Thursday, August 6, 2015

Review: Red Moon by Benjamin Percy


Title: Red Moon
Author: Benjamin Percy
Published by: Grand Central Publishing
Released: 2013
Summary: So you really want to know about werewolves? First, it's a disease spread like the AIDs virus. Second, it can be passed down to kids if a parent is a carrier. Third, the world doesn't know how to deal with this new werewolf population, so segregation and violence is occurring. And finally, some werewolves have decided to be terrorists and plan to carve out a place for themselves by murdering others. This is the story of Claire, Patrick, Miriam, and Chase and the parts they play in this new world.
My Thoughts: As with many of the books I review, I saw this one at my library and it looked interesting and enticing enough for me to pick it up and take it home. Red Moon offers up a completely new take on werewolves and seeks to explain how the disease came about. In this world, werewolf syndrome is like AIDs, it can be spread through blood and bodily fluids. Instead of it being a supernatural oddity, the syndrome comes from a prion disease or problem. So, there is really no fun urban fantasy werewolf stuff to be had in this one. It is interesting, but I won't say it is a fun book.
I only thought this book was okay. It started out promising, but then it meandered and dragged so long that I thought it was going to take me years to finish it. This book did take me longer to read than others, but I was taking a pretty work intensive online class, so that could make up for part of it. But this still was a really slow read for me.
I thought the character's were okay, but we did get introduced to a lot of them. I'm also not sure how I feel about constantly jumping from character to character. Just when I was getting really interested into what was happening with Patrick and something major had just happened, the text would jump to another character, and it would be pages before I saw Patrick again. I was not a fan of the time leaps that happened between Parts 1, 2, and 3. They made it hard to keep up with the characters and just seemed like a convenient way for the author to escape the set-up of the situations he was putting the characters into next. This prolonged amounts of time also made the book feel longer to me. It really did feel that the story dragged on and on and that I was never going to finish it. The ending was also disappointing, because there wasn't one, it was just a set up for the next book in the series. I've just read a 500+ page book, I'd like a little closure.
I just thought this book was okay. An interesting take on werewolves, but so much longer than it had to be. Very slow reading for me. I might check out the sequel if I see it, or if it even exists, but if I miss it, then I won't be heartbroken.
BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 3/5
Why you gotta be so long?

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