Just Finished Reading: Threshold by Caitlin R Kiernan

Chance Matthews is not having a good life. As a teenager her parents are killed in a car crash and she is brought up by her grandparents. Both being geologists they greatly influence her career choice and give her a fascination with anything ancient. For a time at least everything is right with the world. But when her grandmother hangs herself from a tree in the garden Chance realises that all is not well. When her grandfather dies of a heart attack in her twenties she is left all alone and determines to seek out the family secret that has been nagging at her since her childhood. For in the collect of fossils hidden away in a corner room is the impression of an impossible creature that living long before the dawn of man, a creature that still exists and will go to any length to stay out of the daylight.

This book was not at all what I was expecting. For one thing I was expecting a fairly interesting work of urban fantasy. What I was presented with was more gothic horror. Not the kind of horror where creatures jump out of the dark but a story with a overpowering sense of dread and foreboding. Despite the fact that it was well, indeed often beautifully written, this book really failed to engage me and was, because of that, a much heavier read than it should have been. The characters were interesting enough but none of them were exactly lovable – or even that likable. The plot – though often tense – moved at much too slow a pace. Any other book not as well written as this was would have been rejected long before the 300 pages had ended. Speaking of endings….. I still can’t get my head around how the author finished up. The book was moving (slowly) to a natural confrontation and then, very suddenly, it wasn’t. It’s almost as if either she’d realised that she’d painted herself into a corner (which I don’t think she had) or she had no real idea how the bring the whole thing to a conclusion. It was all very strange and very disconcerting. Needless to say I shall not be looking out for more works by Ms Kiernan.