Some people think 'Silk' is incredibly good. Caitlin Kiernan is one of my favorite authors, but I didn't think Silk was as good a read as some others of her works - my opinion, of course. Silk is very full of feelings and dark moodiness, the latter perfect for a horror story. The plot took long enough to develop that I lost interest and didn't finish it. The listed LC classification of "psychological fiction" is actually a very good description, though it is a horror book. My personal rating of the book isn't that high, but if meaty language, introspective characters and a slow-building sense of evil is your kind of horror story, this is just the ticket for you. ( )

It's like Poppy Z. and Neil Gaiman had a love child. ( )

A dark fantasy spiced with Lovecraft-inspiration, the novel Silk is done up like a spiderweb; various characters---all punks, Goths, the artists, the musicians, the outsiders, the freaks---are all the connected to each other through the madness (or is it real?) of Spyder Baxter, and her house just clustered full of deadly family secrets.

Kiernan loves words. It's evident in every sentence; it can be rich, beautiful, with gritty romanticism, but also be warned that this was her first novel so there is a certain occasional clunkiness to it.

It's the perfect dark tale nonetheless, horrific, and lovely all the same. ( )

Much clunkier than later Kiernan novels, but still potent and affecting. The themes that run throughout the Kiernan corpus - madness, nods to Lovecraft, the unseen world that touches this one, the thin line between what is real and what isn't, etc. - all begin here. In terms of style, this may be her most accessible work, having none of the strange literary affectations adopted in 'Threshold,' (and later abandoned), or the heady dreaminess of her later books en todo. If you've never read a Kiernan novel, 'Silk' might be the best place to start. Overall, this book is highly recommended for fans of dark fantasy. The story is strong, unique, and effortlessly compelling - the writing tight, if not yet fully developed in voice - and the end is satisfying, which is unusual for a Kiernan novel. Along the way, questions are raised and never quite answered, but with this author, that's just par for the course. ( )

There are some interesting things going on, but the story is a muddle and in the end I felt it descended into angsty goth silliness. The supernatural side of the story is too murky to contribute much to the story. ( )