Red Moon by Benjamin Percy
My rating: 4/5 cats
i love this book like gravy.
i have felt pretty distanced from my books, lately. nothing has been grabbing me and sucking me in, not since The Last Whisper in the Dark. but this one grabbed me right from the start and i was immediately absorbed into the story and invested in its plot and characters.
was it perfect? no. i loved the book, but i totally agree with a lot of what mike says here. and other reviewers point out that the final scenes in the book felt a bit rushed and convenient and left a character or two stranded.
and that is all also true.
but it’s a great story. you wanna hit me about the head and shoulders with your allegory, i can live with it as long as you are telling me a good story while you are doing it.
you wanna View Spoiler » that’s totally fine, because as you were doing that, you wrote some of the most horrifying prose i have ever read about what happens to animals abandoned in a zoo. seriously – that really affected me, so the tidy and oddly brief wrap-up there didn’t bother me the way it might have otherwise.
and i have never given a shit about werewolves before. (although Blood and Chocolate was pretty rad.) but this book really made me a fan.
i have never read benjamin percy before, but i have heard great things. and they were all showcased here. he writes crackling prose. vivid, detailed, lightning-flash descriptions, characters who make appropriate decisions based on their backgrounds, truly gripping and harrowing action sequences.
that plane scene?? i would love it if more horror novelists could write a scene like that. he is a great lit-horror stylist.
and even in his quieter moments:
A reporter interviewed a woman wearing a Looney Tunes sweatshirt and purple leggings. The tape at the bottom of the screen identified her as a family member of one of the passengers. “It’s the most horrible thing in the world,” she said, roughing away her tears with the remains of a tissue. “And it’s happening right here.”
i mean, that’s freaking divine, that.
yeah, so he left me wondering about miriam, and what happened to her after the last scene we saw her in. i don’t even mind. the ending definitely leaves room for a follow-up, so i am fingers-crossing that we have not seen the last of her.
and if none of those mini-gripes bother you, i am here waving this book at you and telling you to give it a shot.
for chase and augustus and their symbiotic relationship, for miriam’s badassery, for claire’s journey from discomfort to pride in what she is, for puck’s evil in a small package, for patrick’s shifting loyalties, and for that freaking amazing scene where miriam is hiding under the table.
holy hell.
benjamin percy can write, and if you have gotten this far into my review, you can read. do the math.
