In CaitlΓn R. Kiernan's The Ammonite Violin & Others, one of contemporary dark fantasy s most bewitching and distinctive voices is back with another banquet of the weird and unexpected. In his introduction, Jeff VanderMeer (City of Saints and Madmen, Finch) writes, Kiernan creates her own light in this remarkable collection, and shines it on dark places. In doing so, she gives us gritty, lyrical, horrible, beautiful truths.
In The Ammonite Violin & Others, the author rises to meet the high expectations she set with such collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, A is for Alien, and the World Fantasy Award-nominated To Charles Fort, With Love. Within these pages, you ll discover a dazzling suite of stories situated on the borderlands between the unspeakbale and the erotic, the grotesque and the sublime. Here are stories of dream and metamorphosis, strange lands and beings existing beyond the veil of death and beyond this earth. Here is a selkie who's lost her sealskin, a woman with a blackhole in her heart, a fairie girl fallen to the Queen of Decay, the descent of a modern-day Orpheus, and a killer who has fashioned the most exquisite musical instrument from the remains of one of his victims. Here are dreams, nightmares, and worse things yet.
The Ammonite Violin & Others is comprised of stories first published in the subscription only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the stories' first availability to the general public.
From Publishers Weekly
The 20 short, dark tales in Kiernan's third fantastical erotica collection (after Tales from the Woeful Platypus) are marked by obsessive, often self-destructive behavior; haunting, generally prophetic dreams; and beautiful prose. In the title story, an aging serial killer invites a young violinist to his isolated home on the anniversary of his murder of her cellist sister. In ''The Hole with a Girl in Its Heart,'' an unhappy man makes a deal with a young woman who possesses a freakish understanding of quantum mechanics. In ''Bridle,'' an equally unhappy woman begins to have unnerving dreams about a kelpie trapped in a small pond near her home. In ''Ode to Edvard Munch,'' a man relates his long-term love affair with an urban vampire. These very adult stories will prove deeply pleasing to aficionados of literate, sexually tinged fantasy fiction.
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From Booklist
Kiernan's stories clearly descend from archetypal tales, though she adds a depth and a clarity of vision all her own. From βThe Ammonite Violin,β in which a collector achieves the pinnacle of his obsession, and a musician discovers the true power of her craft, to the story of a girl who loves the rat king and holds in her care the whistle the rats used to create the world, her stories give us a side of timeless scenarios that have usually been left unspoken. There are always costs to being a part of these stories, and they aren't always gladly paid by those peripheral to the heroes, as the narrators often are. In βFor One Who Has Lost Herself,β the price is the awful truth that comes after the end of a story we already pretty much knew; that is, what happens to the selkie after the young man who stole her sealskin has vanished. Brilliantly crafted, tightly woven, and memorable, the worlds of Kiernan's imagination are odd places, quite fascinating to poke around in. --Regina Schroeder