Tedious, Tacky, Too Much....Just My Personal Opinion, Of Course...

Lycaon. Engraving by Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617) for Ovid's Metamorphoses Book I, 209 ff. Français : Lycaon. Gravure d'Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617) pour les Métamorphoses d'Ovide, livre I, 209 et suiv. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Red Moon

By Benjamin Percy


This review is Just My Personal Opinion, Of course...so it comes to you in a different wrapper...

I know, I know, werewolves are popular now after the whole Twilight thing...I had so far avoided any of these books but slipped when I chose to read Red Moon. Sure I enjoyed the horror of werewolves when I was young...scary good, right? But I draw the line in getting romantically involved with them...or any other horror monster for that matter... I read about just under 100 pages, including the Epilogue and that was done over a series of days. One reviewer claimed this was literary horror...OMG...

At 530 pages, writing a literary novel of horror makes this, to me, just tedious...It was hard to get into the story, given the planned length and scope... However, that was not the point that broke it for me...

The novel places werewolves, excuse me, lycans, as part of the general population... The blurb says it:
They live among us. They are our neighbors, our mothers, our lovers...They Change... Now, can we substitute something else in place of lycans? Can we just assume, like the lycans, that terrorists or rapists, or all other criminals live among us and we should accept them, even when "they change..."? Am I being too harsh? Oh well...

Or, on the other hand, should we assume that all those who look different or believe differently from us, should be kept separate from the "rest" of us, even if they never "act out" like we assume they will?

The immediate opening event was a human on a plane, turning into his wolf persona, and killing everybody, except one boy who played dead under a dead woman who fell on him...

Then, those who are known as lycans are murdered by the government, even though they had never "changed... (acted out) and one young girl escapes as her parents and her best friend's family are all killed.

I'm sorry...given the fact that the U.S. has been terrorized by using a plane, immediately brought an analogy to mind that I was not prepared for... Hey, horror is one thing, but placing monsters in the middle of our country, as our neighbors, friends and lovers, is just too much of a parody! It was and is tacky to turn a real situation that was experienced by many into a side show horror. It also could lead to an assumption that everybody doing everything is perfectly alright, if you just are attracted to them...Duh...

Without reading the rest of the book, I'll wager that the human boy who escapes the murders on the planes will sooner or later meet up with the lycan girl who escaped the murders of the parents by the government...and they'll fall for each other... Again, duh...same old plot?

There is also something that is quite offensive to me when "monsters" (say for instance, those who go under the name of Al Quaeda) are able to live, love and be happy. We need to stop being so accepting. There is wrong and there is right...killing by plane, by gun, by biting your neck, or tearing out your throat, is not sexy or fun...it's murder. Please do not tell me that this is an epic literary novel!

Fantasy is fine; this is not, in my opinion...

So you can be sure that, if this goes to movies, there will be some young hunk chosen to play the parts so our teens will swoon over...yikes, werewolves who cut out your throats...

As I opened the book and noticed that there are reviews from an entire book sales group, I immediately was put on alert...never seen that before! My guess, this will sell, obviously it's been fine-tuned into an acceptable novel that will be praised by many...


I'm not willing to routinely agree on this one even if well written, a great thriller, et. al., When are we going to stop playing with the difference between right and wrong...criminal acts by evil people are not acceptable. Individual races or people should not be punished if they've done nothing wrong...

GABixlerReview