[.ca] Low Red Moon (ISBN 0451461649)

Unearthing Treasure:
Caitlín R. Kiernan has spent a decade writing more engaging fiction than a great percentage of writers currently publishing. By that I mean not to slight other writers but to imply her fiction is not created from formulas that can be browsed casually for entertainment. The reader is engaged. The reader must actively read. The payoff is the richness and depth and detail of the work which is nothing short of astonishing. LOW RED MOON is no exception. It is a superior work. In a line of great works it is her best to date. Chance and Deacon Silvey are married with a baby on the way. Chance is a paleontologist who works hard to keep her life grounded in reality. Deacon is an ex-alcoholic grounded in nothing more than survival and struggling to build a foundation with Chance. Deacon is troubled by migraine-inducing visions he doesn't want that seem to help everyone but himself. Chance has chosen to distance herself completely from this, to believe these visions are no more than a product of Deacon's self-induced afflictions or something else equally easily explainable. Until she begins to experience hallucinations of her own. This alone gives the novel plenty of room for character exploration. The interaction between these two and a small host of minor characters crackles with intensity. But the pivot of the novel is Narcissa Snow. A someone, or more precisely some *thing,* hunting them with a personal agenda that makes the marriage growing pains seem trivial by comparison. Narcissa is a well developed evil that appears to be unstoppable. And if you have read any of Ms. Kiernan's works you know nothing is guaranteed and the price for survival is high. The characters are well drawn and their interaction is a tightly stretched high-wire as each fights personal battles from within and external battles forced upon them. The last one hundred pages are dynamic, gut-wrenching, and emotionally exhausting. It is impossible to finish this book and not be affected by it. Ms. Kiernan's research and attention to detail are well known to anyone who has read any of her previous work. Here in LOW RED MOON she displays this hard work in the most accessible novel she has written to date. If you have yet to read anything by her and were looking for a place to start, this book is your golden opportunity to be introduced to a writer of spectacular talent. If you are familiar with Ms. Kiernan's work it will be hard to not see she is a writer becoming more sure, more solid with each publication.

Oh What Is The Land Of Dreams...:
When a psychic tracks down a serial killer and saves a victim most would call it a job well done. But for Deacon Silvey it turns into a nightmare. Asked to do a favor for the Birmingham police, Deacon becomes the target of a dark hunt, facing both the revenge of the old ones and the hopes of another killer to fulfill a dream of ascension. Had he been the only target, Deacon might have been able to stand firm, but the demon with yellow eyes has a ritual to perform - on those that Deacon loves. Deacon is an ex-alcoholic, trying to start a new life with Chance, his very pregnant young wife. When he seeks help with the dark visions that have begun to plague him, death follows his trail. Chance is a practical woman and a scientist - a paleontologist. She barely believes in her husbands powers and now finds she is having visions of her own. She is torn between her own bloody nightmares and her fears that Deacon will succumb to his own demons. A deep wedge is being driven between them and only catastrophe can follow. My first encounter with Caitlen Kiernan was Silk, her freshman novel. While chilling and interesting in its own right, Silk pales beside Low Red Moon, Kiernan's third. The events of this novel would be terrifying on their own, but Kiernan has learned to blend subconscious fears and a modern mythology with echoes of Lovecraft into a concoction as suspenseful and doom-filled as anything I've read in years. Dream and reality crisscross in splashes of blood, characters refuse to follow any stereotype, and the Southern gothic horror story gets an infusion of new ideas. Kiernan displays a command of language that transcends her chosen genre. The reader, of course, is the beneficiary, nose buried in a book that is both too chilling to read and impossible to put down. If this is your introduction to Kiernan, brace yourself, you will soon be hunting up everything she has written.

Low Red Moon:
The protagonists of Threshold return in a very different story, an original and chilling take on werewolves. Low Red Moon stands alone; you don't have to have read Threshold to understand it. It's interesting to watch an author learn and develop skills. Kiernan's writing has improved dramatically since her first published novel, Silk; there are still shiny stylistic twists, but there's also a solid, high-tension plot (better paced than Threshold) and well-realized, believable characters. Many things are well done here: the sentence-level writing, the way the dark secrets hidden at the book's center are revealed just enough to make sense, but not enough to lose their effect. Narcissa, the "villain", is a complex character in her own right. The story's resolution will not please readers who want happy endings, but I liked it. I wanted more of the paleontology, wanted it worked into the story (which it is in Threshold more than in this book) rather than just being a character trait - it's interesting, original and has lots of horror potential. It's really good to know that someone is writing intelligent, stylish New Horror. I recommend this book.

Extraordinary!:
I've been an avid reader of Caitlin Kiernan's work since her first novel SILK, but LOW RED MOON surpasses everything she's done previously. This is simply a brilliant novel, in every way. Though more mature than its predecessors, LOW RED MOON still delivers all those things we've come to expect from her. There is no one writing dark fiction today who has more skill as an author, and I can't wait to see what she does next!!

"HEY PRETTY! WANT TO TAKE A RIDE WITH ME?":
The moody and impressionistic "Low Red Moon," is Caitlin R. Kiernan's third, and best novel yet. This time out she brings back many of the Southern Gothic Birmingham characters from her previous novels and introduces them to an escapee from Lovecraft country, serial killer and psychotic Narcissa Snow. She wants to please and appease folks you would definitely not want to invite to your place. But Narcissa, arrested adolescent that she is, wants to be in with this ghoulish in crowd (they apparently are headquartered in a strange house in Providence) and so she sets off Southward to Birmingham on a killing spree (all the while listening in her head to the voices of the people she killed), and an attempt to steal the baby of eight-month-pregnant Chance, from "Threshold," who's now married to recovering alcoholic Deacon Silvey. Narcissa wants to give the baby over to the in crowd as a ticket of admission. After many surprises, the chilling finale takes place back north in Lovecraft country as the sun sets and that low red moon rises on Halloween Night, 2001 a night when, as Ms. Kiernan assures us in her note in the front, the moon actually was full. The author expertly blends standard slasheriana (Don't go out for a cigarette, Alice! Why isn't there a police car at the rear entrance? Will you just hear the guy out before punching him in the nose, Deacon? A dark and stormy night? Oh oh!) with her own unique visions and her intoxicating prose style (she writes of "old-fashioned lampposts along the street, gaslights with electric hearts") and brews up something rich and strange, fresh and piquant. She knows the concoction calls for certain required elements, but her garnishments are what make the difference. Its flavor will leave you spellbound. Notes and asides: On p. 18 you'll learn why Ms. Kiernan has abandoned her trademark technique of running words together. The Low Red Moon, occurring as it does on the last day of the month, was also a blue moon. Not for children under 13.