanded after—Agents of Dreamland. Make of that what you will.
Are you a man or a mouse? Think carefully before you answer—there is a cat in the room...
Even more so than Agents of Dreamland, Black Helicopters comes across as something like a highly-compressed Tim Powers novel—conveying that same unsettling sense of deep, occult currents running underneath the surface of our quotidian reality. From the very first scene, in which Ptolema—a certified badass who's much older than she looks—awaits a couple of tardy X agents in a celebrated Dublin café, off-kilter details start accumulating rapidly.
Too rapidly, perhaps—in contrast to its companion volume's jewellike precision, Black Helicopters seems... disjointed, even wandering off into untranslated French dialogue for several pages midway through (although you will find "le remix Anglaise" in Appendix 9—the only Appendix in this volume, Appendices 1 through 8 apparently having been, to use a word currently much en vogue, redacted).
And, like Powers', Kiernan's characters all seem to smoke cigarettes as sustenance, as if they'd been raised on a planet whose atmosphere is half-nicotine.
We no longer find the remarkable at all remarkable. The outrageous is made mundane.
—p.94
We readers cannot share this sentiment with Kiernan's narrator. Black Helicopters turns out to be many things—not all of them wonderful—but it is never, ever mundane.
May 11, 2018
I don't know why I keep trying to read Lovecraft-influenced books. With very few exceptions, I don't like them, I don't like the threat of the eternal darkness, and they generally don't end well. Yet I still keep picking them up, hoping for something different. I guess it's the eternal optimist in me.
Ironic, no?
Ironic, no?
November 24, 2020
I was so confused with this plot. I liked sections, and thought the writing was good in terms of the described situations and imagery. However, I just never felt like I understood anything other about this story than the big picture of a possible invasion by Lovecraftian horrors.
May 11, 2018
I am so glad to be finished with reading this slightly expanded novella.
At the end of the book, the author admits to having padded out the original piece by adding 5 or 6 additional chapters.
For me this was a frustrating read. The narrative zipping back and forth in time and shifting to assorted characters' points of view.
Lots of strutting out Wm S Burroughsian passages here and there but why the pseudo-beat riffing?
Why not just tell the goddamn story minus the quantum mathematics?
It's all my fault.
I was so impressed with Kiernan's
that I expected more of same.
I wanted more Lovecraftian shoggoths.
No author should be held accountable for failing to thrill me, let alone entertain me.
Very tiresome stuff.
I'm so happy to get back to noirish crime thrillers.
Starting
later tonight.
There's no place like home.
At the end of the book, the author admits to having padded out the original piece by adding 5 or 6 additional chapters.
For me this was a frustrating read. The narrative zipping back and forth in time and shifting to assorted characters' points of view.
Lots of strutting out Wm S Burroughsian passages here and there but why the pseudo-beat riffing?
Why not just tell the goddamn story minus the quantum mathematics?
It's all my fault.
I was so impressed with Kiernan's
that I expected more of same. I wanted more Lovecraftian shoggoths.
No author should be held accountable for failing to thrill me, let alone entertain me.
Very tiresome stuff.
I'm so happy to get back to noirish crime thrillers.
Starting
later tonight.There's no place like home.
September 10, 2021
I usually dislike writing 1-star reviews, but this need to be done as PSA. I picked this up after reading and enjoying Agents of Dreamland, and the two could not have been more different. While its predecessor had narration quirks that add to the horror, the writing here is just horrendous on its own. I surprised myself by managing to even finish it at all. Written with almost no regard to later human consumption, the author regurgitates prose that is barely even grammatical. The purpose for such deliberate drivel eludes me.
For example, gems like "how she collected dreams in blue-bottle skullf*** yottabyte quantum cat boxes. SWQ Check, do love such like REM of serotonin and histamine reflux.", or "Blister white here, though in 707 a bead of the αἷμα swells holly-berry gleam on our suicide - to - be’s mouth after a first unexpected slice, not qyest inadvertent." failed to yield any meaning for me after repeated attempts. Also, let's not forget the fact that there are several pages of French just thrown in the middle of the book, for what, effect? Unless the readers are expected to learn another language before they are deemed worthy to attempt and read this book. To avoid dwelling on my misgivings further, I would just end by cautioning you to proceed with this book at your own risk.
For example, gems like "how she collected dreams in blue-bottle skullf*** yottabyte quantum cat boxes. SWQ Check, do love such like REM of serotonin and histamine reflux.", or "Blister white here, though in 707 a bead of the αἷμα swells holly-berry gleam on our suicide - to - be’s mouth after a first unexpected slice, not qyest inadvertent." failed to yield any meaning for me after repeated attempts. Also, let's not forget the fact that there are several pages of French just thrown in the middle of the book, for what, effect? Unless the readers are expected to learn another language before they are deemed worthy to attempt and read this book. To avoid dwelling on my misgivings further, I would just end by cautioning you to proceed with this book at your own risk.
April 26, 2022
A lot of books could be greatly improved if they include a scene with wizards, shamans, and priests summoning spells, while a military shoots conventional weapons against Elder Gods.
April 13, 2023
Goes hard as fuck. Actually might be better than the first one, I only understood maybe 20% of what the hell was going on here but that's sort of intended, Kiernan is rapid-fire cycling through time and perspective to the point where you're supposed to be as disoriented as the many characters who come and go amidst a worldwide supernatural conspiracy. But it's not only a galaxy brained sci-fi story about a global cosmic chess match spanning entire generations and cycles of history, it is also pervasively obsessed with the mechanics of the universe and how these forces puppeteering and orchestrating everything bend and break the rules; so it's also about chaos theory, about doubling, the existential horror of state power which eclipses and controls even Biblical apocalypse, and about mathematics and Time and the fickle subjectivity of the whole concept. Kiernan is basically serving up a mixed dish of delectable spec-fic ingredients, resulting in a fast-paced postmodern puzzle box full of recontextualized yet affectionately homaged genre tropes and Kiernan's always reliable excellence at sentence crafting, which is stellar throughout, and filled to bursting with references ranging from the mythic to the literary to pop culture. Appropriately for the Lovecraftian undercurrents nothing here is answered directly, piecing together your own conclusions is part of the point. Kinda wish this was a 700 page doorstopper given the amount of modes it plays in and characters and subplots it handles, but there's something impressive on its own about fitting this much into a 200 page volume. Though this series is still ongoing to my knowledge, so maybe if we're lucky Kiernan's all building this to some grand conclusion that could very well end up being our weird sci-fi tome for the ages once the series is finished in bulk.
November 5, 2020
I'm working my way through the Tinfoil Dossier. Apparently this book was written first in the series, but wasn't published until after Agents of Dreamland came out. There isn't much in common between the two books. The Signalman (unnamed in this book I think) makes a very brief appearance. And the the universe is still one in which vast and terrible forces beyond our comprehension are not far from making their way into our world.
But the book itself is more of a spy novel. There are brainwashed psychic operative incestuous twins (albinos no less) who are being used for nefarious purposes, or acting for nefarious purposes of their own, depending on when we are in the book. And there's time jumping. And secret agencies opposing each other. And maybe a Lovecraftian horror coming out of the ocean on the northeast coast of North America? And hopping over a hundred years into a climate-changed watery future? And space travel to Jupiter?? And a chapter with dialogue written entirely in French which is rewritten in English at the end of the book for no reason I understood.
Caitlin Kiernan can be hard to follow. She pieces bits of her books together out of sequence and hints at more than she says. This book suffers from all of that. It felt like looking at an out-of-focus kaleidoscope. I didn't get it.
But the book itself is more of a spy novel. There are brainwashed psychic operative incestuous twins (albinos no less) who are being used for nefarious purposes, or acting for nefarious purposes of their own, depending on when we are in the book. And there's time jumping. And secret agencies opposing each other. And maybe a Lovecraftian horror coming out of the ocean on the northeast coast of North America? And hopping over a hundred years into a climate-changed watery future? And space travel to Jupiter?? And a chapter with dialogue written entirely in French which is rewritten in English at the end of the book for no reason I understood.
Caitlin Kiernan can be hard to follow. She pieces bits of her books together out of sequence and hints at more than she says. This book suffers from all of that. It felt like looking at an out-of-focus kaleidoscope. I didn't get it.
May 23, 2020
"Yes. That's true. A snake with legs." -- Laurie Anderson
October 24, 2020
Well, there is some good writing, and some interesting bits, and some challenging puzzles, and a mess of metaphors and references and weirdness that left me baffled. Agents of Dreamland pretty much resolved its confusions by the end. This one either did not or I’m too unintelligent to see that it did. But the ride was pretty fun at times. I actually enjoyed trying to make sense out of the crazy speak in the far future chapters, and occasionally succeeded. So, on to The Tindalos Asset.
November 24, 2020
Every so often, I read a book that makes me think that perhaps I was too stupid for it. The narrative here is so convoluted that I truly followed very little of it. The chapters are episodic and difficult to connect together. I even read the first book in the series and still understood very little of this.
Maybe I just need a spoonfed narrative, I'm not sure.
Maybe I just need a spoonfed narrative, I'm not sure.
October 20, 2022
I'm still confused, but less so.
The only sections of this I didn't like were the ones set on the off-world colonies. The characters were so all-knowing and cold that they were unfathomable in a bad way. Like I seriously didn't care about anything they had to say. Plus I don't know any French outside of the few Romance language words that have drifted into English. I suppose I could look them up, but yeah, way too lazy.
Once I got the hang of the rhythms of the other stories, I was good. The characters were really interesting and well fleshed out. The overall mood for most of the apocalyptic stories was despair and longing. The only characters that seemed to flourish were lost to pain and self harm. Paranoia was completely over the top.
I might go back and read the first book now. It might be a good idea. LOL.
The only sections of this I didn't like were the ones set on the off-world colonies. The characters were so all-knowing and cold that they were unfathomable in a bad way. Like I seriously didn't care about anything they had to say. Plus I don't know any French outside of the few Romance language words that have drifted into English. I suppose I could look them up, but yeah, way too lazy.
Once I got the hang of the rhythms of the other stories, I was good. The characters were really interesting and well fleshed out. The overall mood for most of the apocalyptic stories was despair and longing. The only characters that seemed to flourish were lost to pain and self harm. Paranoia was completely over the top.
I might go back and read the first book now. It might be a good idea. LOL.
June 30, 2022
This book annoyed me.
The first book in the series was deeply, deeply unsatisfying but had the germ of a story that could be good. Lovecraftian weirdness mixed with conspiracy theories and some noirish government agents, good enough to get me to drop six bucks on the sequel even if the story itself was more like blocks of text barely connected by narrative. Unfortunately, this second book is even worse about the language. To be clear, I really hate the language in this book. It's pretentious, and circular, and deliberately obtuse. There's an early scene in Dublin that seems to exist ONLY so the author can name drop Joyce (this isn't like other genre fiction, I've read ULYSSES!) and that should have been enough warning for me that there was going to be a lot of run-on sentences and very strange jargon. There's a lot of flashing back and forth into the future and past but not a lot of clarity as to why, so naturally we have dense, DENSE, future slang to contend with, for no discernible reason. It's... it's just not well done. Playing around with language can work (see House of Leaves) but not here, not like this.
The story (and I use that loosely) involves an incursion into our reality from Beyond. They take an island in Maine, and various shadowy groups are trying to stop it. A game of chess is implied? It is played between twins? There are echoes of this chess game across time? We win, somehow? The Signalman, a character from the first book, shows up for a chapter or two, to hint at just HOW FAR WE'LL GO to fight off Cthulu, (I assume this means we'll nuke a tentacle monster, but who knows) but I honestly can't tell you whether we even did it or not. SPOILER the twins aren't twins, they're actually one person and that... does something, I don't freaking know.
Really, the things done to language in this book are the worst. There's a chunk written in French that isn't translated. The first few sentences I dug back to my high school French to figure out, because I'm game, but then i realized it was like a whole chapter, and I did not love this book enough to try to parse that shit out, sorry. Skipped over all of it, hope it wasn't important. At one point we're in the future in an Unethical Journalist, who is livestreaming a suicide and somehow sees one of the twins and has lots of sex with her, but maybe just in his m mind. He forgets to keep his eyes on the suicide, getting him in trouble with his bosses. The future doesn't have cameras, only camera-eyes, I guess. This is not important and will not advance the plot. One of the twins is on an island where she has been addicted to heroin, randomly, and is shooting blobs as they come out of the ocean with a Super Genius girl who reads a lot and may kill her later. This is not important and will not be dealt with in any way. There's a Wandering Jew, except she's referred to mostly as the Egyptian. She works for one of the shadowy agencies trying to flip spies from another shadowy agency. She plays chess with her boss, and wins. This is not important and will not advance the plot. At some point in the future, a man will be living on a boat and playing chess and obsessing over stories of the twins and chess, but guess what? This is not important and will not advance the plot.
Seriously, just avoid this one. Go read early Laundry Files, or 14, or Lovecraft Country, or Broken Room. This isn't worth your time.
The first book in the series was deeply, deeply unsatisfying but had the germ of a story that could be good. Lovecraftian weirdness mixed with conspiracy theories and some noirish government agents, good enough to get me to drop six bucks on the sequel even if the story itself was more like blocks of text barely connected by narrative. Unfortunately, this second book is even worse about the language. To be clear, I really hate the language in this book. It's pretentious, and circular, and deliberately obtuse. There's an early scene in Dublin that seems to exist ONLY so the author can name drop Joyce (this isn't like other genre fiction, I've read ULYSSES!) and that should have been enough warning for me that there was going to be a lot of run-on sentences and very strange jargon. There's a lot of flashing back and forth into the future and past but not a lot of clarity as to why, so naturally we have dense, DENSE, future slang to contend with, for no discernible reason. It's... it's just not well done. Playing around with language can work (see House of Leaves) but not here, not like this.
The story (and I use that loosely) involves an incursion into our reality from Beyond. They take an island in Maine, and various shadowy groups are trying to stop it. A game of chess is implied? It is played between twins? There are echoes of this chess game across time? We win, somehow? The Signalman, a character from the first book, shows up for a chapter or two, to hint at just HOW FAR WE'LL GO to fight off Cthulu, (I assume this means we'll nuke a tentacle monster, but who knows) but I honestly can't tell you whether we even did it or not. SPOILER the twins aren't twins, they're actually one person and that... does something, I don't freaking know.
Really, the things done to language in this book are the worst. There's a chunk written in French that isn't translated. The first few sentences I dug back to my high school French to figure out, because I'm game, but then i realized it was like a whole chapter, and I did not love this book enough to try to parse that shit out, sorry. Skipped over all of it, hope it wasn't important. At one point we're in the future in an Unethical Journalist, who is livestreaming a suicide and somehow sees one of the twins and has lots of sex with her, but maybe just in his m mind. He forgets to keep his eyes on the suicide, getting him in trouble with his bosses. The future doesn't have cameras, only camera-eyes, I guess. This is not important and will not advance the plot. One of the twins is on an island where she has been addicted to heroin, randomly, and is shooting blobs as they come out of the ocean with a Super Genius girl who reads a lot and may kill her later. This is not important and will not be dealt with in any way. There's a Wandering Jew, except she's referred to mostly as the Egyptian. She works for one of the shadowy agencies trying to flip spies from another shadowy agency. She plays chess with her boss, and wins. This is not important and will not advance the plot. At some point in the future, a man will be living on a boat and playing chess and obsessing over stories of the twins and chess, but guess what? This is not important and will not advance the plot.
Seriously, just avoid this one. Go read early Laundry Files, or 14, or Lovecraft Country, or Broken Room. This isn't worth your time.
February 23, 2020
I decided to read this to get a little more background on the characters and story in Agents of Dreamland. That was a mistake. Although this book was published a year or so later, it’s apparently just an expansion of an earlier book. However, that’s not the main reason why I didn’t learn anything more about the world of Agents of Dreamland (this book is set in the same universe). This novel is a disjointed mess.
It probably would have worked as an anthology of short stories, but it falls apart as a novel. There is no plot to speak of with a recognizable beginning, middle and end. The style is inconsistent, with jumps from Lovecraftian horror to spy thriller to stream of consciousness narrative. There is no character development, partly because some characters appear in a chapter or two as main characters only to never be mentioned again. Even the consistent main characters appear only intermittently, with no clear progression in their stories. Most frustrating of all was that, at times, I could not even tell who or who or even who was speaking.
One chapter was written mostly in French, with no translation provided and no consideration given to readers who don’t understand French. There are also Greek and what I believe are Hebrew words here and there. Those I just ignored because I did not deem it worthwhile to go research a translation when the author could not be bothered to enlighten the reader in any other respects.
It’s a shame, because there are some interesting ideas and characters here that would have promised a payoff to readers had they been explored.
It probably would have worked as an anthology of short stories, but it falls apart as a novel. There is no plot to speak of with a recognizable beginning, middle and end. The style is inconsistent, with jumps from Lovecraftian horror to spy thriller to stream of consciousness narrative. There is no character development, partly because some characters appear in a chapter or two as main characters only to never be mentioned again. Even the consistent main characters appear only intermittently, with no clear progression in their stories. Most frustrating of all was that, at times, I could not even tell who or who or even who was speaking.
One chapter was written mostly in French, with no translation provided and no consideration given to readers who don’t understand French. There are also Greek and what I believe are Hebrew words here and there. Those I just ignored because I did not deem it worthwhile to go research a translation when the author could not be bothered to enlighten the reader in any other respects.
It’s a shame, because there are some interesting ideas and characters here that would have promised a payoff to readers had they been explored.
May 20, 2018
I adore Kiernan's writing, and her allusions always have a depth and resonance I greatly appreciate, but this time-hopping tale had more ellipses than substance. Its sibling novella, Agents of Dreamland, was a similar prose mosiac, but all of the little puzzle pieces came together in a satisfying way for a dramatic conclusion. This just felt scattered without resolution. Or perhaps it simply reflects its origins as a shorter work that was "padded out" for later re-release. At any rate, I enjoyed the act of reading it -- it certainly set a mood -- but I'm less enthusiastic now that I've read it. Agents of Dreamland works perfectly well as a stand-alone work without this.
July 1, 2021
Unlike the first book in this series where I had a general idea of what was going on, in this book I was completely lost from page 1. I have to read the third book in the series for a reading challenge, so hopefully that one pulls it all together.
Read
June 4, 2021DNFing.
I'm actually gonna tap out here at the 35% mark. I just can't get back into this and it isn't drawing me to return to it. I enjoyed Book 1 but Book 2 just doesn't feel the same.
I'm actually gonna tap out here at the 35% mark. I just can't get back into this and it isn't drawing me to return to it. I enjoyed Book 1 but Book 2 just doesn't feel the same.
September 15, 2022
Gave it a good try, got 30% through, not compelled to finish, recording a 1 star rating so my future self can see this and not try to read it again.
May 24, 2020
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
I liked this story, but I'm not sure that I should and I can think of a lot of coherent reasons why I shouldn't.
The story is juggling a lot of balls. Each chapter flicks back and forth between different storylines. Some chapters of the story are set in the modern day, in places like Dublin and Albany; some are set around Mars two hundred years in the future; and some are set one hundred years in the future in the post-Climate Change apocalypse. Characters are assigned code names - Beta, Ivoire, the Signalman, the Egyptian, sixty-six - and do their bit at various times and sometimes across time.
It's hard to know what's going on.
The story opens with an apparently immortal woman called the Egyptian meeting with renegades from "X." Apparently, she represents "Y." Beyond that we don't know who these people are, although it seems that the Signalman from Agents of Dreamland - so called because he has his grandfather's pocket watch - is part of the "Men in Black." The Egyptian is engaging in spy craft with the renegades.....cut to Deer Island, Maine where Ivoire and Sixty-six are shooting at Shoggoths emerging from the ocean and cut to Mars where the albino assassin - Ivoire two hundred years in the future - is planning an attack on Mars and waiting for the Egyptian...and cut to a fishing boat off of sunken Boston where someone is doing something on the information system that is attracting someone else's attention.
Back and forth it goes.
The author has a backstory and is not sharing. I noted in Agents of Dreamland that I was puzzled by the Signalman's sobriquet. We get the answer in this book and it isn't that special. We don't learn what is going on with X and Y or who they are or why we should care. Was Deer Island real? Seems like it was because the Signalman had to blow the bridge, but why did he do that? And really what was going on with Sixty-Six, Bete and Ivoire?
It all came across like a puzzle to me and I like puzzles, but I sure hope that there is a pay-off here, otherwise this will be a wanking mess.
I liked this story, but I'm not sure that I should and I can think of a lot of coherent reasons why I shouldn't.
The story is juggling a lot of balls. Each chapter flicks back and forth between different storylines. Some chapters of the story are set in the modern day, in places like Dublin and Albany; some are set around Mars two hundred years in the future; and some are set one hundred years in the future in the post-Climate Change apocalypse. Characters are assigned code names - Beta, Ivoire, the Signalman, the Egyptian, sixty-six - and do their bit at various times and sometimes across time.
It's hard to know what's going on.
The story opens with an apparently immortal woman called the Egyptian meeting with renegades from "X." Apparently, she represents "Y." Beyond that we don't know who these people are, although it seems that the Signalman from Agents of Dreamland - so called because he has his grandfather's pocket watch - is part of the "Men in Black." The Egyptian is engaging in spy craft with the renegades.....cut to Deer Island, Maine where Ivoire and Sixty-six are shooting at Shoggoths emerging from the ocean and cut to Mars where the albino assassin - Ivoire two hundred years in the future - is planning an attack on Mars and waiting for the Egyptian...and cut to a fishing boat off of sunken Boston where someone is doing something on the information system that is attracting someone else's attention.
Back and forth it goes.
The author has a backstory and is not sharing. I noted in Agents of Dreamland that I was puzzled by the Signalman's sobriquet. We get the answer in this book and it isn't that special. We don't learn what is going on with X and Y or who they are or why we should care. Was Deer Island real? Seems like it was because the Signalman had to blow the bridge, but why did he do that? And really what was going on with Sixty-Six, Bete and Ivoire?
It all came across like a puzzle to me and I like puzzles, but I sure hope that there is a pay-off here, otherwise this will be a wanking mess.
June 30, 2018
The recently published Author's Definitive Edition of Black Helicopters weaves a fascinating yet abstract and fragmented tale of cosmic horror that leaves you wanting for more clarity, but also leaves you thinking about it long after you are finished.
Having the events and mindf*cks of the book stay in your head is a triumph for the book.
Cosmic horror is known to keep ideas vague and fragmented, to play deeply on the fear of the unknown, and to reveal only enough to creep you out and move the story. I felt Black Helicopters accomplished this well, but too well. One wants to be able to follow a thread between the fragments, and Kiernan obfuscates where that thread is sometimes. Conceptually, it was fascinating, and the implications for her overall universe are important.
But, I can say I enjoyed the clarity of purpose and refinement of Agents of Dreamland much more.
I definitely want to read more in this universe, but I hope that she taps into the page turning focus of Agents of Dreamland more than the fragmented storytelling of Black Helicopters.
There was one specific part where I was truly intrigued, and the characters had a long conversation in french. My french is rusted beyond the pale, and unable to translate it at the moment, I put the book down and finished another book. When I came back, I came back with google translate in hand and burned through it.
Funny enough, at the end, you get to relive the scene with the dialogue translated. So... I could have gone through it the first time, but to be honest, I didn't want to miss that conversation the first time.
The art of this book is the details, hints, and ideas wrapped in shadows, and Kiernan knows we are smart enough to add many of them up.
Still, I stand firm with my desire for the focus of Agents, which was perfect.
Having the events and mindf*cks of the book stay in your head is a triumph for the book.
Cosmic horror is known to keep ideas vague and fragmented, to play deeply on the fear of the unknown, and to reveal only enough to creep you out and move the story. I felt Black Helicopters accomplished this well, but too well. One wants to be able to follow a thread between the fragments, and Kiernan obfuscates where that thread is sometimes. Conceptually, it was fascinating, and the implications for her overall universe are important.
But, I can say I enjoyed the clarity of purpose and refinement of Agents of Dreamland much more.
I definitely want to read more in this universe, but I hope that she taps into the page turning focus of Agents of Dreamland more than the fragmented storytelling of Black Helicopters.
There was one specific part where I was truly intrigued, and the characters had a long conversation in french. My french is rusted beyond the pale, and unable to translate it at the moment, I put the book down and finished another book. When I came back, I came back with google translate in hand and burned through it.
Funny enough, at the end, you get to relive the scene with the dialogue translated. So... I could have gone through it the first time, but to be honest, I didn't want to miss that conversation the first time.
The art of this book is the details, hints, and ideas wrapped in shadows, and Kiernan knows we are smart enough to add many of them up.
Still, I stand firm with my desire for the focus of Agents, which was perfect.
July 1, 2021
First...this series...with this book being the second of three...is definitely one of those that will take the reader through some incredible twists and turns. The actual makeup of the book - just as in the 1st - consists of chapters and small vignettes that jump backward...forward...AND...sideways through over a century of time as characters are introduced, flourish, and subside while the ramifications of events and decisions continually present themselves in those chapters thrown into the future.
Second...if you're looking for a casual read on a soft spring day while you picnic under a the branches of a tree softly moving in the breeze with the sounds of the slowly flowing river playing across the landscape in the background...THIS IS NOT THAT BOOK!!! Author Caitlin Kiernan has definitely created a mosaic of interwoven story lines with threads reaching back and forth across the series and you...as the reader...will REALLY need to pay attention if you want to be able to follow...and grasp...the story as it unfolds forwards and backwards.
Third...you may want to take some mind altering drugs before reading this...or at least have a passing familiarity with the effects of same as this story...and the entire series will feel like a trip that you've taken...or maybe its one that you WILL take and you're seeing it in your future.
Regardless...this book is not for the timid. It is classified as horror - and the Lovecraftian elements definitely support that - but it also contains the elements of many more genres as it pushes its way into your mind.
I would like to say that ANY reader will absolutely enjoy this book...but that would be stretch. Many will not have the patience...or the will power...to survive the 196 pages, but if you do, you may find you've experienced something you unexpectedly enjoyed.
Now on to book THREE.
Second...if you're looking for a casual read on a soft spring day while you picnic under a the branches of a tree softly moving in the breeze with the sounds of the slowly flowing river playing across the landscape in the background...THIS IS NOT THAT BOOK!!! Author Caitlin Kiernan has definitely created a mosaic of interwoven story lines with threads reaching back and forth across the series and you...as the reader...will REALLY need to pay attention if you want to be able to follow...and grasp...the story as it unfolds forwards and backwards.
Third...you may want to take some mind altering drugs before reading this...or at least have a passing familiarity with the effects of same as this story...and the entire series will feel like a trip that you've taken...or maybe its one that you WILL take and you're seeing it in your future.
Regardless...this book is not for the timid. It is classified as horror - and the Lovecraftian elements definitely support that - but it also contains the elements of many more genres as it pushes its way into your mind.
I would like to say that ANY reader will absolutely enjoy this book...but that would be stretch. Many will not have the patience...or the will power...to survive the 196 pages, but if you do, you may find you've experienced something you unexpectedly enjoyed.
Now on to book THREE.
March 24, 2023
Black helicopters is the second book in Caitlin R. Kiernan’s tinfoil dossier novella series and unfortunately, for me, didn’t quite live up to its predecessor (even though this story was apparently written before Agents of Dreamland).
Firstly, I love this world of occult agencies vying to stave off inevitable eldritch apocalypses that Kiernan has imagined. While AoD is a more noir-like detective story reminiscent of The X-files, Black Helicopters is full on, spy game, espionage and I am here for that. However, once I started getting deeper into Kiernan’s signature abstract, time jumping, chapters, I realized that the connecting threads between them are much thinner than they were in AoD. Certain parts felt convoluted and reading this teetered more towards tedious than “mysteriously captivating.” Upon finishing, I do feel like I was able to grasp what all was happening. Although, I would not be surprised if I missed some clues, details, or butterfly flaps, scattered among this 200 page, but two century long, apocalyptic, quantum, chess match of a story.
Also, the eldritch horror kind of takes a back seat compared to AoD. More of a small set dressing for the larger story at hand. However, the short moments of Lovecraftian nightmare’s emerging from the sea are very cool.
Not my favorite, but I will continue to read any and all stories that take place in this world; I love it so much. So, bring on #3.
Firstly, I love this world of occult agencies vying to stave off inevitable eldritch apocalypses that Kiernan has imagined. While AoD is a more noir-like detective story reminiscent of The X-files, Black Helicopters is full on, spy game, espionage and I am here for that. However, once I started getting deeper into Kiernan’s signature abstract, time jumping, chapters, I realized that the connecting threads between them are much thinner than they were in AoD. Certain parts felt convoluted and reading this teetered more towards tedious than “mysteriously captivating.” Upon finishing, I do feel like I was able to grasp what all was happening. Although, I would not be surprised if I missed some clues, details, or butterfly flaps, scattered among this 200 page, but two century long, apocalyptic, quantum, chess match of a story.
Also, the eldritch horror kind of takes a back seat compared to AoD. More of a small set dressing for the larger story at hand. However, the short moments of Lovecraftian nightmare’s emerging from the sea are very cool.
Not my favorite, but I will continue to read any and all stories that take place in this world; I love it so much. So, bring on #3.
November 11, 2024
Black Helicopters is the second book in the weirdly wonderful Tinfoil Dossier trilogy by Caitlín R. Kiernan. How to describe it? I'm not sure I can.
Let's see. First there are the albino twins, la Bete and Ivoire. la Bete is by Deer Island with 66 and soldiers, X agents, CIA / FBI, etc as they battle Lovecraftian creatures who have taken over the island and rise from the sea to battle these troops. Bete is hooked on drugs... Then we move to Ireland where Ivoire and is being 'protected?' by Twimsby while assassins from the various agencies try to get rid of her. There is a sort of time travel as the Egyptian, Ptolema, moves from time to time (I think) In the future it seems that Earth is kind of a Water world..... I think.. LOL.
So now that you know what's going on. Even though I'm constantly confused, I'm also constantly amazed. It's like a Philip K. Dick story when he was writing his most drugged out stories... It's dark, poetic at times, philsophical, horrific, and great Sci Fi. I'm looking forward to #3, The Tindalos Asset to see how it all wraps up. Will the Signalman from Book 1 make more of an appearance? (3.5 stars)
Let's see. First there are the albino twins, la Bete and Ivoire. la Bete is by Deer Island with 66 and soldiers, X agents, CIA / FBI, etc as they battle Lovecraftian creatures who have taken over the island and rise from the sea to battle these troops. Bete is hooked on drugs... Then we move to Ireland where Ivoire and is being 'protected?' by Twimsby while assassins from the various agencies try to get rid of her. There is a sort of time travel as the Egyptian, Ptolema, moves from time to time (I think) In the future it seems that Earth is kind of a Water world..... I think.. LOL.
So now that you know what's going on. Even though I'm constantly confused, I'm also constantly amazed. It's like a Philip K. Dick story when he was writing his most drugged out stories... It's dark, poetic at times, philsophical, horrific, and great Sci Fi. I'm looking forward to #3, The Tindalos Asset to see how it all wraps up. Will the Signalman from Book 1 make more of an appearance? (3.5 stars)
September 15, 2018
There is no doubt in my mind after reading Black Helicopters that Caitlin Kiernan is possessed of an amazing imagination. That, added to a prodigious capacity to add incredible snippets of information, makes this novella a fascinating read. It is always good to see a sharp intellect at work especially in these days of lazy bestsellers. For a number of reasons, however, Black Helicopters did not click despite its presentation of many themes that I find of interest to me. I think the reasons for my hesitation to love this story resides partly in its history. As Kiernan explains in an afterword this novella, originally published in 2012, has been reissued with five new chapters. The other thing to note is the sources Kiernan used which are outlined in a delightful afterword. It is nice to see an author noting that she "doesn't write in a vacuum." I enjoyed recognizing the sources I knew but felt frustrated at those I didn't. It slowed the pace of my reading. I wasn't amused by the chapter in French. Most of the French I learned years ago has eroded away but I was able to, ever so slowly, decipher the general meaning. How do I know that? Well, because Kiernan reprints the French chapter in English as an appendix. Again, momentum. Finally, I think this story's beginning as a novella and revision as a slightly longer novella adversely impacts what would have been a whiz bang novel. The story feels too constrained to me as it stands. Having said all this my experience with Black Helicopters doesn't mean I will not, at some point, try another Kiernan.
September 24, 2018
I really wanted to like this book. Agents of Dreamland had been entertaining and I hoped that this would be too. It wasn't awful, but it suffered from chapters of meandering diatribe and technobabble. It jumped around a lot like a Quentin Tarantino movie where nothing was in order, present day (2012) or the future (2112) and a lot of it just felt like some weird play on a century's long Lovecraftian chess game between two unclear entities.
There were some interesting parts, but it felt so jumbled it was very difficult to grasp what the point of it all was, and in the end, I just didn't care enough to figure it out. Shame, Agents of Dreamland was a much more cohesive story, this was just a veritable hot mess.
There were some interesting parts, but it felt so jumbled it was very difficult to grasp what the point of it all was, and in the end, I just didn't care enough to figure it out. Shame, Agents of Dreamland was a much more cohesive story, this was just a veritable hot mess.
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