Caitlin Kiernen is something of an up-and-comer in the horror field. Her book jackets are peppered with various awards as well as praise from many established authors. Neil Gaiman appears to be a big fan. None of this is surprising, considering her style has been described as "self-conciously modern". What that description means to you and I is that she's a "writers writer"; clearly interested in the craft of writing as much as the story itself.
For readers, that means lot of made up words, murky dreamscape imagery, and out of sequence narratives. Personally, I found the whole business pretty distracting. It's proof positve that on can be a talented wordsmith without being a talented storyteller. In the case of "Threshold" that's a real shame because all the plot pieces for a King style page turner are there; modern setting, everyday people in all their imperfect glory, events beyond their understanding, etc. The story itself follows three friends and a young albino runaway who've happened upon some ancient secrets holed-up in a city's water tunnel system. Monsters, tunnels, and the devil incarnated as a hitchiker should work, but the laborious prose was too much for me.
That said, I can see a place for this with some young adult and college-aged readers. Kiernan provides a cast that is of the 20-something age group and presented in a realistic way. I suppose there's enough elements of realism that the goth set could imagine it all happening to them too.
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