Alabaster

An albino girl wanders the sun-scorched backroads of a south Georgia summer, following the bidding of an angel or perhaps only voices in her head, searching out and slaying ancient monsters who have hidden themselves away in the lonely places of the world. Caitlín R. Kiernan first introduced Dancy in the pages of her award-winning second novel, Threshold (2001), then went on to write several more short stories and a novella about this unlikely heroine, each a piece of what has become an epic dark fantasy narrative. Alabaster finally collects all these tales into one volume.

Dancy Flammarion, an albino adolescent who speaks to angels and slays monsters in human guise in the backwoods of contemporary Georgia, is the heroine of the five interlocking stories that make up this eerie dark fantasy collection... Kiernan imbues the tales with disquieting gothic imagery and envelops them in rich, evocative prose that conveys cohesiveness beyond their fragmentary plots.

Dancy stands, a bit uncomfortably, in a long line of monster-hunting characters, walking the Earth and dispatching creatures of ancient evil, but Kiernan twists the conventions hard. First, Dancy is young, naive about human society (having grown up isolated in a Florida swamp), and visited often by a terrifying angel. She gets no satisfaction out of killing monsters. First, she killed to survive. Later, she killed because it seemed the only life open to her, and because her angel would not permit her to do otherwise. It's not a question of duty, or responsibility, but of necessity. She is more Joan of Arc than Solomon Kane...