Comes a Pale Rider
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Possibly Caitlín R. Kiernan’s most enduring character, albino monster slayer Dancy Flammarion has been carving a bloody swath across the American South ever since her first appearance in Threshold (2001), “laying the bad folks low.” In 2006, Subterranean Press published a World Fantasy Award-nominated collection of Dancy Flammarion short stories, Alabaster, and beginning in 2012, Dark Horse Comics released a three-volume graphic novel series introducing Dancy to comics in Alabaster: Wolves (winner of the Bram Stoker Award), Alabaster: Grimmer Tales, and Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird.
And now, with Comes a Pale Rider, Kiernan offers a second collection of Dancy Flammarion short stories. From Selma, Alabama to the back roads of Georgia to a South Carolina ghost town, Dancy continues her holy war with the beings of night and shadow, driven always on by her own insanity or an angel with a fiery sword—or possibly both.
Comes a Pale Rider includes two new tales available nowhere else, each more than 10,000 words: “Dreams of a Poor Wayfaring Stranger,” and “Requiem.” The volume concludes with a brand new 3,000 word afterword.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Albino demon hunter Dancy Flammarion, who last appeared in the graphic novel Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird, cuts a righteous swath across the American South guided by a skeletal, four-headed angel in this spectacular collection of five weird tales from Stoker Award winner Kiernan. Kiernan gets the collection off to a delightfully offbeat start with "Bus Fare," in which Dancy trades first riddles then blows with a werewolf, and "Dancy vs. the Pterosaur," in which she encounters the concept of evolution and promptly dismisses it as heretical. "Dreams of a Poor Wayfaring Stranger," a series of vignettes that artfully poke holes into the continuity of Dancy's universe, and standout "Tupelo," an unsettling, hypnotic look at what Dancy's life might be like if the supernatural weren't real after all, both explore eerier territory. "Requiem" brings the collection to a satisfying and unexpectedly poignant close, as a witch who once threatened Dancy's life seeks out the now-retired Dancy and the pair reach an unlikely understanding. Readers won't have to be familiar with Kiernan's earlier works to fall in love with her scrappy, mildly unhinged heroine or the masterful way in which she places charm and chills side by side. Dancy deserves a wide fan base.
