Red Moon by Benjamin Percy
Dec. 30th, 2013 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
They live among us.
They are your neighbour, your mother, your lover.
You think they are safe.
They change.
Every teenage girl thinks she’s different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realises just how different she is.
Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and, hours later, stepped off it, the only passenger left alive. A hero.
President Chase Williams has sworn to eradicate the menace. Unknown to the electorate, however, he is becoming the very thing he has sworn to destroy.
Each of them is caught up in a war that has so far been controlled with laws and violence and drugs. But an uprising is about to leave them damaged, lost, and tied to one another for ever.
The night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognisable world will emerge, and the battle for humanity will begin.
It’s an alternative universe. Werewolves (known as lycans) are real – infected with a disease called lobos, which affects the adrenal gland and allows them to turn into wolfish creatures. Some lycans have established their own republic between Finland and Russia but since the discovery of uranium deposits the US has stationed troops there to keep it safe from insurgents. In the US, lycans are obliged to take Lupex, a drug that prevents them from changing, they have to submit to monthly blood tests. Their struggle to obtain basic civil liberties has been fraught with violence and there are still those who wish to treat them as animals to be segregated from society.
Everything changes when a lycan called Balor decides to strike back against America in a string of attacks aimed at civilians. 18-year-old Patrick Gamble is the sole survivor of a lycan attack on a passenger plane – nicknamed Miracle Boy by the media while 18 year old Claire Forrester is a lycan caught up in the government’s reprisals – who witnesses a tall man shoot her parents dead. Meanwhile Governor Chase Williams of Oregon is campaigning for President on a ticket that favours restricting lycan rights still favour while hiding the fact that he himself carries the infection …
Benjamin Percy’s werewolf horror novel is a heavy metaphorical attack on US foreign policy that does little new with the genre. The characters all develop in predictable ways according to the plot and it’s depressing that the one truly strong female character goes through the obligatory rape and sexual abuse cycle. Balor’s motives are never fully explored and given the final twist, I was left wondering what the point of his attacks was. I was similarly dissatisfied with the ending of a couple of the plot strands. Ultimately it’s an okay read but the idea of lycanism as infection has been done to death and there’s nothing new here to grab hold of. I’d read Percy’s other books but I wouldn’t rush to check out a sequel to this one.
The main problem is that Patrick and Claire are both bland characters who react to events rather than shape them and while Chase has a lot of potential, Percy never really explores what makes him tick and his potentially interesting power-play relationship with Augustus fades into nothing.
Ultimately although this kept me turning the pages, it never set them alight.
The Verdict:
Benjamin Percy’s werewolf horror novel is a heavy metaphorical attack on US foreign policy that does little new with the genre. The characters all develop in predictable ways according to the plot and it’s depressing that the one truly strong female character goes through the obligatory rape and sexual abuse cycle. Balor’s motives are never fully explored and given the final twist, I was left wondering what the point of his attacks was. I was similarly dissatisfied with the ending of a couple of the plot strands. Ultimately it’s an okay read but the idea of lycanism as infection has been done to death and there’s nothing new here to grab hold of. I’d read Percy’s other books but I wouldn’t rush to check out a sequel to this one.
RED MOON was released in the United Kingdom on 8th May 2013. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the free copy of this book.
They are your neighbour, your mother, your lover.
You think they are safe.
They change.
Every teenage girl thinks she’s different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester’s front door and murder her parents, Claire realises just how different she is.
Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and, hours later, stepped off it, the only passenger left alive. A hero.
President Chase Williams has sworn to eradicate the menace. Unknown to the electorate, however, he is becoming the very thing he has sworn to destroy.
Each of them is caught up in a war that has so far been controlled with laws and violence and drugs. But an uprising is about to leave them damaged, lost, and tied to one another for ever.
The night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognisable world will emerge, and the battle for humanity will begin.
It’s an alternative universe. Werewolves (known as lycans) are real – infected with a disease called lobos, which affects the adrenal gland and allows them to turn into wolfish creatures. Some lycans have established their own republic between Finland and Russia but since the discovery of uranium deposits the US has stationed troops there to keep it safe from insurgents. In the US, lycans are obliged to take Lupex, a drug that prevents them from changing, they have to submit to monthly blood tests. Their struggle to obtain basic civil liberties has been fraught with violence and there are still those who wish to treat them as animals to be segregated from society.
Everything changes when a lycan called Balor decides to strike back against America in a string of attacks aimed at civilians. 18-year-old Patrick Gamble is the sole survivor of a lycan attack on a passenger plane – nicknamed Miracle Boy by the media while 18 year old Claire Forrester is a lycan caught up in the government’s reprisals – who witnesses a tall man shoot her parents dead. Meanwhile Governor Chase Williams of Oregon is campaigning for President on a ticket that favours restricting lycan rights still favour while hiding the fact that he himself carries the infection …
Benjamin Percy’s werewolf horror novel is a heavy metaphorical attack on US foreign policy that does little new with the genre. The characters all develop in predictable ways according to the plot and it’s depressing that the one truly strong female character goes through the obligatory rape and sexual abuse cycle. Balor’s motives are never fully explored and given the final twist, I was left wondering what the point of his attacks was. I was similarly dissatisfied with the ending of a couple of the plot strands. Ultimately it’s an okay read but the idea of lycanism as infection has been done to death and there’s nothing new here to grab hold of. I’d read Percy’s other books but I wouldn’t rush to check out a sequel to this one.
The main problem is that Patrick and Claire are both bland characters who react to events rather than shape them and while Chase has a lot of potential, Percy never really explores what makes him tick and his potentially interesting power-play relationship with Augustus fades into nothing.
Ultimately although this kept me turning the pages, it never set them alight.
The Verdict:
Benjamin Percy’s werewolf horror novel is a heavy metaphorical attack on US foreign policy that does little new with the genre. The characters all develop in predictable ways according to the plot and it’s depressing that the one truly strong female character goes through the obligatory rape and sexual abuse cycle. Balor’s motives are never fully explored and given the final twist, I was left wondering what the point of his attacks was. I was similarly dissatisfied with the ending of a couple of the plot strands. Ultimately it’s an okay read but the idea of lycanism as infection has been done to death and there’s nothing new here to grab hold of. I’d read Percy’s other books but I wouldn’t rush to check out a sequel to this one.
RED MOON was released in the United Kingdom on 8th May 2013. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the free copy of this book.
