Gerhard's Reviews > Agents of Dreamland

Another superlative Tor novella. This is actually the second in the so-called Tinfoil Dossier (something of an in-joke that), preceded by Black Helicopters, with The Tindalos Asset due in October. I actually read Black Helicopters first, which I enjoyed immensely.

It is certainly testament to the compactness of Cairlin’s world-building that these can be taken as discrete books, though in essence they are clearly elements of a larger whole. Hopefully in this regard Kiernan continues the series, or splurges on a great big novel, like Martha Wells has done following the success of Murderbot.

As I have noted before, Lovecraft is a very difficult writer to emulate. The end result is so often an empty parody that rings hollow. Paradoxically, this is the main red flag when a writer treats Lovecraft either too reverentially or too slavishly.

The secret is to develop a Lovecraftian aesthetic, which comes from taking some of the Master’s stock-in-trade symbolism and themes, and imbuing these with the writer’s own sensibility. Sounds easier said than done, of course.

But Kiernan strikes just the right balance. There is a lot going on in this slim book: “… the Signalman, an agent for a black-budget American service; a cult ranch-house at the Salton Sea that houses horrors from another world; a lost film about an alien princess; a timeless and frightening agent from another service with her own motivations; the New Horizons probe skating past the orbit of Pluto and encountering something alien. These singular events and people all feed into the start—or end—of something immense and devastating for the human species” (tor.com).

All these elements add up to a whole that is infinitely (such a grand Lovecraftian word) larger than the sum of its parts. Something inexplicable either seems to lurk in the shadows of the text, or bleeds through the pages.

It makes for an uncomfortable reading experience, but a truly indelible one. And it is also blackly funny and occasionally downright scurrilous. I can’t wait for the next instalment of noir Lovercraft that Kiernan so expertly serves up.