http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2004-11.html#kiernan ( )

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 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? ( )

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 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. ( )

One of the worst books I've ever read....it may be only my opinion but it's boring I really didn't enjoy this at all...God only knows how I read as much as I did
( )

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 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. ( )