A review by mamimitanaka
The Tindalos Asset by Caitlín R. Kiernan

3.0

I liked this one but it overall confirmed my main issue with this series - too short! Kiernan builds up to so much and in the conclusion to this one everything just sort of...abruptly comes to a halt, with a lot of plot threads tied up as though the book's last stretch was written on a deadline. I've always liked Kiernan's books for the fact anyone can die at any time, the world they create feels properly dangerous and exciting, though that approach kind of didn't work for the ending here, when so many interesting threads and setpieces could have ended as they did just fine if only they had been expanded on further. Because those threads are really good, and the build up here is done very well This one is more of a popcorn book than the first two entries, and its timeline is essentially linear except for a few generally easy to parse chronological shifts, so this could be a reasonably good start to exploring Kiernan's aesthetic fixations. This book also contains a scene maybe in the top 3 of her hallucinatory cosmic horror moments, one that among pulp novels rivals Langan's in "The Fisherman". But I do really wish and hope this series could get at least one more entry - there's so many interesting things going on here, but so many of them explored marginally, which can be tantalizing and I understand is part of the point of Lovecraftian horror, but dammit, Kiernan is simply so good at it I want to see more of how this universe is built and how the characters within it operate! Thankfully, Kiernan's work as a whole is a treasure of modern dark fiction, so all of their works contribute to the greater mythos at play in one sense or other.