Murder of Angels

Rating:
Summary: Unexpected delight
Review:
I'll admit, I hadn't read anything by Caitlin Kiernan until Murder of Angels. Now I'm left to wonder why it took me so long.
This is a beautifully written book about terrible things. More fantasy than horror, but not fitting comfortably in either category. Because the reader is dropped directly into a very difficult segment of the lives of the main characters, it may take a while to warm up to them, but I promise you it will happen.
The real world segments of the book are very much that, and the other world sections feel like a fever dream - vivid and disturbing, hanging on for weeks in the back of my mind.
I am eager to read more by this author.

Rating:
Summary: intricate, dark, and intense
Review: Caitlin R. Kiernan's writing continues to get better with every novel she has published. She combines lyrical yet sharp stylistics with a unique narrative pacing to create novels that read as fast as short stories, dense meditations on loss and mythology that sink into the brain and remain there as easily as one ingests a much simpler work. Her writing challenges but does not overburden a reader, and her ability to craft stark but beautiful characterization--and dialogue--can lure in everyone interested in witnessing the reactions of *real people* suddenly caught up in realities far different than those they are used to....

In Murder of Angels, Kiernan follows up her "first" novel Silk, bringing back many of the characters that populated Silk to finish, as it might be, what they started in the earlier novel. Murder of Angels is more than just a sequel, however: though it *does* take up Niki Ky, Daria Parker, Spyder Baxter, and others roughly ten years after Silk closed, and ties up many of the spidery threads left hanging at the end of Silk, Murder of Angels is a novel built out of manifestly different cloth.

Whereas Silk focused more on the daily grind of the characters themselves, using Spyder Baxter's inspired syncretic mythology of angelic wars, arachnid psychopomps, and transformation as a backdrop to the story's very real human tragedy, Murder of Angels puts that mythology first and mangles reality as the mythworld begins to crash into our own, shards and threads stabbing through the veneer of the everyday and opening wounds large enough for entire universes to tumble through. Kiernan utilizes many elements familiar to readers of fantasy and mythology--most notably, the person spirited away to a parallel world in which they are a hero (or, in this case, a Hierophant) destined to fight the Jungian Shadow for the integrity of the world--but mixes up the standard tropes and concepts of heroic fantasy and mythology into something far darker, far stranger, and far more applicable to the grimy worlds around the dark streetcorners that few people want to investigate.

In effect, Murder of Angels presents a rich, traditional-fantasy epic worldbuilding experience wrapped inside an urban-fantasy veneer that shows how even a morbidly troubled girl can take the weight of worlds upon her shoulders. The prose is lush as velvet but still can cut like a strip of razorwire when the moment demands it. This is not merely a horror novel, nor a heroic fantasy, nor a hallucinatory bad trip through the arid lands of the soul, but a powerful synthesis of all that I, for one, will probably be using as a glowing example of many authorial skills and stylistic tricks in fiction classes from here on out.

Rating:
Summary: Kiernan must be read!
Review: For many years, readers and reviewers have often made comparisons between the work of Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite. I think, based on Murder of Angels, it's finally time for those comparisons to stop. There was never much basis for the comparison to begin with. Yes, Kiernan's first novel, Silk bears very superficial similarities to Brite's first novel, Lost Souls, in that both are concerned with kids and young adults in subcultures (punk, goth, etc.) in the American South. But, whereas Brite's first novel was a wistful fairy tale, Kiernan's was a hard-edged look at life in a small town punk scene tinged with a much darker fantasy. All these years later, Kiernan has distingusihed herself as one of the foremost voices in modern horror and fantasy, while Brite has left the genre to write books about food and restaurants. Both writers have made of success of writing, but I'm tired of the constant comparisons, when there is so little actual similarity. I think the fact that Kiernan and Brite are longtime RL friends is largely behind this continuing misconception.

Anyway, Murder of Angels is an utterly brilliant book. This book is Kiernan at her finest, suprassing even her masterpiece Low Red Moon in its ability to deftly bend reality to the needs of the author. The "multiverse" Kiernan began with Silk and Threshold comes of age in this novel, which blends elements of horror, traditional fantasy, and even science fiction into a beautiful, terrifying, heart-breaking story of love and courage. Niki Ky and Daria Parker, the survivors of Silk, must make choices that will damn or save two worlds and themselves. Where Silk only suggested monsters and ghosts, Murder of Angels throws us headlong into a parrallel universe of vengeful demons, dragons (that might not be dragons at all), flat worlds, secretive witches, abyssal gods, and yes, even pirates. This book is an utter delight, filled with surprises. Not content to merely lead us through her story, Kiernan asks us to question everything we suspect might be true about reality.

Rating:
Summary: A New Classic
Review: I'm an avid reader of the weird and fantastic. I come to a darkly fantastic story with a certain set of expectations. The author must, above all else, make me forget the world in which I am reading and transport me to the world of his or her fiction. They must make it real. They must make it tangible. They must make me see through their eyes.

To say that Caitlin R. Kiernan is a master of this act would be an understatement.

Murder of Angels is a feast for the imagination. Few authors of horror or fantasy can match her ability. Brava!

Rating:
Summary: a new visionary, a great book
Review: If I could give this novel more stars, I would give it ten.
Eloquent commentaries on MoA have already been included in other reader reviews. I must say that realistic characters who find themselves in magical or mysterious circumstances make all of Caitlin Kiernan's works astounding. She is an author capable of creating such worlds, so that I can believe in these worlds, like no other. To me MoA is a story of love and hope. If you've never read her writing before, read this!

Rating:
Summary: Diamonds in the Rough
Review: Murder of Angels is the long-awaited sequel to Caitlín R. Kiernan's novel, Silk. However, I think the new novel stands very much on its own two talons, so you need not have read its predecessor to understand it. This new novel reintroduces us to such memorable characters from Silk as Spyder Baxter, Daria Parker, and Niki Ky, and includes a cameo by the mysterious Scarborough Pentecost from Kiernan's previous novel, Low Red Moon.

There is far too much to the story to include in this review, and I haven't the writing talent to do it justice, but I shall try. Days after reading the last chapter, it's all still swirling around my head like a vivid dream. I've rarely been so affected by a single work of fiction. I must admit that Silk was my least favourite of Kiernan's novels and I expected to be disappointed by its sequel. But I found myself hooked from the opening line of Murder of Angels and it still hasn't quite let me go.

As the title suggests, Murder of Angels has an apocalyptic theme to it. The novel initially reacquaints us with punk rocker Daria and her girlfriend Niki, 10 years after the events of Silk. Their post-traumatic life together is revealed, as well as their tragic separation. But by mid-novel, the focus of the story shifts and the two women are caught up in an otherworldy battle involving the incorporeal yet still frighteningly powerful Spyder.

Yet despite the fantastical plot, the novel relies heavily on its characters to push the story forward. And as with real people, the inhabitants of the novel are complex, multi-faceted, and not entirely appealing. In that way, the book serves as an unpleasant mirror of sorts. I often found myself disliking certain characters, then realizing this was due to seeing my own traits reflected in them. Yet the same distinctly human qualities of these characters that I at first found abrasive soon became comforting and even likeable.

No matter what kind of genre a novel is placed in or how well it is written, it's important to at least partially relate to and care for the characters. And I was surprised to find that by the end of the novel, I did indeed care what happened to these fictitious creations. That is certainly a rarity in horror and fantasy novels.

While the first half of the novel is a gritty look at mental illness, addiction and other forms of human suffering, the second half is a portal to another world. As usual, Kiernan's prose is elegant and dreamlike, describing creatures and settings that were nearly beyond my imagination's capabilities. Certain aspects of the novel seem to pay homage to other novels such as Alice in Wonderland and House of Leaves, however, the whole is most definitely much more than the sum of its parts.

Murder of Angels is one of the most unique, intoxicating books I've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Two Whiney, Dysfunctional Lesbians Save The World .. Sort Of
Review: My first exposure to Kiernan has left much to be desired as well as a bag of mixed emotions. If you want to read a story simply because the author is a master of the English language, then give this book five stars and enjoy. However, if you need such things in your dark urban fantasy such as plot and in-depth characters, I suggest Charles DeLint.

Murder of Angels truly is beautifully written, but the characters with their moral ambiguity whine and complain their way through the book trying to find meaning through alcohol and sex and failing miserably as they try to forget the horrific events that happened to both of them ten years ago in some house in Birmingham, Alabama. You have to wade through 138 pages before you start to get anything that makes the story begin to sound like solid dark fantasy, but then intriguing plot developments are left to whither on the vine. The alternate plane of existence with its intricate mythology and symbolism remains basically unexplored. Daria Parker finds an old notebook with some potentially mind-numbing revelations, but it is left to molder on the floor. The horror in the basement could have been one of the major and important conflicts of the story, but becomes nothing more than a convenient prop easily used and dispatched.

Angst and gothic urban fantasy can mix, but you need more than a mastery of the English language to carry it off. Even if the characters find no wonder or passion or horror in what they encounter and experience because they are emotionally shallow and dull (you get the impression Daria and Niki basically go through the book feeling only tired and irritated), the writer has to communicate that wonder and passion or horror to the reader.

I look forward to giving Kiernan another try as there is wonderful potential there, but until then, I'll stay with Thomas Ligotti, Poe, DeLint and Neil Gaiman.


Rating:
Summary: something really wonderful
Review: This is the first book by Caitlin Kiernan that I've read, and I absolutely loved it. Straddling the line between horror and fantasy, the author paints amazingly vivid, cinematic "pictures" of both the "real world'" and the alternate realities into which the characters find themselves launched. This book echoes such diverse influences as Thomas Pynchon, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, William Faulkner, and William Burroughs. I recommend this novel unreservedly.

Rating:
Summary: These Things Happen
Review: This is the sequel to 'Silk,' which was the very first Kiernan story I read. I liked that tale quite a bit, but the intervening years have wrought a considerable change in Kiernan's approach. She has become more polished, more story-centric, and even better at character development. I think 'Murder of Angels' is the best novel Kiernan has written so far, and that is not in any way a criticism of her previous efforts.

The center stage of the novel is occupied by two of the 'Silk' veterans. One is Niki Ky, a Vietnamese woman whose emotional ties with Spyder Baxter (Silk's dark central character) have left her a functional, but borderline schizophrenic. The other is Daria Parker, a struggling musician in the first novel and a successful one now. The two are lovers - Daria caught in the web of trying to help someone who never gets any better. Daria loses herself in her music, and Niki clings to her nightmares as an escape of her own. Both were marred by the horror of Spyder's death and wend their tortuous way in a relationship that has begun to leak at the cracks.

But just because Spyder died in this world, does not mean that what she has become has ended in all the worlds that reality borders on. Still tortured by the memory of her abusive father, Spyder lives on as the Weaver. In the place that the final events in 'Silk' catapulted her into Spyder has become a rebellious figure, distorting a new reality to meet her own purposes. There her enemy is the Dragon, who is a presence in the story, but never makes a direct appearance. Here struggle has turned the Dragon into a spiritual synonym for her father. This is threatening to ruin one world, and even to spill over into ours.

Niki becomes central to Spyder's plans. She is the Hierophant in her ex-lover's plans to expel the Dragon. She is pursues by red witches and dark minions as Spyder leads her to the bridge between the worlds and brings her face to face with something that will test her every strength. Daria, ridden with guilt over placing career before love, rides to the rescue, herself crowded by portents, dreams, and messengers. She is on a quest to retrieve the philter, something needed for the Hierophant to complete the ritual that Spyder is trying to fulfill.

Using very clear and solid strokes, Kiernan takes us back and forth between realities without ever leaving the reader lost in the shuffle. She is not the kind of horror writer that sprays blood over her pages, which makes this kind of mythological story especially difficult to write and keep up interest. 'Murder of Angels' is a genuine accomplishment, proof that a complicated story where things are not all black and white can maintain interest to the point of real involvement by the beholder. The only fault is one that is common in this kind of story. The ending comes too swiftly - as if Kiernan so cared for her characters that she was reluctant to let them go until the last moment.

This novel can be read in standalone mode, but it will require a vivid imagination to fill in the blanks. To really 'get' everything that happens in 'Murder of Angels' I think reading 'Silk' is a required first course. Since both books are good, this shouldn't be a drawback.


Rating:
Summary: "But these things happen."
Review: Yes, things happen and Caitlin R. Kiernan has made things happen again in her novel Murder of Angels. Her complex, well-developed but still hazy mind has dreamed up another outstanding novel. Kiernan's fingertips are laced with delusional poisons, Murder of Angels drips of The Green Fairy, who undoubtedly had a great influence in this novel. Murder of Angels is a sequel to her first novel Silk. In Murder of angels, wounds are still open and bleeding freely, none of the characters have healed quite right, but then again colliding worlds that cause insanity isn't ever quite right.

Niki Ky and Daria Parker are ten years older but time has not healed anything. Niki has been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and stays at home in San Francisco with her babysitter, Marvin, while her supposed lover, Daria, is off lost in a wave of rock music, alcohol, and denial. The horrid blue klonopin pill (perhaps an inherited addiction from Niki's previous lover, Spyder) and other pills such as Elavil and Xanax try to make Niki all better, but it is the creamy milk Xanax that starts the deep, hitching pain. And then Spyder murmurs to Niki from another world, "You will not believe the things that you will see." And Daria starts receiving phone messages from a voice that sends cold chills up her spine and freezes her brain. Not even the alcohol can drown out this androgynous voice. Daria begins to understand what Niki's going through and she gets a taste of what it is like to be crazy. "And she falls, too."

All through the book Kiernan's voice is heard whispering,"these things happen",as if it is necessary for her to explain herself. It is not. You don't need any explanation from her. She doesn't need to define her writing.

From bridges made of bones to broken white birds and surprise guest appearances from Kiernan's other book Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels causes ripples you are forced to believe. This story is captivating. Mysterious, out of the ordinary events occur, but that is to be expected from Kiernan. Insanity and reality, spyders and dragons, poetic and lyrical, this novel has no flaws, except forcing you to relinquish your sanity.

If you are a fan of Poppy Z. Brite, be prepared to get immersed into Caitlin R. Kiernan's novels. Brite acts like gateway drug she leaves you wanting more, where Brite leaves off, Kiernan finishes. In between Kiernan's pages you will find a more powerful drug that will satisfy your needs. If it were possible I would say Kiernan's novels are savagely true, but we all know that there are no such things as big daunting dragons, spider girls, and other half creatures that don't even deserve names. You only wish her fictitious world were true.

Enjoy, this is one novel that paints such a disturbing world; you will never want to leave it behind, and it worms its way, imbeds its self into your brain so that you will never forget what you have read. You'll be an addict soon.