A collection of 19 short stories, mostly in the horror genre though frequently more mildly creepy than outright horrific. Despite the stories being disconnected, there are images and themes that appear repeatedly: paleontologists (though dinosaurs themselves appear only as fossils or, once, as a cheesy tourist attraction); lesbian couples; protagonists who grew up in the southern United States only to spend their adult lives up north; sitting in a psychiatrist's office describing bad dreams based on weird but not directly traumatic childhood experiences; vivid descriptions of locations in the US's north-east, mostly NYC, Boston, and Providence; the scent of the ocean and/or rivers; explicit Lovecraft references, most often to Mother Hydra, here repeatedly depicted as an evil Venus of Willendorf. As a whole, the stories are a mixed bag; some of them I loved, and some I found far too vague and ambiguous.

My favorites included:
"The Cats of River Street (1925)" – the pet and feral cats of Lovecraft's Innsmouth come together on the spring equinox to fight back a tide of sea monsters. A wonderful portrayal of a diversity of personalities in a specific time and place.
"Far From Any Shore" – three paleontologists dig up the Mother Hydra statue and succumb to mysterious illnesses while revelers celebrate the end of the world. Creepy and understated; very well-done.
"Fake Plastic Trees" – in a world somewhat like Vonnegut's Cat Cradle (though in this case nanobots have turned everything to plastic), a teenage girl makes a horrific discovery. Nice tension and worldbuilding here.
"Elegy for a Suicide" – a woman touches what looks like a fungi, only to find her body rotting and an ancient power consuming her inner self.

Unfortunately too many of the other stories are meandering and unclear, in that way of literary fiction in which nothing actually happens but it's all very weighty and meaningful. Frequently I was bored enough that I had to force myself to keep reading. The other books I've read by Kiernan didn't have this problem, so I was disappointed to encounter it here. But that said, the stories that worked, really really worked.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3031026319

I tried to get thru this book but just didn't really enjoy it. The story line was ok it just didn't "gel" with me. Might just be that this isn't my kind of story. Hate to give a bad review but just didn't enjoy or finish it.

Requested from Netgalley to review, but bought my own copy later.

I have not read a book by Caitlin R Kiernan before, so I did not know what I was getting into, although I regret nothing. I wish the short story had been somehow introduced before rather than afterwards, as sometimes I was lost as to who was telling the story, what gender or scene I was stepping into the headspace of, sometimes a summary would have been nice.

I really expected to read this faster than what I did, I delight in dinosaurs for as long as I can remember, maybe it began with The Land Before Time or Jurassic Park or Barney or something about shells and the sea, but something seemed to slow me down, maybe it's the "weight" or "taste" of these short stories in this book. That's probably a weird thing to claim, or blame on a book. It's a strange book though, the kind that asks questions by telling a story, rather than telling a story to tell you a answer to some discovery (although it does that too). I learned a lot from these stories. I will want to go back to them. Each was whole and yet somehow part of a path.

While reading these short stories I saw on Netflix Love, Death and Robots, the quick stories shown within the show remind me of The Dinosaur Tourist, perhaps especially the episode Fish Night, which is described elsewhere as "When their car breaks down in the desert, a couple of traveling salesmen spend the night in the middle of nowhere and end up in a kind of trans-dimensional rift, surrounded by the ghosts of the ancient sea creatures who roamed the ocean that covered the same space millions of years before." but none of the short stories of The Dinosaur Tourist have that kind of scene, but they do have that kind of presence, the mix of "weight" ( of desert, of sea, of aeons) and "taste" (oil, blood, dirt, sand), if that makes sense?

Perhaps it does not.

"The Beginning of the Year Without a Summer" - At least two stories told like flipping a coin, one watching a dancer amidst a party of what might be monsters or a murder of crows and one by a lake discussing with a girl evil, swans, and more.

"Far From Any Shore" - Something dug up from the ground that looks like The Venus of Willendorf (or Mother Hydra) changes the three diggers and possibly the world forever.

"The Cats of River Street (1925)" - What fights off the monsters from the sea? Cats!

"Elegy for a Suicide"- E finds a antique Austrian razor, or it finds her, and something between a god or a fungus invading her body like a ant zombie.

"The Road of Needles"- Nix Severn, adrift between two worlds, one trying to awaken Oma a AI on a ship overgrown by primeval trees and animals or wolves, leaving lover and daughter in Earth for love of hallucination on the Blackbird or none of it is real.

"Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still" - Mars colonized for generations has strange sacred days and traditions and the Phantom Eve is a peek at the tale told of ancient goddesses Seven and the Seven who hold the Four at bay and the different ways history is recalled.

"Ballad of an Echo Whisperer" - A train ride in New Orleans and the memory and conversation between two companions and what might be ghost dog.

"The Cripple and the Starfish" - Two vampires among her many progeny gather to the side of the Lady of the Silver Whispers and wait for her to speak the name of her next victim.

"Fake Plastic Trees"- In a world becoming plastic, dreaming of what was real and what's not is up to a survivor to write.

"Whisper Road (Murder Ballad No. 9)"-A couple drive away, or to, a red light of eyes in the dark and a noise like Morse code.

"Animals Pull the Night Around Their Shoulders"- A artist reveals or draws upon a dark history of animal attacks.

"Untitled Psychiatrist No. 2"- A recollection of a memory in dream, of a gruesome roadside accident stop and a deer that isn't one.

"Excerpts from An Eschatology Quadrille"- A jade figurine of Mother Hydra of travels through time (1969, 2007, 1956, 2151) perhaps waiting for her husband Dagon in R'lyeh or to welcome a greater god with a great flood.

"Ballad of a Catamite Revolver"- At deadly act of Echo and Narcissus witnessed by two who are there to swap more than stories and myths.

"Untitled Psychiatrist No. 3"-Picking a psychiatrist because of her werewolf paper and a childhood memory of what might be a werewolf haunting a family for a hunt gone wrong, or a family made film.

"Albatross (1994)"- At the shore what might be a sea monster or demon washes up, and a dream upturns new discoveries, or imagines old ones new again.

"Fairy Tale of Wood Street"- Someone lost in the woods, or city, finds a lover in their guide.

"The Dinosaur Tourist (Murder Ballad No. 11)"- A hitchhiker is picked up by a serial killer but the end both aren't just what they seemed.

"Objects in the Mirror"- A scene of meeting a psychiatrist and a discussion on doppelganger, and prehistoric wondering and wandering.

This was an intriguing, but disturbing at times to read anthology. This is an intense read that is not for the faint of heart.

I don't read much fiction, but I could not ignore this book after reading its description, and I am so glad because good lord is this book deeply creepy. Very Lovecraftian in tone, which I loved! I definitely recommend if you are a fan of short stories that are deep in the uncanny horror with hints of eldritch horror spread throughout.

This is the fifteenth collection of Caitlín R. Kiernan's short fiction, according to the blurb, and about the fourth or fifth I've read cover to cover. But prolific as she is, the quality of these stories doesn't suffer from their quanity, and the Kiernan has established herself as a preeminent writer of the weird. These stories share more than a passing resemblance to the likes of Clive Barker and Peter Straub, and owe no small debt to H.P. Lovecraft. Yet Kiernan has a voice that's uniquely her own: her tales follow helpless protagonists through shadowed planes of death and lust, encountering dark wonders shrouded in ambiguity. These stories are modern neo-Lovecraftian takes on humans encountering things beyond our comprehension, full of mysteries better left unknown that scarred psyches, transform the body or mind, and are sure to leave an imprint on readers.

Kiernan is chillingly effective at psychological horror; her stories present scenes laced with dread, fragmented by memory, told from deep within the headspace of doomed and helpless characters. Take the pair of "Untitled Psychiatrist" tales where characters recall unsettling scenes from their past. Others, like "Year Without a Summer" and "Far From Any Shore," follow doomed protagonists whose minds may have already snapped from seeing the indescribable Lovecraftian horror in the other room---these tales are beautiful but mercurial, raising more questions than they answer.

In stories like these, Kiernan takes to heart the concept to keep horror mysterious and unknown, instead circling around and describing it through shrouded implication, and ending without any grand revelation or dénouement. This is great for creating and sustaining a sense of dread unknown, leaving your mind to imagine a myriad of horrible possibilities... but it will be frustrating if you need some sense of finality, of knowing what occurred. I also feel like I've read twenty of Kiernan's variations on this theme by now, but she handles it so exquisitely that this is like complaining Picasso did too much with cubism. And upon reflection this may be because I've read several of these stories before in their original anthologies/collections.

"The Cats of River Street (1925)" is like nothing I've seen Kiernan write before, yet in theme and execution it fits in well with this collection (and with the rest of her works). The setting is Lovecraft's old haunt of Innsmouth, where this story weaves between some of the town's normal inhabitants going about their everyday lives in 1925. I don't want to give away too much, and if you're familiar with Lovecraft's work---especially The Cats of Ulthar and The Shadow Over Innsmouth---then you probably know where this is going. It's a delightful homage to Lovecraft. If you're looking for a darker Lovecraft tale, Kiernan has you covered with "Excerpts from An Eschatology Quadrille." This one jumps across four narratives in different time periods, each one dealing with the same jade artifact that foreshadows madness and death. As each story has a different writing style and themes that loosely match their decade, it's a great example of Kiernan's range and ability to craft strong growing unease.

"Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still" is another standout in my eyes. The descendants of colonists abandoned on Mars revel in an annual celebration, retelling the tortured history when their desperate ancestors were forced to begin anew on the planet. On a world where every resource must be recycled or preserved, where waste and destruction have become anathema, its inhabitants have developed their own society and religious beliefs that bear less resemblance to their ancestors than to a seasonal Pagan ritual. The story reads like one of Bradbury's Martian Chronicles by way of Clark Ashton Smith, with excellent SF cultural world-building that's used for a realistic but deeply unsettling future society.

With her use of dark, horrific, and sexual themes, I can't say that YA is something I associate with Caitlín Kiernan. And yet this collection has a fine YA story in "Fake Plastic Trees." The setting resembles J. G. Ballard's bizarre apocalypses, where a scientific experiment with nanites gone awry unleashed a plastic plague that turned everything it touches into PVC. The protagonist has grown up in world where foliage, roads, structures, and living things were all turned into plastic statues akin to the plaster citizens of Pompeii. The science is detailed and realistic, and the story acts as an interesting metaphor for our irresponsible use of technology and throwaway consumerism. I'd love to see this expanded upon, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.

Of the stories I'd read in other collections, "The Road of Needles" is one of my favorites, a loose retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set aboard a terraforming spaceship. Due to an accident the ship's compartments are now overgrown with verdant rainforest; The sole human crew member must trudge to the other end of the ship to restart the computer core. Along this path, she's pursued by both a lupine assailant and memories of her daughter and life back home. "The Road of Needles" shows nature at its wildest; with its imaginative setting and unnerving tension, I'm not surprised that it won a Locus award.

The Dinosaur Tourist collects 19 of Kiernan's short stories from recent years in one place. A few of these stories I found a bit vague or meandering, too slow or ambiguous for me to really sink my teeth into them. But this collection is overall quite strong; the low points are still quality stuff, and the high points are some of the best being published in the genre today. This is one of the most varied of Keirnan's collections in recent years, and it's also one of the most accessible (compared to, say, the more explicit content in Dear Sweet Filthy World). Readers of horror, gothic, and weird tales owe it to themselves to give Kiernan's writing a try, and this collection is an excellent starting point.

I normally do not like short story collections, but I had a sneaky suspicion that I would enjoy this because I love dinosaurs! I found most of the stories to be interesting and some to not interest me at all but that’s with almost every short story collection I have read, Overall, I think this was a solid read and would recommend it to others!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review!

What a wonderfully weird, creative, and sometimes spooky collection of short stories! I had read a few short stories by Kiernan before picking this up, but Dinosaur Tourist was my first experience with a full collection of her work and I’m so glad I picked it up! The first few stories took me a little while to get into, but before I realized it, I was flying through each story to the end. There’s a wonderful slow build element to all of these stories and each story puts you a little bit on edge, and a little bit unprepared for whatever surprising aspect dawns on you as you read. I love speculative fiction and this collection was a great break from the novels I’ve been reading lately.

All of the stories were at least 3 star reads for me, but some of my favorites included:

“The Cats of River Street”- I just loved the concept of this little story and the cats of this community coming together to defend their town from monstrous sea creatures! It was creepy and sweet all at the same time.

“Fake Plastic Trees”- Dystopian YA story about life in a world where plastic has taken over a majority of the lifeforms on the planet.

“Whisper Road (Murder Ballad No. 9)” - A girl underestimates how far her boyfriend will go during a robbery. (There are a couple of these Murder Ballad stories in this collection and they are each creepy and menacing!)

“The Dinosaur Tourist”- Basically a serial killer story, with all of the eerie vibes that entails.

I really enjoyed reading this collection of diverse speculative fiction and I’ll definitely be checking out more of Kiernan’s work!

I am an anthology junkie. Short story collections are my drug of choice and this collection is definitely worth a few reads. Get to know a bunch of authors. Explore our world and others in new and fun ways. Meet loads of fabulous out of the world characters and laugh, cry, and get angry right along side them. WONDEFUL!!!

Nineteen short stories of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, are brought together in The Dinosaur Tourist, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s fifteenth collection of short fiction. This is my first introduction to her works, and all have a Lovecraftian quality, slowly pulling back the edges of reality, testing the water of surrealism, until a new world is upon you and there’s no turning back. Beware dead swans, large black dogs, psychiatrists, road trips at night, and of course, dinosaurs.

Some of my favorites include:

-Whisper Road (Murder Ballad No. 9) – An addict with anger issues and his girlfriend break into a farm house and get into more trouble than they bargained for. On the road, pale red blinking lights in the night sky follow them ceaselessly.
-Albatross – Two strangers find a dead sea creature washed up on a beach. It doesn’t stink, neither can identify it, no one ever comes to clean it up, and the ocean won’t take it back.
-Fairy Tale of Wood Street – A woman see her lover’s tail for the first time and remembers an encounter she had with a forest creature in her youth.

Many of the stories in this collection boast great concepts, such as idea for The Cats of River Street (1925), in which a group of street cats guard humanity from the tentacled horrors of the deep. But often the execution doesn’t work for me. Many are too slow. Many are narrated by characters with weak voices. The punchline is often softened by not arriving sooner. But the ones that initially grabbed me have not let

First, Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

I don’t know if it was necessarily the stories that kept me reading this book or if it was that I was intrigued by the author’s mind and wondering where else the stories would go. I can say, if you are a fan of Chuck Palahniuk you will probably really enjoy this book.

Title: The Dinosaur Tourist
Author: Caitlín R. Kiernan
Page Count: 312
Star Count: 3.6/5

**This ARC book was provided to me by Subterranean Press via NetGalley for an honest review. No paid content. These thoughts are my own. The completed collection goes on sale 30 November 2018.**

I have so many thoughts regarding this collection of short stories that I'm not quite sure where to begin. I suppose I should start by saying that there were many aspects of this collection that I did enjoy. However, I was disappointed overall in the themes and messages I got from many of the stories, and in the overall presentation of the collection.

First, let me say that this was my first ebook ARC ever. I understand that not all of the formatting in the ARC will be the same as the formatting in the finished product. I honestly hope that is the case here. Personally, I think the book would have had a much better flow if sections hadn't been jumbled up on the page. An example would be a hard line break in the middle of a sentence; this happened multiple times throughout the work. Additionally, I find that reading an author's explanation regarding why they wrote a particular story after having read the story to be off-putting. I would much rather have a place in the collection, perhaps toward the end, where explanations for all of the stories exist. This would help to make the reading experience less disjointed than it was in the case of this collection. Finally, there were several instances where I wasn't quite sure what story I was reading any longer because the title of the story was at the end of the tale rather than at the beginning. I don't mind the fact that some of the stories had less than imaginative titles ("Untitled Psychiatrist No. 2" being one of these). I just think that being consistent with where the titles are being placed would be helpful to the reader.

Now, on to the stories themselves.

Maybe it was just me, but in the first story the narrator seemed to use words and phrases that only served to make the reader feel like the narrator needed to prove how smart they are, or possibly how smart they perceive themselves to be. This story, "The Beginning of the Year Without a Summer," was difficult to follow simply because there was a massive amount of jumping around the narrator's personal timeline. This was done with little to no indication that it was going to happen, or, often, that it had happened at all. There were many times when the narrator would be describing something that was currently happening, then in the same sentence would talk about something that had happened in the past, but would talk about that event as though it were currently happening as well. It was confusing and, while I can see that this may have been a stylistic choice due to the content of the story itself, it made me not enjoy the reading or the tale in the slightest.

Many of the stories fall into this particular category: "Far From Any Shore" (weird formatting and use of both present and past tense in the same sentence, to describe the same moment), "Elegy for a Suicide" (which was problematic on multiple levels), "The Cripple and the Starfish," and "Albatross," to name a few.

"The Road of Needles," "The Cats of River Street (1925)," and "The Dinosaur Tourist (Murder Ballad No. 11)" were, by far, my favorite stories in the collection.

"The Road of Needles" is a Science Fiction short-story which follows the memories of a woman called Nix who has chosen to work on ships in space rather than at home on the planet (presumedly Earth) where she could be with her family. There are memories about her wife and daughter and reading fairy tales to them through a video-chat system (like Skype, but space) and arguing with her wife about taking jobs which would make a good living and allow them all to be together. I thought this was something like a Western exploration reimagining on a spaceship, and that was appealing to me. Pieces of it also are reminiscent of "Little Red Riding Hood;" the combination was an excellent one.

"The Cats of River Street (1925)" was just interesting. It wove together narratives of seemingly unconnected people, but at the end you realized what actually was connecting them, and it was awesome. I can't say too much without giving away the ending (and the connection!) but if you like H.P. Lovecraft's work, you'll enjoy this one.

"The Dinosaur Tourist (Murder Ballad No. 11)," liking this one probably says something about me psychologically. Honestly I just found it intriguing. It follows a man who has picked up a younger man (hitchhiker) as they drive from Nebraska into South Dakota. There isn't much I can say without giving plot details or spoiling the story for anyone who wants to read it, but I will say this: the writing was wonderful in this one. Unlike some of the other stories, it felt complete, while it still left me wanting to read just a bit more. If all of the stories in this collection had been like this one (in writing, not content), I would have enjoyed the journey much more than I did.

All of that being said, there were several issues I had with this collection, beyond the formatting (which I hope will be cleaned up before it goes on sale to the general public!). As I mentioned before, there were themes which I felt were treated incorrectly. There were instances when it seemed like the author was telling the reader that suicide is a perfectly normal and okay thing to aspire to, a natural way to have a life end, and not something that is (typically) the result of despondency or mental illness (as is most often the case). Multiple characters either commit suicide in these stories, or talk about it in moderately glorified tones. This was probably this biggest issue I found with the collection.

All else aside, I can appreciate that Caitlín R. Kiernan is a good writer, and I can see why people would enjoy reading her work; however, aside from the three specific stories mentioned above, this collection was not for me.

The opening stories are Mythos stories and they are the best. Much more mature than the last collection of stories I read by Kiernan and a pretty good read. The science fiction and horror stories are my least favorite, and there is a lot in-between. Apparently this is the fifteenth collection by this author. I think as best-of collection would be a better approach than an all-of.

The Dinosaur Tourist is a collection of tales by Caitlin R. Kiernan.

I have to confess that I grabbed this ARC from Netgalley because I'm a dino-dork from way back. Fortunately for me, the impulse paid off. This was a really good short story collection from an author I've never read before.

Kiernan worked as a paleontologist and paleontology is worked into the periphery of most of the stories. Some of the stories have a Lovecraftian feel, only written in Kiernan's noir-ish style. I don't know that she's ever written a straight up noir tale before but if she did, I'd read the hell out of it. Her style has the doomed feel of the old noir masters.

The title story was my favorite one, partly because it involves a long ass drive across South Dakota, something I've done in the last few years, and it's damn authentic. I had a feeling how it would end but it was still pretty great. I'm a little disappointed they got ensnared by the Wall tourist trap.

It's tricky to review a book of short stories without spoiling too much or writing a review the lenght of a short story yourself. I'll say I was never disappointed and I'll be reading more Caitlin Kiernan in the future. Four out of five stars.

The Dinosaur Tourist takes us to places both familiar and strange, dancing in and out in a way that often defines the strict boundaries of genre to become something more. Kiernan is unafraid to tackle the classics, from her cats that guard Lovecraft's Innsmouth, while also creating so much that is utterly new. Strange idols appear in the earth. Holes open up in bathroom floors.

Throughout many of the stories, the theme of fossil hunting or paleontology runs. Some characters are fossil hunters, while some are merely named for them. It's a uniting theme in any otherwise disparate collection, and one that I was more than happy to see. Short story collections don't have to fit together evenly, at least to me, and this is one that clearly exists to show off Kiernan's best work and then some.

If you're prepared to dive deep into wondrous worlds, I highly recommend The Dinosaur Tourist. Thanks to NetGalley and Subterranean Press for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review!