Alabaster

Darcy Flammarion is a teenaged albino girl who wanders the Southern countryside slaying monsters on the orders of an angel. This is an (outdated) anthology of her adventures.

I've read many authors who like to write about how they write and why they write, etc. Kiernan is that rarity, an author whose autobiographical musings are interesting. In her preface, she points out that a Darcy would despise her creator if she was aware of her. In her afterword, she describes a late night meeting on a dark road where she met her inspiration for the Bailiff, an anecdote almost as troubling as the story it partially inspired.

I love her crazy, original plots, even if they are the creation of a writer to hates to plot. I love how she uses Southern show more ladies' societies and trailer parks and roadside filing stations and abandoned Baptist churches and birds and swamps and dinosaurs and stuffed bears. I love how she can get inside the mind of outsiders, whether the outsiders are suicides or mad women or homicidal fanatics or flat-out monsters. I love her style, which I don't the vocabulary to describe. I'll just say that is hers alone. show less

An interesting story, but not really my kind of book. The writing seemed very disjointed, vague, and confusing. It was at times unclear who was talking, what was a flashback, and what was just all in her head. Which I understand was very intentional by the author, and in that it was pulled off very well. Again, this is simply not the kind of book I enjoy reading, so in my opinion it was an uncomfortable experience.

I had to give up on this one part way through. First off... the sentence structure was awful and there were run-ons and incomplete sentences galore. Second of all... too much description and not enough action in some parts. And lastly, it seemed too... um gorey and horrorish. So... I gave up.

Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/chapters/1596060603/1596060603.htm