There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

Wonderfully creepy. A little confusing at first, but things started to get pieced together quickly. I definitely want more stories from this world and what happens.

Delightfully creepy and weird. Just had a slow start getting into it, so I missed deadline to post it on the normal site I write for.

Beautifully creepy.

In this novella, Kiernan takes Lovecraftian horror elements, and transposes them into an X-Files-type setting. A government agent known as The Signalman is set to meet another operative, Immacolata, regarding the actions of a California doomsday cult. For some reason, he finds his fellow operative even more frightening than the cult; even though brutal, horrific deaths have occurred.

Meanwhile, a young woman explains how the “Children of the Next Level” gave her life the hope and meaning she'd always lacked, with its leader's promises of transcendence and transformation. Well, transformation, of a kind, there certainly will be.

The writing is non-linear and obscure; and I wanted more from the ending... but I still loved it.

Definitely recommended for fans of VanDerMeer's 'Southern Reach' trilogy, as well as anyone who's interested by cult psychology and the weirder elements of the X-Files.

Many thanks to Tor and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinion is unrelated to the source of the book.

Well, this was creepy. I've rarely seen so much packed into a novella. The book is all about atmosphere, not plot, and the time travel aspect of the book means that we can see what has happened before the book actually ends. However, that doesn't detract at all from the reveals or the horror that is evoked. This is a beautifully written book. The author can get into the head of a cynical G-man and a lost junkie with equal acuity and incredibly distinct voices. She makes it look easy, but I know this takes amazing talent.

So, what's going on? Aforementioned G-man meets with an agent from a rival/allied agency to share information. What the information is and what it means for humanity is gradually revealed. The hot dry air of the desert, the desolation of an isolated trailer in the scorching middle of nowhere, I felt almost like I was there. The investigation centers around a cult-like leader and the lost souls that he finds and uses.

This book is also Lovecraftian, and I'm pretty sure I missed some references. But- there are ghouls, time-traveling body snatchers, skittering cockroach creatures from outer space, and an infection that leads to the squickiest of body horror. We've got nothing less than an alien invasion along an outbreak leading to apocalypse. And meanwhile, our burned-out agent is just trying to do his job while dealing with experiences that would send most people gibbering away in horror. The emptiness of his life and soul, the desperate loneliness of a junkie caught up in a cult, these human feelings of despair are just as much a part of the horror as any extra-dimensional monster. For some people, the apocalypse is already here.

An off-kilter novella by Kiernan which, whilst not reaching the engaging heights of The Red Tree (my favourite of hers), it was a good read for a dark and stormy evening.

For a short 84 pages novella, Agents of Dreamland sure felt like one long read. Long and pointless.

You are probably not used to such harsh judgements in my reviews, since I usually try to find at least something positive in the books I read. So let me explain why I'm so negative this time.

The story is about the agent of some secret government organization dealing with the unexplained and the paranormal who discovers what at first glance seems like cult mass suicide, but turns out to be the beginning of the end of humanity. Some kind of alien fungus that would destroy humanity and pave the way for a different life form. Sounds like it could be an interesting story, right? I certainly thought so when I read the blurb and picked up the book.

Well, don't get your hopes up. The story goes nowhere after that. I'm not joking. They discover the bodies of the cultist and one survivor. They take the survivor to a secured facility where she dies in an explosion of alien spores. It's implied that this is the curtain call for humanity. The End.

Even that little bit of story could have been interesting if the characters were engaging enough to empathize with or the stakes high enough to create tension. Unfortunately, we get neither. In fact, I think that by giving one of her characters the ability to cast her mind both into the past and the future, the author effectively shot herself in the foot and killed her story.

So this character can get "unstuck" from the present and let her mind travel to all the moments she lived in the past or will live in the future. She goes into the future and sees that in the year 2043, human civilization is pretty much extinct, the remaining humans infected and changed beyond recognition by the fungus, and aliens are controlling the skies. She sees all that and chooses not to say a word about it to anybody. But the author includes a detailed description of her little trip into the future before the middle of the book…

That right there killed the story for me. If the end of the world is coming anyway, nothing the Signalman or his colleagues from Albany do has any meaning. There are no stakes anymore. So what's the point of the story? Any (minimal) investment I still had in it plunged to zero on my "How much do I care about what happens next" meter. And when the novella ended with a non-ending that didn’t resolve anything, I wasn't really surprised or particularly disappointed.

I came for an interesting horror story he blurb had promised. I got lots of allegories and similes and countless references to obscure black and white movies and the Beatles sprinkled with a bit of mythology. From what I understand, the author tried to write a Lovecraftian story. In my opinion, that attempt failed.

PS. I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thrilling, creepy, and utterly original and enthralling. A brilliant Lovecraftian tale that will resonate with me for a long time.

Weird, kind-of trippy but at the same time awesome X-files esque short novel - definitely recommend for fans of sci-fi who are looking for a good afternoon read.

Mysterious meetings in small town desert diners, shocking photographs, secret agents, time travel, space fungus, kool-aid cults... for a short novella, there is a heck of a lot packed in here!

I'd previously read Caitlín R Kiernan's novel, The Red Tree, following a recommendation based on the terrific House of Leaves (Mark Z Danielewski) - and while not quite as mind-bending as the latter, it shared that sense of disquiet and reality-breaking. Agents of Dreamland has quite a similar tone: unease and creeping levels of horror.

With such a short volume, we're thrown into the action immediately and left to fend for ourselves a bit in terms of figuring out what's what. Who is the mysterious Signalman, who is he waiting for, and why does he fear her? Perhaps knowing that 'Dreamland' is another name for Area 51 might give some clues...!

Chapters jump back and forth on the timeline a little - so you have to pay attention to the title dates, which is generally something I hate, although it does serve its purpose here - revealing slightly earlier events even more remotely in the desert locale, from the point of view of a young teenager saved from the streets and brought to a different kind of purpose. Even without the subsequent revelations, this would have its own kind of chill.

I did fear at one point that the 'short' would feel 'unfinished', but no: while there is a lot of scope for continuation, and a wider tale that is hinted at, this is an almost perfectly formed slice of story. It does perhaps take a couple of (short) chapters to get going, and it's slightly unfortunate that the core idea is familiar to me from something I read a few years back - it would be more shocking otherwise, I imagine - but overall this is a great short fiction from an author I intend to read more of. Recommended for fans of Twin Peaks and The X-Files.

'Agents of Dreamland' by Caitlin R. Kiernan is only 125 pages, but it manages to pack a lot of weird in those pages. I mean that in the best way possible.

The book starts with a strange government agent getting off a train in Winslow, Arizona. He is there to get information about something that happened the previous week. The story shifts between him, and a cult leader who leads a group called the Children of the Next Level, and a woman who kind of lives outside of time. There are strange fungi and possible alien life and that's all I'm going to say.

I like to call this part of the New Lovecraft movement, which is a term I completely made up just now. It seems in SF there are a few stories delving with ideas that H.P. Lovecraft touched on. This story owes a bit to a short story called "The Whisperer In Darkness" and the time setting of this novella coincides with when NASA's New Horizons probe was getting close to Pluto. I was also reminded a bit of the X-Files, but that could just be because of government agents and such.

It's concisely written, and strikes the perfect mood for a late night read.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

A government agent deeply disturbed my an event that no one can explain and something alien making contact!? Sounds like a story right up my alley, but sadly, Agents of Dreamland wasn’t for me.

If I had to describe this novella with just one word, I would probably say “confusing”. I had a hard time getting into the story, and even after I felt like I had more of a grasp on what is going on, it still felt like I just didn’t get it. Agents of Dreamland couldn’t hold my attention and I started to lose interest towards the end so that I’m still not sure about some things.

One of the reasons why I had a lot of trouble with this story is that it’s not told in a complete chronological order. I am not someone who is good at remembering dates mentioned in chapter titles, so this all added to my confusion.

It took some time until it was even made clear what exactly happened that was so disturbing. The point of the story seemed to be more about getting the reader to know the what and not the why. To me it also felt like the hints about what went down were hidden too much and not made clear enough.

Agents of Dreamland definitely wasn’t what I expected. I was hoping to read a rather dark story, events that might be disturbing for the reader themselves, but I didn’t feel any of that and was left with a story that confused me more than fascinate me.

A collection of shortish chapters in a novella that’s supposed to evoke a Lovecraftian feel, but it really just didn’t do the trick for me. I didn’t go in with much of any expectations, and I just found a lot of this to be a little lacking on a whole, and then it was over. Reading an advance of it, by the time I neared the end I was actively afraid that I had picked up a sample of the book instead of a full novel.

Overall, I just felt really disappointed by the whole thing. I’m usually into everything Lovecraft, but this missed the mark.

This is weird-noir novella full of references to H. P. Lovecraft mythos, but it can be enjoyed even if you’re not an expert in Lovecraft, or even if you haven’t read any of his tales.
The story of a government agent, the Signalman, investigating a doomsday cult is told in a non-linear fashion and through different characters’ point of view, but you get enough information to easily fit every piece of the puzzle.
An exciting and enjoyable read, with a touch of horror, of dark fantasy and even of apocalyptic science fiction, and with a pleasantly disturbing ending. Highly recommended for any Lovecraft and dark fantasy fans.
I will definitely include it in my next Recommending Reading post.

Agents of Dreamland, a Lovecraft-fueled novella from Caitlin R. Kiernan, is a trippy, non-linear story that has a bit of an X-Files vibe about it. From a mythos standpoint, Kiernan explores the apocalyptic fate of mankind following first contact with the Fungi from Yuggoth and the investigation of a secret government agency in the years prior.

This is a short, but dense, narrative, and Kiernan hops around from one time period to the next. There are a lot of awesome ideas crammed into this novella, from the mystery of those briefly lost hours when the New Horizon's satellite went dark just before reaching Pluto, to the investigation of a small group of murdered cultists and the strange, fungal infection that has seized their bodies. For the most part, though, the focus is on present-day (well, July 2015 to be exact), but Kiernan plays fast and loose with the timeline, presenting information in non-linear dollops.

At its core, Agents of Dreamland is more concerned with ideas and possibilities than it is in presenting a straightforward narrative with resolution. This is more like a slice of life vignette set against the backdrop of Lovecraft's cosmic horror, and the story itself demands plenty of thought well after the last page turns shut. Kiernan gives us a set of intriguing characters placed in a dynamic world, with several book's worth of possibilities encircling each of them. And I hope to sweet, dear Cthulhu that she'll write those books!

[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley.]

This is the year of novellas, and it been so good to us. Novellas give us more time to see a world and characters than a short story does (a short story often delivering specifically on a point, or a twist) and yet a novella still has to get there quicker than a novel, with more focus and zero time wasted.

In this novella we have the creepy paranoia and stuff that feeds conspiracy theories. As all best conspiracy theories are, it's based in fact. In this case, a fungus that takes over the host with full control and a demand to spread as quickly and painfully as possible. Though this novella has a narrator that's far more swear-y than Sir David Attenborough on Planet Earth, introducing us to these things. Here, we have an alcoholic Government agent known as The Signalman who has to meet with another Government agent woman - Immacolata - supposedly from different agencies - to compare notes and track this. Both are as creepy as hell.

Told through random time order, jumping back and forth and showing us some of those infected and compared as a cult we have a horror book that's delivered effortlessly and with such lovely, crazy prose.

I'm pretty sure this is my first taste of Kiernan's work, but I know for a fact it won't be the last.

Caitlin Kiernan is one hell of a writer. And I'm certain I'll be flamed for this - she writes Lovecroftian horror better than Lovecraft did.

This novella combines mysterious government agencies, burned out agents, doomsday cults, a fascinating woman who travels through time, malfunctioning space probes and some of Lovecraft's nastier creations (Mi-G0) into a beautifully and elegantly written horror novella.

Ms. Kiernan's writing is so subtle, revealing the horrific future that awaits humanity. But there is hope - a little extra time.

Great read, just too short. I can't wait to read more of this series, if there are sequels.

Once again, not knowing my Lovecraft tripped me up. Yep, this is yet another Lovecraft-based story, although in this case it's a rather less well-known one: the Fungi from Yuggoth. Not one I'd have known anything about even if I'd known in advance, but perhaps I might have been better prepared for the sheer bleakness and darkness of this story had I known it was based on Lovecraft's mythos in any way.

It's an intriguing little novella; self-contained, though it hints at a world before and after it through one character who is, to some extent, 'unstuck in time'. The flesh-crawling horror of the fungi, a kind of invasion we're helpless to fight, is done really well. There's one phrase which just made me shudder, because of all the different implications stacked together: "the fruiting corpse". Gah. Gaaah.

It's very effective writing, and because I don't know to what extent it takes any of the detail from Lovecraft, I can say that it's definitely something that can stand on its own. It doesn't rely on me realising exactly what's going on through familiarity with Lovecraft; the creeping unease works as well or better if you're ignorant of where things are going.

[Review link live from 6th March 2017.]

The first two thirds of Agents of Dreamland were boring enough that I barely remember what happened, but the last couple of chapters were really interesting and make me think I must have missed something in the first few chapters. I like a good non-linear story, and the time-jumping structure is neatly executed, though it may be worth picking up the paperback instead of the ebook if you think you may need to flip back and forth to keep track of the chapters' dates.

I didn't love this one, but I do think it's a title I may try rereading someday. It seems like the kind of story that may improve on subsequent readings.