Low Red Moon [Hardcover]

In "Wuthering Heights," Catherine Earnshaw says she's had dreams that have gone through her like wine through water, and changed the color of her mind. Reading Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Low Red Moon" was a similar experience, only, unlike a dream, it can be repeated for enjoyment again and again. This story doesn't just stay with you, it takes up permanent residence in your head and makes you see differently.

Although this book is a sequel, of sorts, to Kiernan's novel "Threshold," it's quite possible you can read and enjoy it without having heard of the earlier book. However, if you have, it's like adding another dimension on top of our mundane three; it's almost bizarrely bruising to keep running into details -- seemingly the "wrong" details -- from "Threshold" (there's that tunnel) -- a strong sense not of parallel universes, but ghostly neverworlds, paths not taken, what-could-have-been bumping up against what-is (or is it?) and even in some cases influencing it. (And then there are some dreadfully unsettling echoes, like just one phrase -- "little pig?" -- that made me a little sorry I was finishing the novel at night.)

It's difficult to write specifically about the plot in a review, not just for fear of spoilers, but because the idea of what might have been and never will be has a metaphorical thrust in the book, as in "Threshold." We meet Deacon Silvey, and Chance, and Sadie, from the previous book, but although they remain the same -- or are they? -- their relationships to each other have changed to the point where Chance is eight months pregnant and Deacon has sobered up (his struggle with liquor is beautifully, nerve-wrackingly done). But just as in Threshold, they begin to be pursued by extreme, elemental, ferocious forces, only rather than coming from the depths of the earth or outer space, this dark power wells up from the human heart.

The book is heartbreakingly sad, but not tragic. While I was finishing the final pages, there was a sort of tidal crash of mourning that seemed to "come out of nowhere" (but which had obviously been built up carefully throughout the first pages and first words). There are all kinds of fantastic little details about "the real world," beautifully done shards of reality you don't find in most modern "realistic" novels -- the sense you get is of a real world being created, and cherished; the making, remembering, as an act of love. And this book is really about the power of love, sort of the way Silk was, except that was nearly a negative proof -- about the loss of love, or the failure of the promise of love -- where this book is a positive one -- about what love can do. Trust me on this one-- like "King Lear," this story's really about love, and the harm, and healing, and hope, that love bears.

This isn't to say the book is weepy, or dull, or slow; on the contrary, it's even more fast-paced than Threshold, filled with all kinds of funny lines and sharp observations and real people. From about about the beginning of Part II on I began to have a Foreboding that Things Were Not Going To Turn Out Quite All Right, accented by the deep bass-notes of sorrow Kiernan wrings out of the plot. It was like the first time I read through "The Return of the King," and realized: Even if they get up Mt. Doom, and throw the Ring into the fire, even if they both live, things are....not going to Be All Right here. There is a Price. And yes, I did CRY at one point.* I couldn't help it. I bet when you get there you'll cry too.

Kiernan is the enviable kind of writer who keeps getting better and better with each book -- this is her best-written yet -- tight, sharp, exciting, but with all kinds of gentle details and asides and world-building. Debates have already been held about whether or not it's "as," or "more," frightening than Threshold; for me, it was more heartrending than any of her other books I've read, containing a deep kind of terror and grievous acceptance of the prices we pay ("Grief is the price we pay for love," as the Queen said on the Princess' death) that makes it more realistic and adult and about "real life" than, again, most modern, mundane this-is-the-American-experience-as-we-live-it-right-now "fiction," which often seems terrified of the inventive power of fiction itself.

In short, it's gorgeous, and harrowing, and one of the books of the year, in any and all genres.

*"I wish it didn't have to end this way....I wish the story could have a better ending. I wish it could end, 'And then they all left the tunnel, went home and never met another monster and lived happily ever after.'"

"That would be a fine story," Chance tells her. "That would be a very fine story."

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.

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.