sortabadass's review
3.0
Alabaster: Pale Horse is a collection of short stories about an albino god-hearing, monster-killing girl stalking the deep South in ragged clothing. Sounds pretty spiffy, right? It is. It's a lot of fun.
Kiernan is a strong enough writer that she knows not to oversell any of Dancy's moral quandaries. As Dancy's life is unveiled in a series of encounters with the weird, we can recognize the humanity underneath her near-unshakable faith in her angel. The relationship between angel and girl is the crux of the collection; moreso because the reader is left wondering whether it is really just Dancy's relationship with herself.
Gushing aside, Kiernan's writing has a few quirks that, unfortunately for me, distracted from her stories. One of my issues with magical realism is that descriptions can be creative to the point of outlandishness. Never is there a sunrise in the world of magical realism: instead the heavens erupt into a riot of strawberry sherbert. After it rains, it never smells like ozone or minerals. Instead it smells like the inside of an old teacup. I interrupt my reading thinking, 'Have I ever really taken the time to smell a teacup? Maybe my cups aren't old enough. Stagnant herb water, is that what I should be getting from this?' Distracting.
Kiernan is a strong enough writer that she knows not to oversell any of Dancy's moral quandaries. As Dancy's life is unveiled in a series of encounters with the weird, we can recognize the humanity underneath her near-unshakable faith in her angel. The relationship between angel and girl is the crux of the collection; moreso because the reader is left wondering whether it is really just Dancy's relationship with herself.
Gushing aside, Kiernan's writing has a few quirks that, unfortunately for me, distracted from her stories. One of my issues with magical realism is that descriptions can be creative to the point of outlandishness. Never is there a sunrise in the world of magical realism: instead the heavens erupt into a riot of strawberry sherbert. After it rains, it never smells like ozone or minerals. Instead it smells like the inside of an old teacup. I interrupt my reading thinking, 'Have I ever really taken the time to smell a teacup? Maybe my cups aren't old enough. Stagnant herb water, is that what I should be getting from this?' Distracting.
Spoiler
I didn't want to be unfair to Kiernan, so I opened her book looking for a few 'magical' phrases that fit within my rant above. (Describing a door buzzer) "A buzz like angry, electric wasps..." "The jewels about her throat sparkle like drops of blood and morning dew set in silver..." "A sickening swirl of black and purple fireflies..." These were from one small section that I opened to at random. Descriptions like these can be very powerful in small doses but they do take the reader out of the story in order to focus on the mechanics of phrasing.ashleygsiler's review
2.0
I picked this one up as one of Malaprop’s “Blind Date with a Book” selections. The brown paper cover described it as “sublime, deliciously dark, surreal, calamitous, eerie, southern gothic, terrifying and beautiful, Flannery O’Connor meets H.P. Lovecraft.”
It was eerie, surreal, and calamitous, but the rest of that high praise doesn’t fit here. Maybe I’m just lacking this book’s context, having not read Threshold or any of the graphic novels mentioned in this book’s two forwards (it’s a series of short stories all centered on Dancy Flammarion, a character from a novel by the same author). But I didn’t latch on to anything in these stories. Each short story seems very unfinished. The main character isn’t fully developed, and certainly none of the supporting characters are. You get a lot of hints—hints at Dancy’s childhood, hints at her “powers”, hints at the demon-monster world she inhabits, and most frustratingly, hints at the plot line. The set up is done really well, and just when the story reaches its apex there’s a jump cut, a long meandering description of an abandoned southern highway, and another jump cut back to the action—only to find out you’ve missed it all and Dancy is on to her next murder.
The writing itself isn’t bad, though Kiernan does have a nasty habit of using 3-4 line sentence fragments as paragraph openers. Certainly there were passages that engaged me, but overall these stories each felt piecemeal and incomplete.
Another frustration—this book has been praised as a great representation of the South. But unless depicting the South means countless mentions of pine trees and poor people, this book misses the mark by a long shot.
It was eerie, surreal, and calamitous, but the rest of that high praise doesn’t fit here. Maybe I’m just lacking this book’s context, having not read Threshold or any of the graphic novels mentioned in this book’s two forwards (it’s a series of short stories all centered on Dancy Flammarion, a character from a novel by the same author). But I didn’t latch on to anything in these stories. Each short story seems very unfinished. The main character isn’t fully developed, and certainly none of the supporting characters are. You get a lot of hints—hints at Dancy’s childhood, hints at her “powers”, hints at the demon-monster world she inhabits, and most frustratingly, hints at the plot line. The set up is done really well, and just when the story reaches its apex there’s a jump cut, a long meandering description of an abandoned southern highway, and another jump cut back to the action—only to find out you’ve missed it all and Dancy is on to her next murder.
The writing itself isn’t bad, though Kiernan does have a nasty habit of using 3-4 line sentence fragments as paragraph openers. Certainly there were passages that engaged me, but overall these stories each felt piecemeal and incomplete.
Another frustration—this book has been praised as a great representation of the South. But unless depicting the South means countless mentions of pine trees and poor people, this book misses the mark by a long shot.
mackle13's review
3.0
When I read [b:Threshold|81062|Threshold|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385276307s/81062.jpg|929484] back in 2008, I only gave it 2 stars. The story and the main characters never quite came together for me, but I did want to read more of Kiernan's work because I kinda dig the way she writes (sometimes).
The one character from Threshold which stood out, though, was Dancy, so when I was browsing for books to read, and I saw that Kiernan had a whole collection of Dancy stories, I decided to give it a go.
And I'm glad I did.
Kiernan's language, the way she writes, wraps around your brain and sort of pulls you into the ambiance and atmosphere. Unfortunately, though, it's a double-edged sword, because there are times when sparser language would be better, and while she sometimes balances the two well, there are other times where deciphering the words becomes more of a hindrance than a help. Only times, though.
Also, there are a few illustrations from Ted Naifeh, and his usual style captures the oddity of the world Dancy finds herself in. They really helped me visualize some of the creatures, like the angel, and were a nice addition to the stories.
This is a short story collection, and like all such some stories are better than others. Also, they're printed in publication order, not linear order, so a lot of the stories offhandedly reference events that you haven't read yet. Someday I might go back and read the stories in chronological order, to try and get the timeline straight in my head.
Anyway -
Overall, a decent story, and I like the character of Dancy. My only "let down", really, was that I was expecting more a horror story and this felt more like a dark urban fantasy.
I definitely plan on checking out the Alabaster graphic novels at some point, though.
The one character from Threshold which stood out, though, was Dancy, so when I was browsing for books to read, and I saw that Kiernan had a whole collection of Dancy stories, I decided to give it a go.
And I'm glad I did.
Kiernan's language, the way she writes, wraps around your brain and sort of pulls you into the ambiance and atmosphere. Unfortunately, though, it's a double-edged sword, because there are times when sparser language would be better, and while she sometimes balances the two well, there are other times where deciphering the words becomes more of a hindrance than a help. Only times, though.
Also, there are a few illustrations from Ted Naifeh, and his usual style captures the oddity of the world Dancy finds herself in. They really helped me visualize some of the creatures, like the angel, and were a nice addition to the stories.
This is a short story collection, and like all such some stories are better than others. Also, they're printed in publication order, not linear order, so a lot of the stories offhandedly reference events that you haven't read yet. Someday I might go back and read the stories in chronological order, to try and get the timeline straight in my head.
Anyway -
Overall, a decent story, and I like the character of Dancy. My only "let down", really, was that I was expecting more a horror story and this felt more like a dark urban fantasy.
I definitely plan on checking out the Alabaster graphic novels at some point, though.
noysh's review
5.0
I actually picked this one up because I enjoyed Alabaster: Wolves and Alabaster: Grimmer Tales so much that I was desperate to read more about Dancy. So I picked up Kiernan's prose short-story collection with low expectations. I was blown away. The atmosphere and the voice that I loved about the comics was present in these stories and I got exactly what I hoped for from this. I'm now actually considering picking up more of Kiernan's work. Naifeh's illustrations capture the same spirit as Lieber and the modern take on southern gothic with a supernatural twist is still there. The texts themselves are layered and lend themselves to multiple types of reading. This is the most fun I've had with a prose work in a long time.
chmccann's review
3.0
I bought this book through Malaprop's Bookstore's "blind date with a book" promotion - a shelf full of books wrapped in plain brown wrappers, with descriptive blurbs written by staff, and a price. You buy without knowing exactly what you're getting.
The descriptions for this book were:
Sublime
Deliciously Dark
Surreal
Calamitous
Eerie
Southern Gothic
Terrifying & Beautiful
Flannery O'Connor meets H.P. Lovecraft
It didn't quite hit for me the way it did for the writer of those terms, but I agree that it's dark, Southern Gothic, surreal, and eerie. Unfortunately it's rather dreary as well, and with no character arc for Dancy (it's a set of interconnected short stories), her exhaustion, hopelessness, and doubts about her mission were more wearing than intriguing. The storytelling sets out to remove all suspense from Dancy's confrontations with monsters - this is a story about her suffering through a treadmill of horrifying and violent experiences and wishing for relief, not about her being a Buffy-style action hero.
I did find the depiction of angels compelling, and I can't deny that I consistently wanted to know what happened next. Maybe it's the lack of a real conclusion to the overall story that has left me feeling this didn't quite work for me.
I would definitely recommend [b:In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers|491190|In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1229050277s/491190.jpg|2223424], the stand-alone version of the opening tale, as a weird and grotesque southern gothic story. If you take to the baroque poetry of Kiernan's language and you desperately want to know more about Dancy, this collection would be a good next step.
The descriptions for this book were:
Sublime
Deliciously Dark
Surreal
Calamitous
Eerie
Southern Gothic
Terrifying & Beautiful
Flannery O'Connor meets H.P. Lovecraft
It didn't quite hit for me the way it did for the writer of those terms, but I agree that it's dark, Southern Gothic, surreal, and eerie. Unfortunately it's rather dreary as well, and with no character arc for Dancy (it's a set of interconnected short stories), her exhaustion, hopelessness, and doubts about her mission were more wearing than intriguing. The storytelling sets out to remove all suspense from Dancy's confrontations with monsters - this is a story about her suffering through a treadmill of horrifying and violent experiences and wishing for relief, not about her being a Buffy-style action hero.
I did find the depiction of angels compelling, and I can't deny that I consistently wanted to know what happened next. Maybe it's the lack of a real conclusion to the overall story that has left me feeling this didn't quite work for me.
I would definitely recommend [b:In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers|491190|In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers|Caitlín R. Kiernan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1229050277s/491190.jpg|2223424], the stand-alone version of the opening tale, as a weird and grotesque southern gothic story. If you take to the baroque poetry of Kiernan's language and you desperately want to know more about Dancy, this collection would be a good next step.
sarrie's review
5.0
I love dark fantasy worlds and monsters, I'll be the first to sign up for those worlds but one of the harshest critics. Yet I will definitely be pre-ordering this book and looking forward to more by Caitlin R. Kiernan. I love, loved this. If you've ever enjoyed a good twisted world with a truly believable heroine then check this out when it hits the shelves. It's worth it, I swear.
Full Review!
Full Review!
glennisleblanc's review
3.0
I assumed this was going to be a graphic novel of her stories but this is more of short story collection with some illustrations. Dancy Flammarion is a young albino girl hitchhiking in the South following an angel's instructions to kill monsters. The stories are interconnected but clues within the stories make you wonder is this real or a fantasy. Dark and full of symbolism the writing is lush and expects the reader to keep up with it and doesn't dumb down anything. Not my usual read but I think I will be looking for more in this series of stories.
Digital copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
Digital copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
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