I wrote my review of Caitlin Kiernan's Alabaster last night and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It's hard to write about short story collections for me - I struggle to balance my review over all of the stories, or at least make sure to mention enough about each of them so that a reader who hates the story I love will still be knowledgeable enough about the rest of the stories to give the book a look. I don't want the author to lose readers just because I only wrote about one story - but how to be balanced and coherent, that's the problem And I'm still working on that with every collection I write about.

In this case it was a lot easier as all of Alabaster's stories are about Dancy Flammarion, Kiernan's teenage monster killer. In the way that all interrelated story collections seem more like a novel than short stories, Alabaster is fairly easy to explain to readers: girl sees monsters, girl kills monsters and in between there is a lot of struggling to live the life of monster killer (as well as a ton of wicked good writing about monsters, the south and what it takes to be the one who tries to save the world).

But even after writing the review I've still been thinking a lot about this book. Partly that was just because it is that good, but mostly it was because of Dancy's angel. The angel tells her where the monsters are and sends her on her quests; the angel never lets her rest, not for a minute and always has another assignment waiting in the wings. Dancy does not know why the angel does this, or why he chose her, she only knows her angel sends her after monsters and because she can not escape him, she goes and she kills and she does it all over again.

Does that sound like any angel you've ever heard of?

There is a bit of this angel business in my YA book - called Hurricane Angels today - but not Touched by an Angel sort of angels, more of "it looked like an angel and I was expecting an angel so it had to be an angel, right?" type action. I've been thinking about how we expect angels in our lives, especially if we were raised in certain religions and because of that when something happens that seems to be angelic or at least angelish, we immediately grasp on to the angel aspect. We don't think it could be anything different and in the case of my story, that sets up a long tragic mystery to follow.

But none of that has anything to do with Dancy.

I was listening to Sarah McLachlan sing "Angel" tonight and that is when it hit me. Dancy is hoping that her angel will act like an angel at some point I think - she is hoping there will be a reward for all of this, or at least a rest.

Go back to sleep and I'll be home again, she thinks. Close my eyes and none of this has ever happened. Not the truth, nothing like the truth, but cold comfort better than no comfort at all in this hole behind the place where the monster sleeps during the day. Dancy blinks at the darkness, licks her dry, chapped lips, and tries hard to remember the story her mother was telling her in the dream. Lion's den, whale belly, fiery-furnace Bible story but all of the words and names running together in her head, the pain and numbness in her wrists and ankles more real, and the dream growing smaller and farther away with every beat of her heart.

Why doesn't her angel save her, just once? Why must it always be so hard when you fight on the side of the angels?

spend all your time waiting
for that second chance
for a break that would make it okay,
there's always one reason
to feel not good enough
and it's hard at the end of the day

She kills the monsters again and again and again and they are so horrific - more horrific then the fairy tale monsters and Biblical monsters and the monsters that live down the street - but Dancy walks down the highway to the next town, the church, the gas station, the place the angel sends her because he is an angel and surely that means something doesn't it? Surely if an angel sends you out there to kill the monsters then it all must be for something bigger than you can imagine and wanting it to stop, wanting it be easier, wanting your angel to be kinder is not fair, not important, not part of the deal. It's not what you need to be thinking about little girl - you are on an mission and that is all that matters.

i need some distraction,
oh beautiful release,
memory seeps from my veins,
let me be empty and weightless and maybe i'll find some peace tonight,
in the arms of an angel,
fly away from here,
from this dark cold hotel room and the endlessness that you fear

I get it now. What we do, what we have to do, all the ugly and awful and tragic things we do are because we know we are on the side of the angels, we are convinced that killing the monsters is what the angels want and need and pray for us to do and if we do this, if we succeed then the angels will love us, they will save us, they will make everything okay.

The angel will love Dancy; we will all be loved.

you are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
you're in the arms of the angel,
may you find some comfort here.

Just some peace, some place to rest, some comfort. That's what the angels promise, what they have always promised and if you do what they command then the peace will come, in this life or the next, the peace will come.

Dancy gets off the highway as quickly as she can and crouches low in a shallow, bramble and trash-filled ditch at the side of the road. She squeezes her eyes shut and covers her ears, trying not to think about the thing in the iron cage, or the naked woman it pretended to be, or the old man who would have fed her to the monster, trying not to think of anything but the angel and all the promises its made.

That she is strong, and one day soon she will be in Paradise with her grandmother and her mother and even though they will know all the terrible things she's had to do for the angel they'll still love her anyway.

The angel promises us, you see. From the moment we go to church and see those pictures of goldness and light the angel makes a promise that it will always love us, that it will always know what is right, that it will lead us to peace. If only we do what the angels ask, if only we believe then we will know the love of angels forever.

it don't make no difference,
escaping one last time,
it's easier to believe in this madness, oh
this glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

A teenager monster killer in a book where the angel might just be the biggest monster of all and I finally understand everything. All of us are looking for an angel to love us and so we do what we think they want, we fight on the side of the angels, all of us, every one of us, and that is how we are safe and loved and know the promise of peace.

We do it for the love of an angel.

in the arms of an angel,
fly away from here,
from this dark cold hotel room
and the endlessness that you feel
you are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
you're in the arms of the angel
may you find some comfort here

you're in the arms of the angel,
may you find some comfort here

Now I understand Israel and Hizballah; now I understand how we can still be here, the whole world can still be here in this very same place, just a different time but an eternal and ageless story. Now I understand.

We fight on the side of the angels, every single one of us, all of us. And because of that, the only comfort the world will ever know is chaos, the only peace is war. Just like Dancy Flammarion, we better all get used to it.

you're in the arms of the angel,
may you find some comfort here