Rating: 
Summary: Something of substance.
Review: Almost everything about this book is surprising. From its rich and inventive use of language to the depth of its characters, from the sublty of its terrors to the author's ability to describe goth and punk subculture without romanticizing. It's hard to believe this is a first novel. It's not hard to believe it's an award-winning first novel. Silk is a dark wonder. I recommend it very strongly!
Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint-hearted or arachnophobic.
Review: Caitlin R. Kiernan knows how to scare people. That much is obvious. More importantly, she knows how to write fantastic fiction with a flair and sense of understatement rarely seen in contemporary horror stories. Silk is a gritty, surreal trip down a rabbit hole filled with worse things than most of us would ever want to imagine, and the author has a knack for suggesting, rather than showing, so that we make our own mental pictures of the terrors that populate her fictional landscape. This book is just amazingly good.
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Summary: More, please!
Review: As someone who is hopelessly addicted to horror, I'm always delighted to come across a new author (or an author who's new to me, at least) who transcends the expectations and weaknesses of the genre, writers like Thomas Ligotti, Poppy Z. Brite, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Kathe Koja, Michael Marshall Smith, and, well, you get the idea. Add Caitlin R. Kiernan to that list. Silk is a fabulous journey into darkness.
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Summary: My new favorite novel!
Review: A word or warning: if you're looking for escapist fluff, literary background noise designed for those with poor reading comprehension and short attention spans, Silk isn't the novel for you. If, on the other hand, you're after one of the richest and most powerful pieces of dark fiction in recent years, let me recommend Caitlin Kiernan. In Silk she has created a novel that is not only delightfully disturbing, but, for want of a better word, substantial. Much of the strength of Kiernan's writing rests in her superb use of the English language, and at times she approaches prose poetry (think a toned down William Faulkner crossed with Shirley Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft)and her ability to create characters that we believe in, who quickly become real people to us, is amazing. Her story is complex, weaving together such disparate material as partical physics, the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, and apocryphal elements of Christian mythology, played out against a post-industrial backdrop. And she is surely an author who expects the reader to work, not merely passively consume the words that have been set before them. The reward is great, however, for those who are patient and inquisitive enough to follow the path that Kiernan has laid out in this magnificient novel. Silk is as much a poignant coming of age story as it is an exploration of things that go bump in the night. Don't miss it!
Rating:
Summary: SILK is fantastic!
Review: I bought this book because Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors, had said nice things about it. I was not disappointed. SILK takes the reader on a terrifying and revealing romp through the psyches of its characters, and keeps us wondering where reality begins and sanity ends. Is the post-industrial wasteland of this novel REALLY inhabited by vengeful angels and giant spider-like things? Is Spyder Baxter a shaman? Or is the author only showing us the things that haunt the mind, that our fears might as well have the power to bring to life? Either way, this is a heck of a novel and should be read by anyone with a taste for hip and seriously creepy fiction!
Rating: 
Summary: Good imagery / No point
Review: As I was reading this book I was thinking: this girl can really write great descriptions. Unfortunately, as I kept reading I found that's about all she's good at. The characters are interesting, but ultimately, unconvincing. When Spyder beasts start killing people off, the only rationale I could find is that their sender, is named Spyder, and she has a fascination with spiders. This fascination has something to do with childhood abuse, but why it led to spiders is not clear. Perhaps that's something explained at the end of the book; I never got that far. Life is too short to finish poorly conceived novels, and, if the only reason to finish a book is to find out the reason for a plot device, it's not a good reason.
Rating:
Summary: Spiders and angels and phantoms, oh my!
Review: Silk is a triumph of incremental suspense. Kiernan begins her novel of Southern Gothicisms with solid characters and a finely-tuned knack for describing her setting, coupled with a powerful, almost poetic flare for the English language, and slowly lures the reader into a frightening world where nothing is certain and every shadow is reason for fear. Her ability to undermine our sense of reality is awesome and she uses it to set up a novel where the things that go bump in the night might only exist in the mentally-ill or drug-altered minds of her characters as nothing more than an elaborate array of shared hallucinations....or may be very, very real indeed! Kiernan's beautiful writing and terrifying story definitely work for me! I loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: Would make a great movie
Review: Angelina Jolie could play Spyder Baxter and it would rock. I got this book from my girlfriend for Xmas and loved it. It's a very original story.
Rating:
Summary: thank you, caitlin kiernan
Review: this is the best book i've read since geek love and gravity's rainbow. silk is a sad and beautiful and sometimes scary book full of sad and beautiful and sometimes scary people, which must have been written with sad and beautiful and sometimes scary people in mind. this is the sort of book that makes me remember why i'd rather be reading books than watching television or playing video games and i recommend it to all who delight in truly unique books!
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book
Review: Even though I don't usually read horror, I thought this was a really brilliant novel. It deserves a much wider audience, in my opinion, than the people who are likely to be lured to it by the cover blurbs from Clive Barker and Peter Straub. Caitlin Kiernan's writing is almost word perfect, and I give this book two thumbs (and both big toes!) up.
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