Customer Reviews

The Hungry Moon

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Once upon a time, I read an interview in Fangoria magazine with Mr. Campbell, and based upon that article (and the strength of short stories I had read by the man) I went out and bought everything I could find. The Hungry Moon is one of my favorite novels from that time (the other is Ancient Images, also highly recommended)... Fantastic, well worth tracking down. I recall that interview made mention that John Carpenter was interested in making the book into a movie... That would be pretty interesting, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. Still, we have this terror-ific novel, and that is already MORE than enough!!! In short: get this book, and give yourself a treat. To this day, I still buy Ramsey Campbell's books and treasure the memories of gooseflesh and shivers I got on those warm summer nights, when I first discovered his exceptional works.

I normally find Campbell a bit over-rated relative to the other stars of modern British horror (my faves Phil Rickman and Joe Donnelly in particular) - he's a bit weak on locality description, as well as character and atmosphere development. However, "The Hungry Moon" is a goodie, and difficult to put down. Basic plot: religious nut and followers come to isolated Peak District village full of dysfunctional characters. They take over the village and ban the local pagan festival where a local cave is decorated with flowers. Unfortunately, the ritual was needed to keep at bay the Bad Thing that lived in the cave, so things go downhill from there. Several eerie twists involving tricks of memory and time-space distortion: won't spoil it by saying more, but there are similarities to Donnelly's "Bane" in places.

I haven't had a chance to read all of Campbell's work but i have read quite a few. I would absolutely rank this as one of his best pure horror novels. The creeping dread that this book makes the reader feel from the opening till the close is awsome in it's power. I am telling all of you horror fans out there to go and find a copy of this book. It isn't easy to find this so i recommend you find a used copy online somewhere. It is well worth the amount you will have to pay for it. This novel ranks up there as one of the all time scariest novels ever written. If you don't believe me simply read it you'll see

Like most of Campbell's fiction THE HUNGRY MOON is a tour de force of atmospheric weird horror. At the same time Campbell has crafted here a biting satire on religion, and particularly the troubling ease with which panic and hysteria, acting on a population, can breed mindless fanaticism within supposedly civilized society. Overall, THE HUNGRY MOON doesn't quite impress the reader as strongly as Campbell's most masterful works--for novels, see INCARNATE and THE INFLUENCE--but neither does this book in any way discredit Campbell's reputation as one of horror fiction's most extraordinary talents.

It is the Dawn of a new Age, but you're not the one to notice it. You're too busy hunkered down by the fire in the sorry excuse for a parade ground here amid the hastily piled stones of the Governor's Roman garrison, pitched under cover of torchlight and glinty spear by a nervous Aedile tempered less by the wind-blasted heath of England than the fairer gusts off Capri.

You're one of Caesar's Legions, left to garrison the Northern Island against the Picts and Savages and hairy half-men that would hinder the Glory of the Empire, that would harry the Double Eagle sigil, that would dare do dishonor against the Standard of the Emperor Claudius himself. Winter might blight you, famine might starve you, but no man, no spear, no stone can drive you from these shores!

Only Something does.

Something that lives deep in the ground, in the pit of the land, something that hauls its heaving, bloated, distended body out by the silvered Moon, by the eternal Moon, by the Hungry Moon.

Something that still lies in wait millennia later, in a well on the fog shrouded moor at the center of the ancient tumble of dun-colored cottages and windy streets, the well about which the villagers hold their annual festivals, about which trot the little girls with their curls festooned with flowers: the Thing that sleeps, and dreams of carnage, beneath cobbles of the town called Moonwell.

When grandmaster of English horror Ramsey Campbell is good, he's very good, and here the Master practices his witchy craft at its finest: "The Hungry Moon" is a tale of precisely what happens when some gallivanting rationalist---or, perhaps, some stalwart, wordy, charismatic chicanerer who comes under the Banner of a New God---dispenses with all those silly rituals that keep the simple country-folk under the yoke of the ages, and lets the really insatiable horror out of the cage ritual politely kept for millennia.

Here it is the fundamentalist evangelist Godwin Mann (a thinly-veiled doppleganger of the Reverend Billy Graham, who Campbell encountered during one of his English crusades in the seventies). He brings his Bible, his camp followers, and a burning confidence in his capacity to rouse the sleeping, and call them forth to the tender bosom of Christ.

And you know, when you stand at the door and knock---as Christ once said---something is bound to answer.

Campbell specializes in conjuring up gruesome tales of a contemporary England uneasily at armistice with its bloodsoaked haunts, a green and unpleasant land where the ancient terrors and slavering Gods and Monsters slumber fitfully, paved over by the motorways and strip malls and soulless business districts, neglected, fed less often, but no less hungry or terrible for it.

If you're new to Campbell, then I envy you, particularly if your first approach is through "The Hungry Moon", which covers some of the darkest, most sinister territory the author has surveyed, weaving the tale of an ancient, slavering horror that overwhelms first the confident Bible-thumping crusader, then stretches its cancerous pedipalps through his self-righteous, well-fed, bristling flock, with an eye towares the potential of the American nuclear missile base nearby.

Campbell is also deft at exploiting the gaps left in the frayed alliances and sagging relationships of his villagers: these are flawed creatures, humans, instantly familiar. The unhappily married man who gluts his lust with furtive glances and weekend porno flicks, the scholarly shut-in terrified to speak up, the police inspector all too aware of his own brutal failures as the darkness grows thick, and whispery, and fatally insistent.

"The Hungry Moon" is caviar and cognac in the dark, the work of a master at the height of his craft. Savor it, but lock all the doors & check beneath the bed first.

JSG

I think this is one of Campbell's best books. If you liked "In the Darkest Part of the Woods", you'll like this book more. It's a page turner, and it'll stick with you long after you've finished it.

Like most of Campbell's fiction THE HUNGRY MOON is a tour de force of atmospheric weird horror. At the same time Campbell has crafted here a biting satire on religion, and particularly the troubling ease with which panic and hysteria, acting on a population, can breed mindless fanaticism within supposedly civilized society. Overall, THE HUNGRY MOON doesn't quite impress the reader as strongly as Campbell's most masterful works--for novels, see INCARNATE and THE INFLUENCE--but neither does this book in any way discredit Campbell's reputation as one of horror fiction's most extraordinary talents.

Very literary, well-written piece. I'm not a believer that horror has to be splattery or in-your-face threatening. So I enjoyed how the cumulative creepiness of THM takes a while to settle in. Campbell really captures the feeling of paranoia, mass hysteria and isolation. I've witnessed similar in "The Crucible" and some of Hitchcock's films. Characters are not plastic. In fact, the internal monologues really impressed me. Believable, interesting dialogue. My negative: if you're looking for overtly SCARY, don't look here. The "creature" is not remotely terrifying. The atmosphere created is remarkable: spooky but not exactly chill-inducing.