Caitlín R. Kiernan

The Tindalos Asset is the third and likely final slender novel in Kiernan's Tinfoil Dossier series. It introduces a new central character, while pulling along several from the earlier books. This character Ellison Nicodemo is the "asset" of the title, a subordinate agent of the deep black intelligence directorate referred to as "Albany" in this series. Usage in this book shows that the "Dreamland" of the previous volume's title does also denominate this same outfit. (I had noted its show more ambiguity there.)

I was startled that the title of the first chapter was a quote from Leah Hirsig--but Kiernan seems to have received it via its use as a song title by Coil: "Paint me as a dead soul." In the appended author's note, they list all the music that was integral to the composition of the story (168). It's no secret that these books are built around neo-Lovecraftian yog-sothothery, and this one is as much as anything an updated and re-imagined "Call of Cthulhu," with generous bits of "Dagon" and "The Shadow over Innsmouth." Frank Belknap Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos" is of course a significant source as well, and Kiernan ties its notions to the Manhattan Project, among other space-time problems.

Following the precedent in Black Helicopters, this book's chapters are episodes presented under dates that are not in linear sequence, ranging from 1956 to 2151. The chronological core of the story is in January 2018, around the time it was written. This sort of time-loose montage effect has a self-similar relationship to the entire Tinfoil Dossier series, and I think the books could be read with enjoyment in any order. Indeed there seems to be some confusion among readers about the sequence of the first two books, since Black Helicopters, the one Kiernan calls "first," was expanded and re-published as a series element after Agents of Dreamland.

Looking back on the series as a whole, its mixture of the weird horror Lovecraft canon with espionage and a certain measure of sympathy for the "monsters" is a common ground with other recent/current series: the Laundry Files of Charles Stross and the Innsmouth Legacy of Ruthanna Emrys. Kiernan's more experimental style definitely makes these books distinctive, though. There really aren't any of the comedic elements that Stross uses, and there's more of a high-tragic sensibility despite the fact that the Tinfoil Dossier books are much shorter than their comparanda.

This work is rife with extra-textual and inter-textual allusions, which supply a lot of the enjoyment. Given its manageable size and convoluted presentation, I think there is a good chance I could return to it in the future for a profitable re-read. show less

The author clearly loves language, and loves descriptions and every reader who loves those too will enjoy Silk immensely. It is a first novel, so there is some tendency to overindulge herself – there is hardly a sentence here that does not contain at least one metaphor or two similes, but Caitlín Kiernan’s prose is so luscious and sensuous that complaining about this in the face of so much too enjoy would seem rather petty.

Kiernan is usually classified as an author of horror fiction, show more and for good reasons, I am sure; but in this particular novel the horror seems almost incidental and marginal, while the main focus of the story rests on the lives of a group of people in a small town in the United States, all of them young, all of them mentally scarred in some way and existing on the fringes of society. For most of Silk, it is not even quite sure whether the horrors they experience have any external source besides drugs; but while the visions they live through might not be real, their tragic consequences very much are. Interestingly, even though all of the novel’s main characters are misfits and outsiders, the narrative’s conflicts are not about them versus the mainstream of the society whose margins they live on (although Kiernan does not leave any doubt that they are being marginalized) but rather about the characters either battling with or surrendering to their own inner demons, whether it is by taking drugs, by repeatedly falling in love with the wrong kind of person or any of the countless other possibilities of hurting oneself.

While the novel’s catastrophe is initialized by a group of town bullies, that enounter is entirely random, and in the end it are the characters themselves who bring about their downfall – there is not a single character in Silk who is not in way or another bent on self-destruction, and while some manage to escape that urge, it proves fatal for others. Even when events take a turn from psychological and drug-induced horror towards the distinctly supernatural at the end the demons still remain largely internalized, or appear as the external expression of a damaged interior (that might be a disturbed psyche as well as a conflicted community).

But – and this, I think, is where Silk gets really interesting – if it appears that all the novel’s characters are severely damaged and can relate to their own self only by self-destructing, it becomes clear (for some characters soon, for others later in the novel) that all of them have been traumatized in some way, that the original damage was done to them by outside forces, and the deformations of their psyche are the scars of that damage; the misfits and outcasts were made not born, and born by the structures (mostly familial) of the very society that stigmatizes them. This might not be the most original of insights, but it is no less true for that, and what makes Silk so good a novel is that it never needs to make any of this explicit to get it across, but keeps it implied in the story, in the characters, and in the imagery woven through the novel. And of course above all in Caitlín Kiernan’s superbly evocative writing that conjures up an atmosphere of slowly thickening claustrophobia, gradually closing in on the characters like a spider-spun cocoon. She is already such a skilled and accomplished writer in her debut novel that it is easy to forgive her the occasional swerve into overly purple prose, and I am very keen on reading more of her works. show less

I'm ashamed to admit this is my first time reading Kiernan. I now see what I've been missing.

I loved this novella SO. MUCH. It's ambiguous and pulpy and weird and horrific all at once; you don't know what the hell is going on but that doesn't matter because it's such a good read anyway. The writing walks a delicate balance, providing just enough detail so that what is left to the imagination is entirely and wonderfully nightmarish. I'd read a seven-book series set in this universe but at the show more same time, this slim volume stands so strongly on its own.

This was such a fun read. I'm already eager for more Kiernan and I'm mad at myself for not picking up this author's work sooner. show less

I finally found the monsters!

If you like your monsters to be brooding, passably human centerfolds with a desperate need to be loved and an obsession with haute couture, this is not your book, and thank the gods for that! The bookstore shelves are already buckling under the weight of all those books. If you like your monsters to be weirdly other and your protagonist to kick ass despite being a self-deprecating screw-up, you're going to love this gritty story that manages to be a fun and show more compelling page-turner while thumbing it's nose at the "ParaRom" genre. I devoured this book quickly and very much look forward to the next book in the series. show less