'Dear Sweet Filthy World' by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a collection of dark and erotic stories that delve into themes of transformation, sacrifice, and encounters with the Other. The book weaves together narratives of surreal and macabre scenarios, from lovers in liminal lands to women giving themselves to monstrous creatures. Kiernan's writing style is described as beautiful, enticing, and filled with exciting imagery that immerses readers in a world of decadence and destruction.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The anthology contains high levels of mature content, including sexual violence, graphic descriptions, and themes that may be triggering for some readers.
Has Romance?
While not the focal point, there are elements of romance entwined with the stories, although often in dark or forbidden contexts.
From The Publisher:
What exactly is the difference between a love letter and a suicide note? Is there really any difference at all? These might be the questions posed by Dear Sweet Filthy World , Caitlin R. Kiernan's fourteenth collection of short fiction, comprised of twenty-eight uncollected and impossible-to-find stories.
Treading the grim places where desire and destruction, longing and horror intersect, the author rises once again to meet the high expectations she set with such celebrated collections as Tales of Pain and Wonder, To Charles Fort, With Love , and the World Fantasy Award-winning The Ape's Wife and Other Stories. In these pages you'll meet a dragon's lover, a drowned vampire cursed always to ride the tides, a wardrobe that grants wishes, and a lunatic artist's marriage of the Black Dahlia and the Beast of Gévaudan. You'll visit a ruined post-industrial Faerie, travel back to tropical Paleozoic seas and ahead to the far-flung future, and you'll meet a desperate writer forced to sell her memories for new ideas. Here are twenty-eight tales of apocalypse and rebirth, of miraculous transformation and utter annihilation. Here is the place where professing your undying devotion might be precisely the same thing as signing your own death warrant or worse.
The stories in Dear Sweet Filthy World were first published in the subscription-only Sirenia Digest, run by Caitlin for her most devoted readers. This publication marks the first availability to the general public for most of these rare tales.
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1 comment(s)
i feel like i just rolled around in the leafy mulch on the ground of an ancient forest
in a good way
kiernan is such a hidden gem, and this book just proves that she should be on the same shelf as angela carter and shirley jackson, who she names in her dedication
these stories are mostly retold fairy tales, and they mostly revolve around the transformation, breakdown, and rebuilding of the female body
"paleozoic annunciation" is my favorite story, the imagery of the woman hanging in the water hundreds of millions of years in the past will stay with me forever
also, that story is a great example of showing the reader just enough that we can put together the scariest details ourselves
i'll be honest: "tempest witch" made me fall asleep
but everything else in this collection is ridiculously riveting
and the final story? guess what writers, kiernan won the prize for best title ever written
you might win a bunch of prizes, but you will never write a better title than "interstate love song (murder ballad no. 8)"
What can you read after
Dear Sweet Filthy World?
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