Rating: 
Summary: Threshold
Review: A novel of loss, discovery, regret, revelation and the stark, far from human horror that can attach itself to all of the aforementioned, Threshold is a victory for Caitlin Kiernan while at the same time a modern, chthonic vision that will harrow its reader long after the book is placed safely on the shelf, its secrets secured until the next, unsuspecting and curious human intrudes into the world contained within its pages.
Rating:
Summary: This book is spooky
Review: Do NOT read this book in the dark, during a thunderstorm, at night, before you try to sleep. There's some seriously spooky stuff in this book. You'll be afraid to go in dark places for weeks after reading it. It's so cool, this book, I've read it twice already.
Rating:
Summary: A world of gods and monsters
Review: I've been reading Caitlin R. Kiernan's amazing work since I first stumbled across her short story "Bela's Plot" years ago. Since then, she's given us a steady stream of marvelous dark fiction. Instead of the usual horror cliches, Kiernan's work is fashioning a new mythos, complete with heroes and monsters, gods and demons, the whole thing seen through the expertly fractured lens of her prose. THRESHOLD is the latest addition to Kiernan's ouvre and does not disappoint. Like her literary antecedents - Lovecraft, Poe, Blackwood, Brockton Brown, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, etc. - she is creating a vast and disturbing world from the fragments of our own, one with has the power of refining those things she wishes us to see and understand. THRESHOLD is both terrifying and uplifting, and deserves to be read and cherished by all true admirers of horror fiction.
Rating:
Summary: An Extraordinary Talent
Review: I absolutely loved THRESHOLD. Caitlin Kiernan continues to prove herself one of the most talented authors writing horror today. I was doubtful that she would be able to write a book that I liked better than SILK, but I have to admit that with THRESHOLD she has done exactly that!Like all great horror, this novel works on many levels simultaneously. It's terrifying, yet filled with Kiernan's grasp of the sublime and beautiful. It sets its characters against insurmountable odds, yet draws genuine heroism from them. This is the best horror novel I've read since Mark Z. Danielewski's THE HOUSE OF LEAVES.
Rating: 
Summary: Altogether disappointing
Review: Having just finished this book two hours ago, I feel a need to write this review while all my complaints are still new. Before I list my complaints, however, I would like to say that Caitlin Kiernan has the ability to craft a fantastically weird plot. I admire her defiance of conventions that seem to plague the plots of many darker novels - most prominently, a resolution wherein all "good" and "evil" subplots, images, characters, etc. are conveniently separated, explained, and brought to a point of closure. Caitlin Kiernan tends to ignore conventional closure in her books. But while, perhaps, such a trait was impressive in Silk, it is not impressive in Threshold. The end of Threshold, I feel, is utterly disappointing. The entire book builds up to the ending; the climax, if there is one, is, I believe, meant to occur where a resolution would typically occur. The end, though, is weak, mainly because we have no idea what it is supposed to signify. Are the characters enlightened, disillusioned, or forever scarred - both spiritually and psychologically? No light is shed on their reactions, or, truly, on what the purpose of their entire involvement in the world of monsters and angels was - or symbolized. The end of this book does not lend to a greater feeling of awe in the reader. It lends to confusion, and in my case, frustration. I am not saying that this book needed to provide us with horribly concrete "answers," but it would have been helpful and, I think, more intriguing if Caitlin Kiernan had described how the characters felt and what, really, their motivations were. Too often in this book, characters have what appear to be epiphanies: they come to a moment of what they think, at least, is understanding. As readers, we are never invited to see or comprehend these epiphanies. I'm sure that Caitlin Kiernan would say that the suppression of their realizations was deliberate on her part; the reader is supposed to "draw her own conclusions." That's all well and good, but the answer-free ending (which I think is meant to mirror the answer-free conflict her characters face) seems more a cheap wrap-up tactic borne out of either Miss Kiernan's boredom while finishing her book, or her uncertainty of how, exactly, to finish her book, than a compelling and justifiable resolution. It truly seems that she does a real disservice to her vision, her characters, and the integrity of her plot by making her ending so maddeningly non-specific. My other main complaint lies with Miss Kiernan's treatment of her characters - mainly, Dancy and Sadie. As readers, we sympathize with Dancy. But while we care about her, it seems that the author that created her does not. Dancy's purpose in this book, it seems, is to be a receptacle for absolute misery. She endures terrible pain and horror only to, apparently, remain entrapped by that pain and horror. It almost seemed that Miss Kiernan was using Dancy as a means by which she could vent her anger and frustration. Although this may not be the case, I got this impression, and was in turn quite upset and disappointed by her treatment of Dancy. Similarly, I was unhappy with her treatment of Sadie. Why create a character - why let the readers into a character's head - if you are simply going to make her vanish at the end of the story? I think that Caitlin Kiernan owed us some explanation of why Sadie's presence in the book was ultimately important. This novel could have been very interesting. But the seemingly purposeful suppression of important plot details - and the neglect and abuse of two main characters at the hands of the author - make it, in the end, irredeemably baffling and depressing.
Rating:
Summary: none
Review: (Kiernan) knows how to control and weave the fine gossamers of the dark, disturbing, and desolate; entangling the reader in her web, and hold them until the very end...and long after...Gary S. Potter Author/Poet
Rating:
Summary: Was slightly dissappointed
Review: I had read Kiernan's first book, SILK, about 6 or seven times, each time I grew more and more in love with her writing style and her charcters, and the beauty and poetry strewn thorughout her wonderfully detailed novel. The symbolism throughout Silk had related to me in so many ways, and it touched down on many bases, as well as put very vivid images in my head. Never before had I read literature that FORCED a person to feel a certain way. If you were in an uppity mood, reading her writing is likely to put a damper on it, for it forces you to see inside the minds of the troubled characters and situations you are forced to follow closely, or you will get lost. I was very excited to get my grubby little hands on Threshold, expecting beauty, but I knew when I first began to read it, it would be nothing compared to Silk, for I don't think anything could outrank that as being my favorite book. But as I began to delve deeper and deeper into the novel, I noticed far less ability to actually relate to the characters, and it just felt as though she didn't look as deeply into their minds.. The story dragged on so badly at points that I had set down the book and began to read others, only to pick it up about a month later out of boredom. So I forced myself to finish reading, but the plot was nothing to make me dance. She spent the entire novel building up for the ending, and I came out feeling as though I had been cheated out of something. I have an unimaginable ammount of awe towards Kiernan's writing techniques, but this just didn't even come close to the awe that Silk had invoked. I have a feeling it may also be the actual set-up of the book....the very crisp white pages, the font, the longer book. It didn't contain the same melancholy and dark beauty, the same ability to feel personal to the reader, as do her other books. I was let down by this, but thank god there are always Silk and her books of short stories. Read those books first, for if you read this, you may wonder why Caitlin R. Kiernan is worshipped so much.
Rating:
Summary: Simply breathtaking
Review: Caitlin R. Kiernan's elegant, creepydark fantasy is stunning proof that a writer can seldom go wrong writing about what she knows. She is, according to the biography on the inside back cover, "trained as a vertebrate paleontologist," who lives in Birmingham, AL. The story takes place there, and fossils certainly figure prominently in this, her second novel, which deals with things that may be lurking inside a water tunnel in the southern city. In Kiernan's tale of the real and yet imagined Birmingham (also the locale of her first novel, the equally stunning "Silk"), which evokes Beowulf and Alice, to say nothing of Lovecraft (and Jung?) things can go bump in the day as often as at night-maybe more often. In fact, its chilliest passages involve heat and sun and dust and thirst, and psychotic birds that crash into windows. And you'll surely become enthralled with the doings of Chance, Deacon, Sadie, and Dancy. All this would get a four-star rating for the tale. But what makes it worth five is the author's evocative dreamysmooth writing style. Words seem to tumble out Kiernan. She writes like a poet, not a paleontologist. It's best read in the morning, before you forget your dreams, and perhaps with Kristin Hersh's "Strange Angels" on your CD player.
Rating:
Summary: Threshold : A Novel of Deep Time
Review: The only other horror I've read in the past few years was "Silk" (also by Kiernan). Her writing has vastly improved since her last novel (and it was quite good to begin with!). This story is layers of mythology, science, and poetry - stratum stacked up until I found myself trying to read slower and slower so the story wouldn't end despite the fact that I was reading faster and faster because this story is a page turner. Her poetic prose had me reciting lines to anyone who would listen while I read. PLUS, how can you go wrong with a story that has trilobites in it?! Loved it all around - even the beautiful cover. My only gripes are the monsters don't take a more obvious role in the story soon enough for me - but this is a story of subtleness with creatures of insinuation and patience. I also wished the trilobites would have had a more prominent role. One of the best books I've read in the last year (which was just under 50 last year)!
It is also refreshing to read fiction of any sort and have the author know what they are talking about when it comes to the science - a rare commodity these days!!
Rating:
Summary: Splendidly Spooky
Review: Caitlin Kiernan's beautiful writing just keeps on amazing me. Threshold combines her poetic prose with a mounting sense of cosmic dread that would have made even Lovecraft squirm, and you truly feel for the characters trapped inside her terrifying tale of ancient secrets and powerful beings from "deep time". Nothing is what we think it is, or maybe it is and that might be even worse. Five stars.
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