Book Review: Red Moon by Benjamin Percy

I’ve been sitting on this book review for a couple months now. Trying to get back into the swing of things has been hard these last few months; don’t know why – maybe because of the holidays?

Anyways, this book had been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for at least two years. It was one of those buys that I picked up after seeing it in Powell’s when I was visiting friends in Portland. But it was around that time that I started really getting into reading and reviewing, so I started buying books like crazy and this one got pushed to the back burner.

Which was a mistake if only because it was such a surprising and good read, but not so much since the timing for when I read it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Red Moon by Benjamin Percy is set in an alternate reality where a small percentage of the world’s population are basically werewolves, called Lycans in the book. However, it’s illegal for any one of them to change, which works since the majority of them are drugged to the point that they can’t change anyways. But then some of them decide to become terrorists and a form of chaos ensues.

The book mainly follows three characters: Claire Forester, who never really gave a thought to her and her family being Lycan until the day government agents kick down her door and murder her parents; Patrick Gamble, who was nothing special until he becomes the only person to step off a plane, alive; and Chase Williams, a man slowly rising in government, sworn to protect the people of the US from the menace, the Lycans in their society, only to find himself becoming the thing he’s promised to destroy.

All three of these character’s story connect and then disconnect at different points in the book, all creating an epic of a story that covers multiple themes that are prevalent in today’s climate and society both on the global and US scale. The story and the themes used to create such a complex, but well written plot is one of the reasons this book was such a great read for me. The book covered prejudice against a subgroup of people in both the political, societal, and medical arenas; terrorism; domestic surveillance; military presence in other countries; and even how food and its ingredients are distributed.

This book also has a lot of great action, characters, and great description when it came to the blood and gore scenes (which happened quite often). It also has a great horror aspect a la Mary Shelley/ Frankenstein, which I think was a well executed element for this book because it’s humans that tend to become the monsters, you just can’t always see that for what it is.

The only downfall of this book, I think, is that the writing wasn’t something to call home about. Percy is a good writer and did a very good job creating this complex story that never left me confused yet there was something missing from his writing that I think would have really made this book amazing.

Regardless of that, I am so annoyed with myself that I waited so long to finally pick it up because it definitely grabbed my attention and didn’t let go until the end. Actually, I don’t think it let me go until several weeks later; very thought provoking especially with how similar some aspects were to reality.

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Just to give a little more insight, here is a picture of all of my status updates while reading this book:

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So, is your interest piqued at all with this book?? Have you already read it?

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Reading Challenge Prompts Satisfied:

PopSugar 2017 Reading Challenge: Book Involving a Mythical Creature

Sorry, I’m Booked 2017 Reading Challenge: (Sept) Book with Mythical Creature(s)

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