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nonesensed's review against another edition
3.0
An agent is meeting with another, who may or may not be a turncoat for a rival organization. A woman is stuck battling monsters on an island. Her twin is in the hands of a psychologist with few scruples who she might be working with or might be the prisoner of. It's all quite a fine mess.
I kinda enjoyed this story, and then again, I kinda didn't. There are a lot of jumps back and forth in time and a ton of references I'm not sure I understood - I think I caught all the lovecraftian ones, but there are far more historical and pop cultural ones that likely went way over my head. That took me out of trying to figure out the story, so to speak. I did enjoy the story's twist.
I kinda enjoyed this story, and then again, I kinda didn't. There are a lot of jumps back and forth in time and a ton of references I'm not sure I understood - I think I caught all the lovecraftian ones, but there are far more historical and pop cultural ones that likely went way over my head. That took me out of trying to figure out the story, so to speak. I did enjoy the story's twist.
kleonard's review against another edition
2.0
Oooh, chess as a metaphor. Oooh, chess as a plot device. Oooh, chess as an overused cliche. Some interesting ideas, but also a mess.
brandonadaniels's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the first entry of this trilogy, Agents of Dreamland, but this one left me a little cold. Agents was dense, but the rapid fire ideas were held together by strong characters and, in the audiobook, strong narrators. Black Helicopters is more character focused, but the characters somehow feel less distinct. I was confused frequently about the nature of the cast, whose voice as who’s, and what the characters relationships were. The narrator was great, but I think I would have preferred a multi cast production like the first one. The chapters bounce around a bit too much between characters and time periods. It felt a bit like a Burroughs cut up novel. There’s some really striking imagery here, but it gets a little muddled.
mamimitanaka's review against another edition
4.0
Goes hard as fuck. Actually might be better than the first one, I only understood maybe 20% of what the hell was going on here but that's sort of intended, Kiernan is rapid-fire cycling through time and perspective to the point where you're supposed to be as disoriented as the many characters who come and go amidst a worldwide supernatural conspiracy. But it's not only a galaxy brained sci-fi story about a global cosmic chess match spanning entire generations and cycles of history, it is also pervasively obsessed with the mechanics of the universe and how these forces puppeteering and orchestrating everything bend and break the rules; so it's also about chaos theory, about doubling, the existential horror of state power which eclipses and controls even Biblical apocalypse, and about mathematics and Time and the fickle subjectivity of the whole concept. Kiernan is basically serving up a mixed dish of delectable spec-fic ingredients, resulting in a fast-paced postmodern puzzle box full of recontextualized yet affectionately homaged genre tropes and Kiernan's always reliable excellence at sentence crafting, which is stellar throughout, and filled to bursting with references ranging from the mythic to the literary to pop culture. Appropriately for the Lovecraftian undercurrents nothing here is answered directly, piecing together your own conclusions is part of the point. Kinda wish this was a 700 page doorstopper given the amount of modes it plays in and characters and subplots it handles, but there's something impressive on its own about fitting this much into a 200 page volume. Though this series is still ongoing to my knowledge, so maybe if we're lucky Kiernan's all building this to some grand conclusion that could very well end up being our weird sci-fi tome for the ages once the series is finished in bulk.
lazercatz's review against another edition
2.0
I really wanted to love this book but the nonlinear narrative just doesn’t work for me.
elfington's review against another edition
3.0
Caitlin Kiernan's work is intriguing but I never fall in love with it. Her mish-mash of Lovecraft, Alice in Wonderland, and time travel ticks off lots of my boxes, but I wish she would have more fun with it. This novella straddles literary fiction and pulp, but doesn't go deep enough into either to really satisfy.
mschlat's review against another edition
3.0
A nice enough place, but I wouldn't want to live there....
This is highly abstruse and allusion filled fantasy/science fiction, with narrative time jumps and Cthulhu monsters and spycraft (which doesn't help the clarity). Except for a few short chapters, I appreciated the atmospheric feel and prose style, but I quickly accepted I wasn't getting to get much of the way of explanation, clear character motivations, or even plot closure. That's okay for a short work like this, but I couldn't handle this in a longer novel.
This is highly abstruse and allusion filled fantasy/science fiction, with narrative time jumps and Cthulhu monsters and spycraft (which doesn't help the clarity). Except for a few short chapters, I appreciated the atmospheric feel and prose style, but I quickly accepted I wasn't getting to get much of the way of explanation, clear character motivations, or even plot closure. That's okay for a short work like this, but I couldn't handle this in a longer novel.