I really liked Caitlin R. Kiernan’s debut novel Silk and I adored Threshold. Nevertheless, I do not like this book. Murder of Angels is ostensibly a sequel to Silk, but they’re different breeds entirely. Murder of Angels attempts to stretch the supernatural elements of Silk into a full-blown modern fantasy, which falls flat since the reader isn’t clued in to what is going on until the last few pages of the book. Note to would-be fantasy authors: if you don’t reveal enough of the plot your readers will get bored. Part of the problem is that the characters in this novel who do know what is going on speak very cryptically to the characters that don’t. Actually, dialog in general is a problem throughout the whole of this book; Kiernan’s ear seems to have turned to tin. Particularly nettlesome is the British character: his “accent” is portrayed so poorly that I expected him to pop off with “Oy, Mary Poppins” on any given page. Another problem is that once you do know what the deal is it ends abruptly and anticlimatically. All you get is throw-away metaphysical hoodoo and ragged text. (I expected to see the word house underlined in blue at one point, if you get my drift.) Sound and fury, signifying nothing—if you will.

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