Threshold

Ever since she and her friends Deacon and Elise went to the water tunnel and something terrifying occurred that they refuse to face, nothing has gone right for Chance Matthews. Following in her paleontologist grandparents' footsteps, Chance deals with just about everyone she cares about dying: her grandmother, Elise (both apparently suicides), and now her grandfather. But when Dancy Flammarion, a young albino girl, turns up and tells her they need to fight monsters everything Chance knows to be true is turned on its head.

This was a really atmospheric, creepy book of urban fantasy. Kiernan's work has been compared to Lovecraft, and I can definitely see echoes of that. She has a unique style and creates compound words that could be show more jarring but instead lend a sort of lyrical quality to the writing. Chance, Dancy, Deacon and Sadie (Deacon's latest girlfriend) were all really flawed characters but ultimately people I could root for. So much for what I liked... what I didn't is that I don't know what the heck just happened. There are no clear answers, or if they are, I missed them entirely which left a really unsettled feeling that I think was intentional. show less

Having been impressed by a couple of her Lovecraftian stories and her appearance as one of those interviewed for the documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, I decided to give one of her novels a try - particularly after hearing it was not only Lovecraftian but featured geology and paleontology.

Chance Matthews, grad student in paleontology, is alone in the world. Orphaned at a young age, she's now without the grandparents, also geologists and paleontologists, who raised her. Her friend Elsie committed suicide. Grief stricken and trying to concentrate on her studies, she's in no mood to see ex-boyfriend Deacon, present gothish girlfriend in tow along with one Dancy Flammarion (evidently a character in several Kiernan works). As if show more Dancy's albino looks and freakish insistence on seeing her wasn't enough, Dancy also insists Chance has to help her kill some monsters. It's all a lot of mental patient crazy talk until Chance finds some strange fossils her grandmother secreted away before killing herself. And it may just have to do with whatever Chance, Deacon, and Elsie saw one strange night, at novel's beginning, in the waterworks of Birmingham, Alabama.

Like most of the best Lovecraft inspired authors, Kiernan does no slavish imitation of Lovecraft. The plotting owes as much to Beowulf Translated with an Introduction and Afterword by Burton as Lovecraft though Lovecraft gets an explicit mention (as does Algernon Blackwood, Lewis Carroll, and the poet Longfellow). No characters, places, monsters, or books show up from Lovecraft. The inspiration is more subtle in the physical appearance of the novel's menace and, particularly, in the promise of the novel's subtitle: "A Novel of Deep Time". For the menace is from deep time. There is one beautiful passage where Chance has a vision of Alabama's Silurian age. (And, for those who need it, Kiernan, formerly a professional paleontologist, provides a glossary of terms.)

And that beauty is part of another subtle promise Kiernan makes on the copyright page: "The book is best read aloud." Kiernan does provide read-aloud prose -- carefully paced, sonorous, and sprinkled with occasional coinages of her own.

Lovecraft characters almost always seem divorced from any life with family and friends, and that is definitely not the case here. The trinity of Chance, Deacon, and Sadie are most definitely attached to other people - even if only their memories.

Kiernan tells her story with an interesting technique of describing a scene, often leaving the scene before its climax, and then going to another scene in the past which provides answers to the resolution of other scenes.

The one thing that may frustrate readers is the novel's end. This story does not neatly resolve all the loose ends and mysteries. As one character says, "Some stories don't have endings. In some stories, there aren't even answers." Kiernan's resolution is not neat, perhaps too messily like real life for some. But it's obviously a considered choice not incompetence. While I think not resolving major questions is a sin in some genres, I think it can be appropriate to a mystery horror novel of deep time, and it worked for me the more I think about it.

In other words, I was impressed by Kiernan the novelist as much as Kiernan the short story writer, and I'll be reading more of her. show less

It is a very hard novel to get into. Between the present tense and the constant jumping in time (you are never sure if you are in the past, in the present or in someone's dreams until you get to something that gives you a clue), the story seems almost jumbled. And yet, once you get used to the constant change and get used to the style, it actually somehow works.

Chance Matthews had just lost her grandfather - the last family member she had left - and all she wants it to be left alone to grieve. What she definitely does not want is an albino girl, who claims to be able to see monsters, and Chance's old boyfriend (and his new paramour) to show up at her door talking about secrets, monsters and evil. But of course the universe does not show more work on her schedule so she needs to deal with all of them. She is a paleontologist, she believes in science and sanity. All that talk about monsters sounds like someone's mental breakdown and not like something she needs to pay attention to. Although there is this incident in the past and the girl knows things which supposedly only Chance knew.

That's how this story starts. And then it gets weird. Kiernan is a trained paleontologist and she blends her science with some Lovecraftian horror to create something almost unexpected. Add a connection to some old literature and a few deaths and you really want to know where this whole story is going.

It is not a perfect novel - it is an early novel and it shows. It could have used some tightening, especially in the middle parts. The constant jumping around and revelations from the past can get a bit tiring (in a few places I wondered if I missed something or if it really feels as if she needed something in the past for the story to work so it just got thrown into the mix) and more than once I wish she had left some of the characters' self-pity out of the story - by the end it got tiresome.

And yet at the end I liked the book quite a lot. The slow storytelling works well with the time jumps so it almost blends together.

Kiernan wrote quite a lot of stories about Dancy Flammarion, the albino girl who kickstarted the whole story here. She also wrote at least one more novel about Chance. The novel may be flawed but it made me want to read more about its characters. And what more can a writer ask for? show less

I didn't find this as difficult to read as many other people seem to have, but I did have to read it twice to fully appreciate it. This is mainly because I found certain affectations of style - namely Kiernan's bizarre character names and habit of sandwiching adjectives and descriptive words together - distractingly irritating. The story was compelling enough, however, and I managed to get through and enjoy it. Upon the second reading, I fell in love with it.

It would be easy to label this book "Southern Lovecraft," and have done with it, but that does both Kiernan and the book itself a great disservice. Yes, it is thematically similar to Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, but where Lovecraft's vision of horror from the sea comes from unknown show more worlds and dimensions, Kiernan draws inspiration from the very real, earthly realm of invertebrate paleontology. This tie to actual science makes the slow uncoiling of the story potent, believable, and quite unsettling. Also, while Lovecraft's tales tend to be rather cold and epic, Kiernan takes a similar premise and makes it, for lack of a better word, smaller. It is visceral and fluid, its characters further developed and much more relatable than any found in Lovecraft's work. Kiernan excels at laying dread down in layers. The rhythm of the story almost mimics the creatures she describes - slow, crawling, barely visible at first, but there, subtly increasing in strength until we are plunged into chaos. Particular scenes, (most notably the laboratory scene), are genuinely frightening, but as a result of suspense and suggestion rather than gore.

Threshold is by no means a perfect book. Its languid pace means that there is a lot of exposition to slog through before we get to the heart of what is happening, and that heart is constructed mostly of vagueness and shadow. The end is also vague and so dense that, even after two readings, I'm still not sure that I really understand it. Caveats aside, this is an engrossing, unusual book by a very unique and gifted writer - those facts alone make it well worth the time it takes to get through it. show less

I kept trying to put this down so I could get some errands done, but I just couldn't. It's like if Lovecraft and Carroll sat down to write a paleontological nightmare, urban fantasy style, with a generous dash of Beowulf thrown in.

It was a bit of a slower read than is normal for me with novels, but it's worth the effort to let yourself go and immerse yourself in the world. The use of language -- new compound words, unusual syntax, most scenes written in the present tense -- took some getting used to, but it was so consistently, logical done that it acted as a world building device in itself. The characters were simultaneously repellent and sympathetic. The story was a slow building descent into horror, where the characters are show more constantly wondering what's real and what's imagined. Then the ending... I need to think about the ending a bit longer.

It's not an easy read, neither light not schlocky. What it is, is new; I appreciate not knowing what's going to happen before it happens, even in genre fiction, and this really satisfied that need for me. show less

This made for a phantasmagorical journey that bent genres with both science fiction and fantasy elements. I read this because it was on a horror genre rec list, and though that fits and the novel at times is suspenseful and scary, I don't think that quite describes the book.

For one, the style is much more literary than you usually see in genre writing. It reminds me of a less extreme and more grammatical Cormac McCarthy: there are long, complex sentences and the present tense and frequent use of "and" imparts a lyricism and rhythm to the narrative that is at times mesmerizing. Kiernan frequently uses unusual compound words such as fetidwet, sugarsmooth and blisterswollen.

The characters grew on me. We're introduced in the prologue to show more Chance, Deacon and Elise as, stoned, they're preparing to break into a tunnel in Birmingham, Alabama. I found that off-putting, but through the book we learn there are reasons why Chance and Deacon are troubled, and enough ultimately to make them sympathetic. The same can be said for two other characters who prove important--Dancy, a mentally disturbed teen and albino, and Sadie, a goth girl that takes up with Deacon.

Though there is a resolution for the characters, not everything ties up neatly, and if you expect your monsters clear cut, you might end this story frustrated. Paleontology is a major thread in this novel, for instance, but I didn't end up feeling it tied in and made sense. What was the point of the trilobites? But if you're not someone who needs everything tied in a bow at the end and are looking for an intelligent and literate book that can deliver chills, this isn't a bad choice. show less

My Rating

Couldn't Finish It: when this book first came out, the cover nabbed my interest. But I stuck the title on my Amazon.com wishlist and promptly forgot about it. Anytime I browsed through my wishlist for something to read, I always ignored this book for whatever reason.

But I finally got it after there was a call via the internets to support Kiernan's work, I believe due to the fact she was suffering from health issues, and we all know hospital bills pile up, so those making the pleas were encouraging their readers to pick up one of Kiernan's work. Because obviously, the more books Kiernan sells, the more money she makes.

Since I'd had my eye on this title for a while, I didn't mind forking over the cash. And for the most part, I show more was looking forward to the book.

So why couldn't I finish it? If you turn to the copyright page of the book, you'll find the direction below:

This book is best read aloud. --CRK

Which made me crack up. I appreciate this, I really do. I for one always encourage writers to read their fiction aloud so that they can catch mistakes, and plus, you really learn to hear your own work and understand its rhythms. Plus, I got my bachelors from Hollins University, a school known for its creative writing program, and in those circles, reading your work aloud is A BIG THING.

Prose poetry is cool. Make no mistake. And trust me, as soon as I started reading the first page, I understood Kiernan's direction for the book. This book is best read aloud.

No kidding. I don't know HOW many times I kept having to re-read sentences because of their poetic structure, and while poetic structure in and of itself is not a bad thing by any means (I love Valente's and Winterson's work, for example), I have trouble when the poetry is repeating the same description in different ways, or when the dialogue for multiple characters is in the same paragraph, or when for whatever reason, sentences and dialogues are strung together with the word "and" when a period would have worked just as good, if not better.

But who am I to criticize poetry? Clearly, Kiernan made some very deliberate choices in her punctuation and grammar, and while in the end, I found it unreadable, I'm sure that read aloud, or to certain "ears," this reads as smooth as silk. Only, I don't have those kinds of ears, nor am I willing to read a 308 page book aloud. And let's face it, I didn't have the patience to keep reading (and re-reading, in several cases) just to get through the book. The premise didn't grab me enough, and while the characters seem to be very well drawn, their situations strikingly human, I just couldn't justify the effort of turning these pages. Oh well. I'll pass this sucker along to someone who can appreciate it. show less