It is not in the interest of either book for me to give any spoilers. It would take too much time, anyway, as the stories don't lend themselves to easy summation. The easiest thing to focus on is the way this author tells a story.
Few horror writers bother with the layered characterizations you encounter in a novel by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Each person you meet is fully fleshed out, good and bad sides both, and some who are nominally the heroes are still revealed as weak and tortured. Daria Parker is a good example - Ms. Kiernan doesn't do anything to make one really sympathize with Daria too deeply - she's not a person you'd probably want to know - perenially angry, confrontational, self-absorbed, prone to talk more with destruction than words at times. Yet Daria is in her heart deeply wounded and the emotion that bears the tide of anger forth is real. You may not like Daria, but you feel her. Her lover Niki comes across for much of Murder of Angels as a kind of classic 'holy fool' - a blithe spirit, befuddled by the danger surrounding her yet persevering. Through both stories Spyder Baxter is the ostinato that beats away under each action taken, the influence, the ghost who haunts and the spinner of the webs that entrap everyone else. She is the most intriguing character, in part because she's become something far different in Murder of Angels than what she was in Silk.
Technically, Silk is the less polished novel - sometimes I felt a little bogged down by the writer's gift for florid, tactile descriptions, and wished for things to just move along a bit faster. In Murder of Angels the prose is no less poetic, but Ms. Kiernan has matured as a novelist, and the story is in motion from the very first, moving at a satistfying and sometimes thrilling pace.
Honestly, the end of Murder of Angels was puzzling to me. There was less denouement than I expected. Because of the vividly realized other world the author created I had to wonder if the story arc had really come to an end after all. I've seen no mention of a third book continuing this story line, but it's easy to imagine Caitlín R. Kiernan wanting to delve further into this fantastic world she's constructed and live a little while longer with these characters, particularly the enigmatic, mystic Spyder Baxter.
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