Kirsten Reviews: Cherry Bomb by Kathleen Tierney

Cherry Bomb by Kathleen Tierney

Siobhan Quinn #3

Meet Siobhan Quinn—Half vampire, half werewolf, and retired monster hunter. Or so she thought…

Three years have passed since Quinn turned her back on Providence, Rhode Island’s seedy supernatural underbelly, walking out on Mr. B. and taking a bus headed anywhere. She hoped her escape would give her some peace from the endless parade of horrors. But a dead girl who quarrels with the moon can’t catch a break, and, on the streets of Manhattan, Quinn finds herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Again.

What do you do when you’re stuck in the middle of a three-million-year-old grudge match between the ghouls and the djinn, accidentally in possession of a hellish artifact that could turn the tide of the war, all the while being hunted by depraved half-ghoul twins intent on taking the object and ushering in a terrifying Dark Age?

Especially when you’ve fallen in love with the woman who got you into this mess—and you ain’t nobody’s hero…

Cherry Bomb is the third and final installment in Caitlín R. Kiernan’s (writing as Kathleen Tierney) series about a vampire-werewolf named Quinn. This series seeks to ‘re-fang’ the paranormal genre, as it were, one gorey and expletive-heavy passage at a time. It both mocks the romantic niche that vampires have been crammed into like ill-fitting coffins, and is both unabashedly sexual and intolerant of anyone who seeks to lie to themselves about price one pays to live forever.

The book opens three years after Quinn walked out on Mean Mr. B. and Rhode Island both, and she now resides in New York. She settles, as much as is possible for her, into a relationship, which she chafes and, this is short-lived, pun fully intended, when she meets Selwyn Throckmorton, an antiquities dealer one night in a BDSM club.

Unfortunately, it seems that the very thing that drew Selwyn to approach someone she knew wasn’t human has also lead to her getting involved in trading ghoul artifacts with individuals one would do well to avoid. Nobody with any sense would wander into a feud between ghouls and the djinn, but then, this is Quinn’s life, and these things happen to her as a rule.

Unlike the previous books in this series, Quinn’s dry sense of humor has a distinctly darker tone, which makes sense given what’s happened to her, but it also ties into the rest of the story, which is much more aggressive as progressively more unpleasant things happen to people and creatures who may or may not deserve what happens to them.

It’s essential to remember that as a protagonist, Quinn is not intended to be admirable, and she is aware of how far from the role of a traditional hero she walks. On the other hand, Quinn is definitely not infallible, and even though the audience may be able to see Selwyn as the trouble she most assuredly is, Quinn, from time to time, allows emotion to get the better of her.

On the one hand, it’s a shame that this series has ended, but it is preferable for it to end strongly, rather than drag on for years, with characters becoming progressively unrecognizable. At the end of the day, the audience knows Quinn, inside and out, as well as anyone can know a character who would sneer at them, swear, and spit her defiance, and that is in and of itself satisfying.
(Received a copy from the publisher)

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Other Reviews:
     The BiblioSanctum
     Fantasy Review Barn
     Paranormal Haven

Previous Books:
     1. Blood Oranges
     2. Red Delicious

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Kirsten Reviews: Red Delicious by Kathleen Tierney

Red Delicious by Kathleen Tierney

Siobhan Quinn #2

Siobhan Quinn is back and working a new case in the dark and satirical sequel to Blood Oranges.

Half-vampire, half-werewolf Siobhan Quinn survived her initiation into the world of demons and monsters. But staying alive as she becomes entangled in underworld politics might prove to be more difficult. When the daughter of a prominent necromancer vanishes, it's up to Quinn to find the girl. But her search will land her directly in the middle of a struggle between competing forces searching for an ancient artifact of almost unimaginable power...

Red Delicious by Caitlín R. Kiernan, writing as Kathleen Tierney, is both the sequel to Blood Oranges, and the second volume in the Siobhan Quinn series. As far as sequels go, it is a worthy continuation of the first book, and its events pick up almost directly following the end of the first book.

Anybody expecting a slow start to the book will be immediately tossed into the deep end.The story begins with the confession of murder. To be more precise, Quinn; never call her Siobhan, people have died for that, introduces herself as such, no apologies, equivocation or beating around the bush. That's because Quinn not only killed the bush, she set it on fire and scattered its ashes for good measure. Substitute 'her enemies,' which is a catch-all for anyone who gets on her substantial bad side, with ‘bush’ and you've got an idea of the sort of life that Quinn leads.

Carrying the thread of genre mockery from Blood Oranges, Quinn disparages vampires who sparkle, spend too much time in New Orleans, the 'romantic werewolf' and in short, every monster made Byronic and tame by popular media.

The truth about monsters is foul, nasty and they will eat you up if you're not careful. Quinn’s own cautionary tale is a convincing case for the universe having it in for her. She killed a ghoul, then a vampire and was recruited to work for the dapper and frustratingly unforthcoming Mr. B, middleman for the supernatural set. Then Quinn screwed up and was bitten by a lycanthrope and the Bride of Quiet (a powerful vampire.) She managed to save her bacon with the loan of a magical 'doodad,’ killed of the Bride along with a few werewolves and resumed working with Mr. B.

Flash forward 6 months.

Having adjusted to her state of undeath, Quinn is laissez faire about things that she would be better of paying more attention to in the long run. One of these things is the threat posed by Rizzo, an ex-priest and pedophile-turned vampire/monster hunter, which becomes problematic, to say the least. But, Quinn is aware of her shortcomings, even if she doesn’t always compensate for them in time to avoid trouble, and trouble is clearly headed toward her in the form of Rizzo and his zealotry.

Then there's the mission Mr. B has sent her on: the daughter of an extremely powerful and well-connected necromancer has gone mission. It's Quinn's mission, whether or not she accepts it to find Amity Maidstone before Daddy Dearest catches wind of it and raises the literal kind of hell.

But this isn't a simple missing person case, and Amity is tangled up in dark business connected to a magic totem, ancient and of such power that anybody with nefarious designs is out to get a hold of it.

That puts Quinn squarely in the middle. Some monsters are lucky, others make their own luck and then there are those that try and carry more weapons than anybody else. One guess which group Quinn falls into. There’s plenty of gore, foul language and an array of equally unpleasant and interesting characters in Quinn’s world, which should please a discerning audience.

In short, Red Delicious is a vicious parody of the bloated tropes conflating the urban fantasy genre, spinning them dizzyingly and shoving the story off a cliff into unexpected and delightfully twisted new territory.

(Received a copy from the publisher)

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Other Reviews:
     The BiblioSanctum
     My Shelf Confessions

Previous Books:
     1. Blood Oranges

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Kirsten Reviews: Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney

Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney

My name’s Quinn.

If you buy into my reputation, I’m the most notorious demon hunter in New England. But rumors of my badassery have been slightly exaggerated. Instead of having kung-fu skills and a closet full of medieval weapons, I’m an ex-junkie with a talent for being in the wrong place at the right time. Or the right place at the wrong time. Or…whatever.

Wanted for crimes against inhumanity I (mostly) didn’t commit, I was nearly a midnight snack for a werewolf until I was “saved” by a vampire calling itself the Bride of Quiet. Already cursed by a werewolf bite, the vamp took a pint out of me too.

So now…now, well, you wouldn’t think it could get worse, but you’d be dead wrong.

Blood Oranges, the latest book by Caitlin R. Kiernan is written under the nom de plume of Kathleen Tierney, and is a departure from the rest of her novels in that it's pretty straightforward. There's no evil slowly revealing itself from the shadows or underneath the earth. Here, the adversaries aren't prehistoric, but familiar monsters, demons, ghouls, trolls, werewolves, and vampires.

If urban fantasy and horror have tried to romanticize the undead, then Kiernan's protagonist, Quinn, kicks mud in the reader’s face, and then spits blood to make sure they get the point.

In some ways, Blood Oranges is similar to The Five of Cups, an earlier novel of Kiernan's that can be summed up as being raw, nasty, and filled with unpleasant characters that happen to be vampires. Cups is rough, unpolished, and yet there is a certain ferocity to the voice of Quinn that hearkens back to Cups, and the monsters; both then and in Blood Oranges, feel much more honest than the way they’re portrayed in most media these days. What Kiernan does isn't an attempt to expand the genre of 'heroines who fight monsters but sleep with them too.' Instead, she's taken the sharp edge of her pen, and carved out a space, or reclaimed it for the kind of stories where these things aren't your prom dates, but creatures that will rip your throat out. There are a number of digs against popular vampire books and movies which will make readers laugh, and all the characters have their own flaws that sometimes overtake them, or, in other cases, end up saving their lives.

The protagonist, Quinn is a mess; a junky, a young woman who hunts monsters, more or less by accident, and has no special powers. But then there's a series of not-so-accidental- events, and she has to figure out where she stands, and who's behind what's happened to her. Of course, because this isn’t a pretty little story with a sweet heroine, or even one that is trying to improve her life, nothing is simple. Quinn swears, does drugs, might have a couple friends, and often inadvertently gets others killed or hurt in the course of finding answers. The fact is, she doesn’t have any leverage, and her planning skills could use a little tutoring, but all she’s doing is attempting to stay alive, and if she’s gotten this far, there’s a chance she might not die horribly. But then again, there are no guarantees.

Blood Oranges is a quick read, and will please anybody who was ready to stake all vampires out for the sun as a reflex.

(Received a copy from the publisher)

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Other Reviews:

• Red Hot Books 
• Paranormal Haven
• Fed on Peaches 

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